From: Rich Lafferty Newsgroups: tor.general,van.general,ott.general,calgary.general Subject: Re: Who expected the WTC towers to disinigrate after impact by planes? Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 20:14:18 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <3BA953D8.6517269E@netscape.net> [Apologies for continuing to crosspost; I'm not sure where the poster I'm replying to saw this thread.] In ott.general, ircle2 wrote: > > I didn't, and I don't believe the terrorists did either, the terrorists > around the world are probably surprised by how completely devastating the > attack was. The B-52 bomber that flew into the Empire Stated Bldg., didn't > utterly destroy it, maybe they thought the same thing would happen with > the WTC. It was a B-25 Mitchell that hit the Empire State Building in 1945; the B-52 Stratofortress didn't exist until 1955. Even without fuel, the Mitchell (with an empty weight of 21,100 lbs and a 31,000 lb takeoff weight) is a /lot/ smaller than a 767 (empty weight 190,000 lbs, takeoff weight 409,000 lbs); the B-25 pilot was lost in fog and thus probably flying relatively slowly and cautiously, while the WTC pilots were aiming for the building at speed; and the B-25 wouldn't have had anywhere near the amount of fuel onboard. (It's been suggested that the hijackers hijacked sea-to-sea flights in order to get a heavy fuel load.) On top of that, the Empire State Building is built conventionally, with the floors being held up by internal bracing (core and beams), so that the walls taken out by the aircraft were less important structurally than those of the WTC, which were load-bearing. (The Mitchell didn't take out any beams at all, although the wings hit two; even then, no one beam was critical.) Note also that the WTC didn't collapse because the planes broke the walls, but because the intense heat from the fire softened the steel enough to take it out of equilibrium, and once it's out of equilibrium, the whole building tries to get back into equilibrium -- the easiest path of which is to fall to the ground. The New York City fire code requires a building to remain standing for an hour in a fire, and the WTC met that specification. Add to this that the hijackers flew their planes full of jet fuel into the middle of the buildings (and, possibly, banked to spread the fuel around more floors or to take out more wall), and I'm led to suspect that destroying the buildings was precisely what was intended. -Rich -- Rich Lafferty --------------+----------------------------------------------- Montreal, Quebec, Canada | Help save the endangered Mountain Walrus! http://www.lafferty.ca/ | http://www.end.com/~jynx/walrus/ rich+usenet@lafferty.ca ----+-----------------------------------------------