- The unmarked military-style jet swooped down at high
speed through the valley, twice circled the smouldering black scar where
Flight 93 had careered into the ground just seconds earlier and then hurtled
off over the horizon.
-
- At least six eyewitnesses saw the mysterious aircraft
on the morning of September 11 last year. But the US authorities deny it
ever existed.
-
- So when George Bush laid a wreath yesterday at the crash
site in a remote valley outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, he was one of
only a handful of people who know what really happened to the 40 innocents
and four hijackers aboard the doomed United Airlines Boeing 757-200.
-
- Those unimaginable final seconds as passengers showed
courageous defiance apparently wrestling for control of the aircraft have
become one of the defining images of the tragedy.
-
- And "Let's roll" - ringleader Todd Beamer's
no-nonsense call to arms - became a defining battle cry in America's war
on terror.
-
- But of the four aircraft taken on September 11, the exact
fate of Flight 93 after its two-hour journey is proving difficult for US
officials to explain.
-
- What was the white jet doing there and why won't they
admit to its presence? Why did other witnesses see smoke and flames trailing
from Flight 93 as it fell from the sky, indicating a possible explosion
aboard?
-
- Or - and this is proving to be the most uncomfortable
question of all - in the moments before the airliner piled into the black,
spongey earth at 575mph did an American fighter pilot have to do the unthinkable
and shoot down a US civil airliner?
-
- Susan Mcelwain, 51, who lives two miles from the site,
knows what she saw - the white plane rocketed directly over her head.
-
- "It came right over me, I reckon just 40 or 50ft
above my mini-van," she recalled. "It was so low I ducked instinctively.
It was travelling real fast, but hardly made any sound.
-
- "Then it disappeared behind some trees. A few seconds
later I heard this great explosion and saw this fireball rise up over the
trees, so I figured the jet had crashed. The ground really shook. So I
dialled 911 and told them what happened.
-
- "I'd heard nothing about the other attacks and it
was only when I got home and saw the TV that I realised it wasn't the white
jet, but Flight 93.
-
- I didn't think much more about it until the authorities
started to say there had been no other plane. The plane I saw was heading
right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at
the very moment it came down.
-
- "There's no way I imagined this plane - it was so
low it was virtually on top of me. It was white with no markings but it
was definitely military, it just had that look.
-
- "It had two rear engines, a big fin on the back
like a spoiler on the back of a car and with two upright fins at the side.
I haven't found one like it on the internet. It definitely wasn't one of
those executive jets. The FBI came and talked to me and said there was
no plane around.
-
- "Then they changed their story and tried to say
it was a plane taking pictures of the crash 3,000ft up.
-
- "But I saw it and it was there before the crash
and it was 40ft above my head. They did not want my story - nobody here
did."
-
- Mrs Mcelwain, who looks after special needs children,
is further convinced the whole truth has yet to come out because of a phone
call she had within hours from the wife of an air force friend of the family.
-
- "She said her husband had called her that morning
and said 'I can't talk, but we've just shot a plane down,' " Susan
said. "I presumed they meant Flight 93. I have no doubt those brave
people on board tried to do something, but I don't believe what happened
on the plane brought it down.
-
- "If they shot it down, or something else happened,
everyone, especially the victims' families, have a right to know."
-
- Lee Purbaugh, 32, was the only person to see the last
seconds of Flight 93 as it came down on former strip-mining land at precisely
10.06am - and he also saw the white jet.
-
- He was working at the Rollock Inc. scrapyard on a ridge
overlooking the point of impact, less than half a mile away. "I heard
this real loud noise coming over my head," he told the Daily Mirror.
"I looked up and it was Flight 93, barely 50ft above me. It was coming
down in a 45 degree and rocking from side to side. Then the nose suddenly
dipped and it just crashed into the ground. There was this big fireball
and then a huge cloud of smoke."
-
- But did he see another plane? "Yes, there was another
plane," Lee said. "I didn't get a good look but it was white
and it circled the area about twice and then it flew off over the horizon."
-
- Tom Spinelli, 28, was working at India Lake Marina, a
mile and a half away. "I saw the white plane," he said.
-
- "It was flying around all over the place like it
was looking for something. I saw it before and after the crash."
-
- India Lake also contributes to the view there was an
explosion on board before the Newark-San Francisco flight came down. Debris
rained down on the lake - a curious feat if, as the US government insists,
there was no mid-air explosion and the plane was intact until it hit the
ground.
