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Did Heroes Force Flight 93 Down?
1-4-2

Source of this report:
http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_heroes.html#nov26
 
Personal details and a memorial:
http://www.unitedheroes.com/whotheywere.html
 
Face with the names memorial:
http://www.flight93.org
 
The flight took off at 8:42 after a 40 minute delay on a crisp Tuesday morning in Newark. That delay probably saved target number 4. The heroes had time to be informed, and air defense had more time to become aware we were under attack. The passengers on this flight are heroes and deserve all the credit and medals they get.
 
Investigators learned from the cockpit voice recorder from UA Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania, that a hijacker had joined the flight crew.
 
The FBI source said the hijacker, disguised as a pilot, was invited into the cockpit for the flight from New Jersey's Newark Airport to San Francisco.
 
http://www.news.com.au/common/
 
Comment: This explains why the passengers reported 3 hijackers. One of the 4 hijackers was in a Pilot's uniform and was already in the cockpit. Later another hijacker joined him and they locked the cockpit.
 
At 9:39 a.m., a third plane smashed into the Pentagon -- and Flight 93 suddenly made a U-turn. Air traffic control picked up a transmission from the San Francisco-bound flight as it neared Cleveland. A stuck microphone revealed something wrong in the cockpit. "Get out of here," controllers heard. The microphone cut off but then came back on, with the sounds of an apparent scuffle. "Get out of here!" someone yelled.
 
Eventually, a man speaking in broken English announced: "There is a bomb on board. This is the captain speaking. Remain in your seat. There is a bomb on board. Stay quiet. We are meeting with their demands. We are returning to the airport." http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
 
9:28 a.m. Cleveland controller hears screams and scuffling over the radio channel between the cockpit and the ground. Asks if somebody called and gets no answer.
 
9:29 a.m. Controller hears one of the pilots yelling: "Get out of here, get out of here." http://www.msnbc.com/news/662607.asp
 
Some investigators speculate that the hijackers may have slashed the throats of the pilots as the two men were still strapped into their seats. The cockpit voice recorder picked up the sound of someone choking. When a hijacker took over the controls, he knocked the plane off autopilot. http://www.msnbc.com/news/662607.asp
 
It was about 9:35 a.m. on Sept. 11... "We still don't know who said Get out of here,' whether it was a pilot or the hijacker," one of the sources said. "We heard a lot of scuffling and racket from the cockpit just as the words were yelled, so it's likely it was the pilot." ...
 
The controller watched the blip make a sharp turn over Cleveland and head back toward Pennsylvania.
 
Whoever was at the controls filed a new flight plan, listing the destination as Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.
 
"By that time the FAA had been alerted about what was going on," the source said. "But for the controllers, there was really nothing they could do but clear the skies and get everyone out of the way."
 
http://www.cleveland.com/n
 
The radio transmissions "each about 10-20 seconds long ," contain the sounds of a "loud and violent encounter," said one person who had heard a tape of the transmissions. Another said it appeared the pilots were being murdered. Several people described the recording as deeply disturbing. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/24/cockpit.htm
 
Comment: The cockpit scuffle often played on TV was the first thing that happened in the Flight 93 hijacking. And the ATC was clearing planes out of the way immediately.
 
THE HEROES
 
Mark Bingham 31, 6-foot-5 Bingham was a former rugby star at the University of California at Berkeley. Ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, just this summer, and he had once wrestled a gun away from a mugger.
 
Comment: It's widely been reported in newsgroups that Mark was gay - not that it matters... but if it helps alter the opinion of one homophobe into cutting gays some slack then I suppose it's worth noting.
 
Todd Beamer Beamer, a basketball and baseball player in college and a take-charge guy, said he thought he and the others could "jump the terrorist with the bomb." http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/09/17/MN40630.DTL
 
Comment: It's widely reported in newspapers that Todd was a devout Christian - not that it matters... but if it helps alter the opinion of one anti-Christian zealot into cutting devout Christians some slack then I suppose it's worth noting.
 
