9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes

[Dirty Ed]

VANITY FAIR : FEATURES : GENERAL

9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes
How did the U.S. Air Force respond on 9/11? Could it have shot down United 93, as conspiracy theorists claim? Obtaining 30 hours of never-before-released tapes from the control room of NORAD's Northeast headquarters, the author reconstructs the chaotic military history of that day—and the Pentagon's apparent attempt to cover it up. VF.com exclusive: Hear excerpts from the September 11 NORAD tapes. Click PLAY after each transcript to listen
By MICHAEL BRONNER
ucked in a piney notch in the gentle folds of the Adirondacks' southern skirts—just up from a derelict Mohawk, Adirondack ........................

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This has been around for a while, but I just came across it. One of the things that has always bothered me was the rather expert way the hijackers flew the new Boeings, supposedly with very little pilot experience, and virtually none in jet transport types. The most highly trained of them had a few hours of B-727 simulator time.

According to this report, they were well aware of the transponders role in tracking;, they handled the throttles and airspeeds in descents quite well, made precision level turns into the WTC, etc..

I am ATP Rated on the B-757 767, and I had a lot of learning to do just getting accustomed to the glasshouse cockpit, which none of the hijackers had ever seen before.

The NORAD screwups are pretty gross. The women in particular seemed to be "out of the loop", and the actual act of getting a few interceptors on the targets was chaotic - and then they were ordered not to fire.

 

[Bullockracing]

Interesting, but we won't know what really happened for years...

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Ed, I could tell you with great certainly that flight 93 was not shot down. My father in law is a senior captain and IP with United (he was working at the training center at that time) and was good friends with Jayson Dahl, the pilot of flight 93. Hours after the attack (and after numerous phone calls to my father in law who happened to be flying that day, my wife was hysterical because we didn't hear from him) my mother in law called to tell us that dad was OK but their friend Jayson was killed aboard flight 93. At that time my mother in law said something to me that turned out to be very prophetic. "Jayson was a fighter, I bet he put up a struggle before he was killed." This was about 5 hours after the attack.

But aside from that there are a few things to consider here....

Back in 2001 there was little if any emphasis on intercepting manned aircraft as in the cold war days. Why 9-11 threw such as curve ball at everyone is because all interceptions are designed to address aircraft that are "incoming" into an ADIZ not from within. Yes there was mass confusion and screw ups but this is a scenario that no one ever would anticipate happening although some in the intelligence community knew of a plot uncovered in the Philippines to do the same thing in Asia.

Now I could tell you that as far as the hijackers flying those aircraft, it's totally possible. I've spent time in the 737 sim at TK (United's training center) and once airborne I had no problem controlling the aircraft (at the time I had maybe 250 hours flight time).

But here's some other things to consider....

I posted this information on a political forum, there a lot of folks there who believe flight 93 was shot down and 9-11 was an "inside job." Here's something I put together involving the the aircraft who eventually got airborne that day to attempt to intercept flight 93 (or any other "suspect" aircraft).

Conspiracy chasers would want the public to believe that flight 93 was shot down by F-16s. Here's some food for thought....

The F-16 is a multi role fighter used for air-to-air combat and ground support. Most bases that operate this aircraft train for the multi role mission and prepare for overseas deployment.

The F-15 is the USAF primary air-to-air fighter and the backbone of air defense of the Continental US. During the cold war years, F-15s normally did the intercepting of snooping Russian aircraft. Their role is basically the same.

MY POINT - F-16s will normally not be on alert for interception or scramble!

911 Research does do a good point of showing this but fails to mention F-16s are normally not under the control of NORAD or on air defense alert, that job is for the F-15....

9-11 Research: Air Defense
Good job but some errors.

From the site - "At 10:01 AM the FAA ordered the 180th Fighter Wing out of Swanton, Ohio, to scramble F-16 fighters." The FAA has no authority to "order" fighters to scramble - that lies with the USAF (DUH!)