-
- "It was mainly mail, bits of in-flight magazine
and scraps of seat cloth," Tom said. "The authorities say it
was blown here by the wind." But there was only a 10mph breeze and
you were a mile and a half away? Tom raised his eyebrows, rolled his eyes
and said: "Yeah, that's what they reckon."
-
- Light debris was also found eight miles away in New Baltimore.
A section of engine weighing a ton was located 2,000 yards - over a mile
-from the crash site. Theorists point out a Sidewinder heat-seeking missile
attacks the hottest part of aircraft - the engine.
-
- The authorities say the impact bounced it there. But
the few pieces of surviving fuselage, local coroner Wallace Miller told
us, were "no bigger than a carrier bag".
-
- Nearly all the passengers were reduced to charcoal on
impact and the largest piece of human tissue found was a section of spine
eight inches long.
-
- CURIOUSLY, military officials insist there was never
any pursuit of Flight 93, although they were informed that it was a suspected
hijack at 9.16am, 50 minutes before the plane came down.
-
- At 9.35am they assumed it was heading for Washington
DC after it changed course in a 180 degree turn and three F-16s - top speed
1,800mph - now patrolling over the capital were told to "protect the
White House at all costs".
-
- An anonymous flight controller said on the day that an
F-16 was "in hot pursuit" of Flight 93 - Washington to Shanksville
is seven to 10 minutes flying time.
-
- A few minutes before the crash Bill Wright, piloting
a single-engine Piper, could see Flight 93 three miles away, but was suddenly
told to turn away and land immediately without explanation.
-
- At 9.58am a 911 call - the last mobile phone contact
from Flight 93 - was made from one of the airliner's toilets by passenger
Edward Felt.
-
- Glenn Cramer, the emergency supervisor who answered it,
said on the day: "He was very distraught. He said he believed the
plane was going down.
-
- "He did hear some sort of an explosion and saw white
smoke coming from the plane, but he didn't know where. And then we lost
contact with him." Glenn Cramer has now been gagged by the FBI.
-
- Also, according to sources, the last seconds of the cockpit
voice recorder are the loud sounds of wind, hinting at a possible hole
somewhere in the fuselage. What caused the smoke and explosion? Why the
wind sounds?
-
- The FBI's later explanation for the white jet was that
a passing civilian Fairchild Falcon 20 jet was asked to descend from 34,000ft
to 5,000ft some minutes after the crash to give co-ordinates for the site.
The plane and pilot have never been produced or identified. Susan Mcelwain
says a Falcon 20 was not the plane she saw.
-
- FURTHER verification that some kind of military aircraft
was operating in the area is scientifically irrefutable.
-
- At 9.22am a sonic boom - caused by supersonic flight
- was picked up by an earthquake monitoring station in southern Pennsylvania,
60 miles from Shanksville.
-
- That Todd Beamer and others launched an assault on the
hijackers there is no doubt. The brief extracts released from audio tapes
indicate a fierce struggle going on at the cockpit door.
-
- But nobody - official or otherwise - has categorically
said the group got into the cockpit or that their actions led to the crash.
Those final, agonising moments are mere presumption.
-
- President Bush and his team have the whole story. So
why aren't they telling the rest of us?
-
- UA93: THE EVIDENCE
-
- THE WITNESSES
-
- At least SIX witnesses, including Susan Mcelwain saw
a small military type plane flying around shortly BEFORE UA93 crashed.
The FBI denies its existence
-
- THE DEBRIS
-
- The US Government insists the plane exploded on impact
yet a one-ton section of the engine was found over a mile away and other
light debris was found scattered over eight miles away
-
- THE MOBILE CALL
-
- Passenger Edward Felt made an emergency call from the
plane. He spoke of an explosion and seeing some white smoke. The superviser
who took the call has been gagged by the FBI
-
- THE F-16s
-
- UA93 was identified as a hijack at 9.16am. At 9.35am
three F-16s were ordered to "protect the White House at all costs"
when it turned towards the capital. At 10.06am it crashed at Shanksville,
less than 10mins flying time from Washington
-
- THE BLACK BOXS
-
- Sources claim the last thing heard on the cockpit voice
recorder is the sound of wind - suggesting the plane had been holed
-
- THE SONIC BOOM
-
- The FBI insists there was no military plane in the area
but at 9.22am a sonic boom - caused by a supersonic jet - was picked up
by an earthquake monitor in southern Pennsylvania, 60 miles away from Shanksville.
-
- Copyright 2002 The Mirror All Rights Reserved
- First published September 13, 2002
- http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12192317&method=full&siteid=50143
-
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