Jeremy Glick He was an all-state wrestler for Saddle River Day School in Northern, N.J., a judo champion. [A friend] insisted "Those attackers are pretty f----, sorry, because they ran into the toughest son of a bitch I've ever known ... http://espn.go.com/columns/wojnarowski/1251966.html
 
Tom Burnett: Burnett told his wife, Deena, that he and two other passengers were "determined to do something" to take Flight 93 back..."He came up through the football camps. He started in the camps in the third grade and never missed a summer," Waldner said. "We had some great quarterbacks (at Jefferson) who were highly talented. None were as self-made as Tom Burnett. http://www.pioneerplanet.com/columnists/docs/SANSEVERE/docs/139019.htm
 
Lou Nacke: 42, a 5-foot-9, 200-pound executive who wore a "Superman" tattoo on his left shoulder, that Nacke is believed to have been involved in the plan, according to Robert Weisberg, Nacke's father-in-law.
 
Donald F. Greene (trained pilot): There was also a trained pilot among the passengers, , 52, executive vice president of Connecticut-based Safe Flight Instrument Corp.
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
 
Comment: Basically, there were some pretty tough guys on board - and a Pilot to keep it in the air. 757's have been reported as very easy to fly. It seems reasonable that other heroes may have joined in. Also, I've added below that the Flight Attendants were boiling hot water to throw on the hijackers. Other stories have noted they may have used fire extinguishers and other handy items to fight with.
 
THE TERRORISTS
 
They boarded the flights in teams of five. The exception was the four aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which authorities believe crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers took on the hijackers. http://europe.cnn.com/2001/US/09/19/hijacked.planes/index.html
 
The four men who are suspected of having hijacked the plane had trained for years, authorities believe, learning to fly, practicing martial arts and procuring some of the information they needed over the Internet. Passengers saw men with red headbands, holding a red box that they said contained a bomb. They were armed with ceramic knives and box cutters. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/09/17/MN40630.DTL
 
"You must make your knife sharp and you must not discomfort your animal during the slaughter," it read. "Completely forget something called 'this life.' The time for play is over and the serious time is upon us." http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93mainstoryp7.asp
 
Comment: Ceramic knives are the latest craze as seen in some of the popular cooking TV shows. These knives are composed from zirconium oxide ceramic, a high-tech material. The knives stay razor sharp for years and don't set off metal detectors.
 
Three thousand miles from Boston an attractive woman is waking up in London. Over the past two weeks she has twice met the same group of five Arabs. The first time is at the China White club in Air Street.
 
Although the place is famous for its celebrity clientele, the backbone of its business is big-spending oil-rich Arabs and wealthy Palestinians, though these five fit into neither group. The management don't know them. "These men looked more like athletes than lounge lizards," the woman will later tell police. "They were all quite young, below 40, and they were very fit.
 
"We started chatting but they wouldn't tell me what they did for a living," just that they'd soon be leaving for New York where they had a big job to do." http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/4319025
 
At 5 feet, 11 inches and about 180 pounds, Jarrah surprised Rodriguez with his stamina. The training included flat-out fighting. At one point, the trainer went at the student with a baseball bat to teach him disarming techniques.
 
The young man, who told Rodriguez he was training to become a pilot, could go 10, 15 or 20 minutes in unrelenting combat. The battle techniques Jarrah came to learn involved thinking -- figuring out ways to make an opponent's moves work against him; throwing attackers off-balance; keeping composure under stress.
 
Jarrah, Rodriguez said, was very calm and a quick learner. "He was in very, very good shape. He was a great person to work with," Rodriguez said. "I told him, 'If you have someone to practice with, practice these techniques.' He told me, 'Oh, yeah, I have some roommates I can train with.' " http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93mainstoryp7.asp
 
Basically, these guys have trained to fight with their hands and defend multiple attackers - and knew they were on a one way trip. These 4 men may have been training for more than a year. Some hijackers are reported to have taken the same flights a number of times as part of their training - checking security and becoming familiar with the combat zone.
 
SET-UP
 
Deena Burnett was waking up at her home in San Ramon, Calif. She'd gone down to the kitchen to fix breakfast for her three daughters. The phone rang. She recalls it was around 6:20 a.m. -- 9:20 Eastern time. It was Tom.
 
"Are you all right?" she asked.
 
"No. I'm on United Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco. The plane has been hijacked. We are in the air. They've already knifed a guy. There is a bomb on board. Call the FBI." Deena Burnett dialed 911. http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93mainstoryp7.asp
 
In an equally calm and businesslike way, Beamer rattled off the details (3 hijackers, 2 with knives; 10 passengers in first class, 27 in coach, 5 flight attendants; no children that he could see). A flight attendant had relayed to him that there were two people, "she believed they were the captain and first officer," lying dead or gravely wounded on the floor in first class.
 
http://www.msnbc.com/news/662607.asp ... Beamer's group (in back of plane) was being guarded by a man who claimed to have explosives strapped to his midsection.
 