This unit was the only F-16 unit close enough to perform an intercept over Pennsylvania in the shown time frame although F-16s as far away as Andrews and Michigan were now being called. One controller from New Hampshire reports another F-16 was in the area as well. Flight 93 crashed at 10:06, that gave the fighters at from the 180th FW (the closest ones) 5 1/2 minutes to scramble, get to altitude, pick up the target and shoot down flight 93 like some alleged.

Let's see, the F-16s top speed is 1,321 mph. From the base to the crash point of flight 93 is 233 miles. That would of meant the aircraft had to take off and immediately go to full after-burner and reach the target in 5 minutes - If the F-16 went full afterburner climbed up to altitude and shoot down flight 93, it would of also meant that the aircraft was performing within the lower part of it's combat radius which is about 330 miles. That means the aircraft might would not make it back to Toledo.

The closest place to land would of been Pittsburgh, but no conspiracy chasers jump on this...

It would of also meant that if the intercept would of happened under the noses of Pittsburgh International Airport and other ATC Centers - if a shoot down would of occurred, someone would of heard it...

The final tally - every East Coast ATC center is attempting to talk to flight 93 - several F-15s and F-16 in the air. No one admits to a shoot down order although the first two F-15 pilots on scene were told that flight 93 was shot down (I even remember that being reported in the chaos and confusion of the day) and no ground crews who service these aircraft (who happen to be mainly non-career enlisted personnel) admit to any weapons being deployed after all of this. - THIS IS THE BIGGEST HOLE OF ALL WITH REGARDS TO FLIGHT 93! - Someone explain this to me!!!!!

United (and American) has enough political clout to investigate the US government purposely destroying one of their assets, I think the CEO at the time would of been a bit upset to know that the USAF smoked a 25 million aircraft despite it being hijacked. I think there were cover-ups mainly to hide the mistakes and incompetencies at all levels regarding 9-11, especially flight 93, but giving the benefit of the doubt the last time US territory faced a major aerial assult was probably Dec. 7, 1941!

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Kind of ironic, this was on Yahoo right after I jumped off here!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - There is no evidence that senior Pentagon commanders intentionally provided false testimony to about the military's actions on the morning of the September 11 attacks, according to a report by the Defense Department's watchdog agency cited in the New York Times on Saturday.

The Pentagon's office of inspector general said the Defense Department's initial inaccurate accounts could be attributed largely to poor record-keeping, the newspaper said in an article on its Web site, citing the newly released report.

In a report dated May 27, 2005, but not released until Friday, the inspector general's office found that "the inaccuracies, in part, resulted because of inadequate forensic capabilities," including poor log-keeping at military air traffic control centers, the newspaper said.
The report was initially classified secret but was released under a freedom-of-information request by the Times. What amounted to several pages' worth were blacked out on national security grounds, the newspaper said.

The Pentagon had initially suggested that the North American Aerospace Defense Command had reacted quickly to reports of the hijackings and been prepared to intercept and possibly shoot down one of the hijacked planes, United Flight 93. But investigations determined that the Pentagon was not aware of Flight 93 until after the aircraft had crashed into a Pennsylvania field.

The September 11 commission then requested that the inspector general investigate why senior military officials made so many inaccurate statements to the commission.

A spokesman for the inspector general's office, William Goehring, told the Times that the question of whether military commanders intentionally withheld the truth from the commission would be addressed in a separate report, but he suggested it would exonerate them. "We haven't found any information to indicate that testimony was knowingly false," the newspaper quoted Goehring as saying.

The report said commanders had found it difficult to create an accurate timeline of the events of September 11 because of the lack of a well-coordinated system in logging information about air-defense operations, the Times said.

And, newly disclosed audio tapes provided to the commission by Norad demonstrated widespread confusion within the military on September 11, with many commanders uncertain whether the reported hijackings were part of an unannounced military exercise.

 

[evangilder]

Good posts,Joe.

 

[Nonskimmer]

Agreed. Very informative.

 

[Gnomey]

Yep, good stuff Joe!

 

[P38 Pilot]

Very good. Those people were heroes for standing up to those damned terrorists.