9/11 Hijacker Tactics, Part III

The 9/11 hijackers, allegedly operated in groups of four to five. While this is clearly a substantial amount of "muscle", they were after all only armed with small knives and mace, at best. On each flight they were outnumbered significantly by the passengers. And, as pointed out by Jere Longman in his book on flight 93 "Among the Heroes", the hijackers were not particularly large or athletic men-- assuming the hijackers are who the FBI says they are (a bit of a leap of faith).

The point is that the hijackers had to have a good strategy to take control of the airplane, since they couldn't do it easily by brute force.

Thus, what was their strategy?

There are three basic ways they could have attacked, as far as I can see.

First-- several of them could go straight up to the cockpit, ram themselves in, and kill the pilots-- hopefully for the hijackers they could catch the pilots still in their seats, where they would be more vulnerable. Once they had the cockpit, the flight attendents and passengers wouldn't matter very much, except that early on in the attack, the flight attendents and passengers would be near the cockpit, could see the struggle, and could intervene. Certainly there would be enough the flight attendents and passengers that could subdue a few smallish, non-athletic knife-wielding men. I can't believe there wouldn't be enough people who would attack the hijackers if they could see they were taking over the cockpit. I know I would. So, this strategy is not the best for the hijackers.

Second-- the hijackers could threaten and scare the passengers before taking over the cockpit, and get them to move to the back of the plane. This way, the hijackers could storm the cockpit without immediate interference from the flight attendents and passengers. Indeed, this strategy of moving the passengers to the back would seem to be what occurred on several of the 9/11 flights. However, there is one large problem with this strategy. A flight attendent could use one of the phones that allows communication with the cockpit, tell them there was a hijacking, and then the pilots could call ATC and alert them they are hijacked. But THIS DID NOT HAPPEN, and thus this second strategy is unlikely.

The third strategy is a mixture of the first two-- have say two hijackers push passengers and flight attendents to the back of the plane, while the other two take on the cockpit (we should probably assume that the hijacker pilot stays out of the melee, since he is needed to control the plane and cannot be hurt). While this strategy would get around the problems of the first two strategies, it leaves another problem-- a poor manpower ratio. In this strategy, we are expected to believe two hijackers armed with only knives can kill the pilot and co-pilot four out of four times? This is just not believable. We can assume they didn't use mace in the cockpit, because it is a small space and filling mace in that small area would preclude the hijacker effectively piloting the plane. Moreover, in this strategy, we are expected to believe that two hijackers armed with knives and mace and a bomb-like thing can hold at least forty flight attendents plus passengers at bay. This defies belief as well.

So, the fact is, none of these strategies would seem to be effective for the hijackers, and it defies common sense that any one these strategies would work four out of four times to take control of the planes.

Importantly, try to put yourselves in the shoes of the hijackers. Would you base the success of this whole incredible mission on the chance that you would be able to effectively take over planes armed with only small knives and mace? I actually can't see how "Al Qaeda" would ever expect such a mission to work. Moreover, the whole set-up of the hijackers, from the fake-bombs to the red bandanas on flight 93, screams out that it is some sort of mock hijacking exercise, a "terror drill" if you like.

According to official 9/11 story, on several planes there were flight attendents or passengers who were stabbed and presumably killed. Supposedly somebody tried to fight back-- unless this was just part of the exercise. Why more people didn't fight the hijackers (except in the special case of flight 93) is not clear. Perhaps you wouldn't fight them if you thought they had a bomb-- but then, why would anybody try to fight them? So this again is something that doesn't fit. However, the hijackings of 9/11 do make more sense when viewed as some sort of mock hijack, with passengers and flight attendents playing roles in this "play". Many of the cell phone calls made from the 9/11 flights make more sense when viewed in this manner as well.