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articleThe remaining passengers and crew were broken up into two groups; some were herded together in the first-class compartment, but most were told to sit on the floor in a galley at the rear of the 757-200's 110-foot cabin, Beamer told Jefferson.
 
http://www.wash
 
Comment: Passengers on floor are not strapped in - this was planned, like everything else, as we'll see later.
 
Todd Beamer placed a call on one of the Boeing 757's on-board telephones and spoke for 13 minutes with GTE operator Lisa D. Jefferson, Beamer's wife said. He provided detailed information about the hijacking and -- after the operator told him about the morning's World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks -- said he and others on the plane were planning to act against the terrorists aboard, Lisa Beamer said. http://www.bostonherald.com/attack/investigation/auscall09172001.htm
 
"They may have realized that (the hijackers) were planning to do the same thing with their plane," Beamer said Sunday in a telephone interview from her Hightstown, N.J., home. "So they chose to do what they could to prevent other people from being hurt."...
 
...Beamer said that her husband placed the call at 9:45 a.m. Tuesday and told Jefferson that there were three knife-wielding hijackers on board and one had what appeared to be a bomb tied to his chest with a red belt. Two of the hijackers were in the cockpit with the door locked -- the pilot and co-pilot were forced out -- and the man with the apparent bomb stayed in the rear of the aircraft. (where Beamer was)
 
http://www.thepittsb
 
Comment: If the two times above are correct and are talking about the same phone call, then we have a call originating at 9:45am and lasting 13 minutes. Ending 12 minutes before crash time.
 
ASSAULT
 
Lisa Beamer said her husband called Jefferson on a GTE Airfone at 9:45 a.m., after the passengers aboard his flight had learned that Flight 11 hit the World Trade Center. By that time, the hijackers aboard Flight 93 had stabbed one passenger to death. The United pilots, Jason Dahl and Leroy Homer, had also been injured, Beamer told Jefferson, though he did not say how seriously.
 
http://www.washington
 
Comment: So we've got one passenger dead, two pilots out of action, 2 terrorists in locked cockpit, 1 terrorist guarding rear of plane, 1 terrorist guarding front of plane.
 
"Deena," Todd Beamer told her, "If they're going to crash the plane into the ground, we have to do something. We can't wait for the authorities. We have to do something now." http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028flt93mainstoryp7.asp
 
Beamer, a , and the GTE supervisor recited the Lord's Prayer... Beamer dropped the phone and was heard saying: "God help me. Jesus help me."...
 
"Are you guys ready?" the operator heard the 32-year-old Beamer ask fellow passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh on Tuesday. Then he said: "Let's roll."
 
http://www.washingtonpost.co
 
Comment: Well there isn't much we can do here other than speculate. Cell phone witnesses heard a couple sets of screams with silence in between and that's it.
 
The predominate theory seems to be that these guys made it into the cockpit in and forced the plane down. I want to point out that the transcripts I've seen have the heroes saying "We want to take the plane back" and "Hold on, I'll be right back". They do not plan to crash the plane. That doesn't make sense. Would you plan to do that? Americans would beat the hell out of the terrorists and try to fly that baby home. The alternative ending is the terrorists realised they were under assault and crashed the plane themselves.
 
Even if they managed to overpower the hijacker standing guard over them, the men in the back of the aircraft would have had to run -- single file, down a narrow aisle about 37 yards to the cockpit.
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/w
 
Comment: The next time you get on a plane think about this. I flew 3 weeks after 9-11-01 and those aisles are very tight.
 
MORE HEROES
 
Bradshaw said he took his wife's call about 9:30 a.m.... "Have you seen what's happening? Have you heard?" Sandy asked her husband in a calm voice. "We've been hijacked."...She said the hijackers put most of the people in the rear of the plane and a few in first class... While Sandy talked, she and other flight attendants were boiling water to toss on the hijackers. Nearby, many passengers were making cell phone calls, a few were plotting an uprising.
 
