AFAIK, there is no accurate flight path available other than what could be constructed using eyewitness accounts. If you want to reconstruct it, start with the closest witnesses and work your way through all of them - not just 13 who may not have had the best line-of-sight view. Here's 19 for you to start your search:

Eyewitness Accounts



As stated, I don't think anyone has the "exact" flight path once the plane began to dive and turn in on the Pentagon - I suspect that only partial segments of the path can be agreed and I would not take the FAA or NTSB's account as anything more than an approximation with considerable room for error.



Here's where "Truthers" go off the rails - the choice of a word such as "liquified" is not a correct explanation of what happened - perhaps "violently and completely disintegrated" would have been better - but so-called Truthers jump on the use of "liquified" as if the fellow was intentionally saying that the plane turned into a pot of molten aluminum..... Maybe some of it did.

You've seen this video of an F4 crashing into a reinforced concrete wall - what would you call the resulting disintegration?

web page



Oh........ I found the plane for you:



Frank <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

Now let's take a look at the altimeter and see what's used in a 757 instead of a Cessna 172.

I'm not familiar with flight data recorders, but I assume either digital instruments or analog-converted-to-digital signals are used to record the data.

Here's the NTSB's summary of the data recorded for AA Flight 587 that crashed in 2001:

web page

Note that as with Flight 77, NTSB does not correct the data for pressure altitude.

Note that one of the instruments used for altitude reporting to the FDR is a radio altimeter - and that the radio altimeter's data points were found to be "erroneous".

One of the digital instruments used in a 757 is a Rockwell-Collins LRA-900 Low-range Radio Altimeter:

LRA-900

Apparently, one of the issues with these altimeters is inaccuracy when a plane is doing anything other than flying straight and level - here's a patent application that describes - and hopes to resolve - the problem:



Patent Description

WRT Flight 77, here's one electrical engineer's opinion of the accuracy of the FDR:



web page

So, here we have a possible combination of:

1) Electronic latency (historesis) that cannot record in exact real-time. If the last 1-2 seconds of flight data are not recorded, then at 500mph the potential error is between 733-1466' - obviously not straight down as a loss of altitude, but certainly some loss of altitude at the end of the flight.

2) Inaccuracy of the reported altitude due to aircraft attitude and control input just prior to the crash.

Face it, Phil..... if reasonable people thought there was any "truth" in the claims that Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon, we would have had full exposure long ago.

Truthers looking for that plane remind me of O.J. Simpson looking for Nicole's killer. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

Where is that plane?

Frank

This is all very entertaining. Really, it is. But, every time I look at this thread, I envision bretwalda as the character Mel Gibson played in the movie Conspiracy Theory. In the movie, he was right about alot of stuff, which, I'm sure there are possibilities that Phil is as well. I just find this banter very humorous. They're all theories, on both sides. "Facts", as we all know, can be fabricated. But, I too find it difficult to wrap my brain around a conspiracy this big not being leaked with hard eveidence to substantiate the leak. Internet stories, supposed eyewitness accounts, video; all of it can be fabricated, doctored, and generally fooled around with. I choose to believe the account that makes the most sense. But, please, don't stop on my account <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Sorry, but I'm about done with this - the Truthers remind me of what a junior JAG officer once said to someone I knew:

"No matter what you say, the facts remain."

Figure that one out. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

Frank <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

Lots of truth in that statement <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

Or not - depending on how you view it. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

That statement was made off-the-record by a JAG officer/prosecutor to my father who was appointed as defense counsel at a soldier's court martial during WWII. It was one of the first examples I heard that showed how twisted words can be made to sound like truth...... and that even a grain of truth can be made to sound like a "fact".

I'm still waiting for an answer to this:



And this:



Frank <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

Point taken.

Another that I heard once was, "For it to be believable, at the bottom of every lie, there has to be a shred of truth."

Yup - even if the shred of truth isn't accurate - only inexplainable - or not understandable - to the point where it seems like the truth if enough people repeat it. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Frank <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

I found this and thought of Phil. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Just gotta stir that pot, huh <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />