Did Flight 77 Really Hit the Pentagon?

While this may seem obvious, like many things on 9/11, it is far from obvious once you learn more.*

Look at these pcitures of the Pentagon right after it was hit:
picture 1
picture 2

Do you see the hole where a large Boeing jet entered the wall? At best, one would have to say that only the plane's fuselage broke through, and that the wings and tail completely folded into this small hole. It is possible, but it really makes you wonder.

The fact is, I am neither convinced that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, but neither am I convinced that it didn't. It is just too hard to tell.

Here are a number of reasons to think Flight 77 DIDN'T crash into the Pentagon:

1) the INITIAL hole in the Pentagon wall was very compact. While it is possible that a large Boeing jet could completely enter the Pentagon and completely disappear into that small hole, it nonetheless seems highly unlikely.

2) there were NO skid or gouge marks on the grass outside where the Pentagon was hit. It seems unlikely that the huge engines of the jet would not have scraped the ground if Flight 77 hit the wall at the level where the impact was.

3) the surveillance video the Pentagon put out to show the plane hitting did NOT show a large jet at all. This is very suspicious-- plus the fact that a few frames appear to have been edited out where it might show a plane clearly.

4) some witnesses recall seeing a much smaller plane, such as a military plane or a missile with wings hitting the Pentagon

5) the very tight circular route flight 77 had to make to hit the Pentagon is very suspicious, and would seem to be almost impossible to be done with a large Boeing jet and especially by an amateur pilot such as the supposed pilot on flight 77, Hani Hanjour.

6) the perfect hit on the side of the Pentagon, a fairly narrow target, without hitting the ground or overflying, would seem to be impossible for a pilot of the caliber of Hani Hanjour to do with a large jet.

7) when asked about something else hitting the Pentagon, the Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke responded with demagoguery. You might expect if they were really sure about flight 77 hitting, they would simply speak the truth rather than appeal to emotions.

8) the relative lack of plane debris that would be expected from a large jet crashing into the region where the Pentagon was hit.

9) the FBI took a surveillance film from the nearby gas station that might show the plane hitting the Pentagon and have not revealed it contents

10) why haven't the collected and assembled flight 77 plane parts, that they supposedly said they had, been shown to journalists?

11) why hasn't the black box recording been released, since they said they found the black boxes?

12) supposedly the Pentagon has several anti-aircraft batteries (supposedly quite sophisticated) designed to prevent an air attack on the Pentagon. Why weren't these activated? One possibility that has been put out is that a US military plane or missile would not activate these weapons (due to their electronic signature), whereas a civilian aircraft should.

Here are the reasons to think Flight 77 DID crash into the Pentagon:

1) It is the simplest explanation for what happened to Flight 77.

2) Many eyewitnesses report seeing a large jet crash into the Pentagon.

However, even the eyewitnesses aren't uniform, and they seem to contradict known facts. For instance Steve Anderson, an editor for USA Today, seems to be a credible witness. From his vantage point in his office building he could see the flight path and the Pentagon very well. However, Anderson says that the plane's wing dragged along the ground before the plane struck, and pictures show the ground outside the hit area to be completely undisturbed. Many witnesses clearly saw a large plane hit the Pentagon, but it is not clear if it was Flight 77.

So I don't know what really happened, but collectively these facts certainly suggest that the story is more complicated than flight 77 simply hitting the Pentagon. My one alternative is that some sort of military jet hit the Pentagon, and that something else happened to flight 77. Perhaps the jet was tailing flight 77 and accidentally crashed into the Pentagon and Flight 77 was later shot down over a remote area-- and they obviously didn't want to admit this (like Flight 93). Obviously, they would never admit to this. Or they shot a missile at Flight 77 that was flying over the Pentagon, and the missile missed the flight and struck the Pentagon. Later flight 77 was shot down over the ocean by a similar missile. Again, they would not care to admit this. Certainly, these types of scenarios are actually somewhat comforting in that there may have been an air defense to the hijackings on 9/11. Of course, there are more nefarious explanations, such as perhaps flight 77 crashed in a remote inland area, when it was supposed to hit the Pentagon, and so someone in the military decided to shoot a cruise missile into the Pentagon to make sure the Pentagon was struck making it a clear act of war. Or other weird things are possible along those lines.

*Note, in order to streamline my writing, I am not going to reference everything I write here. Everything I write will be based on sources one can find fairly easily on the internet. Also, the book "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush administration and 9/11" by David Ray Griffin is a good resource for many of these issues. Also, feel free to leave a comment if you want a reference. I will be happy to find it.