Bradshaw thinks they talked for five or 10 minutes... Around Sandy, three men were whispering the 23rd Psalm. "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want..." Then one of the men apparently made the call to charge the hijackers. "We're all running to first class," were her last words. LINK
 
Comment: Now we've got more Heroes. Sandy Bradshaw - a part time flight attendant that worked only 4 days per month and her coworkers. She says they are running to first class... so maybe the rear guard was fairly far away from the group. This makes some sense... he would have wanted to see them coming. The timing of this call doesn't seem to match the others - the call was taken at 9:30 and lasted 10 minutes before the rush IF Bradshaws husband recalled correctly that would put the attack at 9:40.
 
A fight ensued, likely one attacker at a time. If the rear guard was overwhelmed and dogpiled (as was the plan) the front hijacker may have rushed the dogpile with a weapon and taken care of the attackers while they were on the ground in a weak position. OR the first class hostages may have risen against the front terrorist simultaneously.
 
If both terrorists were overwhelmed I surmise that that heroes would have regrouped before attempting to break into the locked cockpit. If so, they surely would have returned to the cell phone to report victory. There were active cell phones all over that flight.
 
But that didn't happen.
 
I assert this is what probably happened. On attack, the hijackers probably screamed to alert the flight crew of the attack. With all their training, the flight crew should have planned for this contingency. They may have thrown the plane into a climb, a dive or a hard turn in order to throw the attackers off their feet. A couple times a year passengers are severely injured when planes hit rough air and passengers aren't wearing seat belts. A Fed-Ex pilot had thwarted a hijacking by doing something similar - The FedEx crew eventually subdued the attacker and landed safely. Calloway was convicted of attempted aircraft piracy and sentenced to life in prison. James Tucker, the FedEx pilot who rolled the cargo jet upside down to throw the attacker off balance, said he was horrified by the calculated brutality of Tuesday's "act of war" -- and its simplicity. http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/terrorism/nation/0913inside.html
 
The plane was witnessed to have been wagging it's wings, this would sync with the idea that the pilots were keeping those passengers bouncing around the cabin until they were incapacitated. It could indicate a cockpit struggle or a terrible pilot too. (written 9-22-01)
 
On 11-25-01, this new information was reported in an exclusive by Newsweek - and then seemingly reinterpreted by a number of other news outlets with interesting variations. Chris Matthews asked Newsweek's Evan Thomas if he heard the recording. Thomas answered NO that he was writing the article from a transcript provided to him by the FBI. Given the FBI's record of highly accurate information dissemination surrounding this incident, that doesn't really give me a super-warm-comfy-feeling inside. Surprisingly, the Newsweek reporters seem to feel after reading this partial transcript that the heroes got close to, but not into the cockpit.
 
Beginning at 9:57, the cockpit voice recorder began to pick up the sounds of a death struggle. There is the crash of galley dishes and trays being hurled, a man's voice screaming loudly. The hijackers can be heard calling on each other to hold the door. One of the passengers cries out, "Let's get them!" More crashing and screaming. In a desperate measure to control the rebellion, a hijacker suggests cutting off the oxygen. http://www.msnbc.com/news/662607.asp
 
The one at the controls decides to try to knock the passengers off their feet as a last line of defence by putting the aircraft into a steep dive. He is heard mumbling to himself about cutting off oxygen to the passenger compartment but cannot find the right control. As half a dozen men charge up the aisle towards the cockpit, the hijackers, hearing this bedlam, suddenly realise that two of their team are left outside and are heard dragging them inside to safety as they push away the first of their assailants. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001540007-2001550826,00.html
 
Comment: I imagined two months ago that the pilot would try to to bank, dive or climb to knock the passengers off their feet. The only thing the reporter leaves out is the fairly obvious fact (in my mind) that it would have worked.
 
It's very difficult to walk, let alone run or fight in a dive. The heroes would be weightless in a dive of more than a 2 seconds.
 
Another thing this story adds is now the heroes would have had to have gotten by MORE than 2 terrorists, possibly 4, locked in the cockpit. Tough mission. No divide and conquer option, and the passengers would still have to attack one at a time through the narrow cockpit entrance. Also, 9:58 to 10:06 isn't well accounted for. They basically say "There must have been a continued struggle all that time". Which would be sorta right. There was struggle to fly the plane during that time, but probably because the plane started falling apart somewhere in there and then an engine fell off.
 
Later on in my article on this page you'll see that over 2 months ago, I also offered the possibility that the terrorists may have either tried to crash themselves, or lost control. (from the email's I get, I'm pretty sure a lot of people never read that.)


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