I volunteered at Ground Zero in the days after 9/11. My friend and I drove down to New York and served meals to firemen in a food tent near the still smoking, devastated site.
One day, a policeman who had come through the tent a few times asked us if we wanted to see Ground Zero for ourselves---and at a time when virtually no one had access to the site beyond the country’s politicians and tireless public safety teams.
I remember that when he asked us we immediately put down whatever we were doing and followed him without saying much, but we knew we were being given unique access to something both tragic and historic--something few people would ever see and something we would never forget. We were aware that the scene would be etched into our dreams for the rest of our lives, and become a part of our own story.
And I think we both wondered as we walked why he had chosen us. This policeman, who was now our guide, was solemn and dutiful---not at all using the moment he was leading us to for any other reason than to share it with us. It was clear that he wanted us to see it, wanted these two meal makers from the food tent to bear witness to something that he faced everyday.
He led us up a street and through a police barricade and told us not to take any pictures and then we walked into Ground Zero--- us two young mothers from Massachusetts who hadn't been doing anything special on September 10th.
To describe what we saw inside will always be impossible.
It's everything you saw on TV, but it was the feeling inside the site that I remember most. Not the twisted steel and the abandoned plates of eggs on a restaurant table---but the feeling. There was this heavy silence, but it wasn't---at least to me---the silence of death but the silence of reverence.
It was reverence.
Even today---all these years later---that reverence is what I carry as the remnants from that day.
It's a reverence for those who died, those who searched and rescued, those whose lives were touched so intimately by that tragedy.
And I will remember how small I felt standing amongst the piles of steel and dust and leaving with my head bowed but with an incredible feeling of hope...that one day this hell would lead us to a world that has no rubble...
I have always thought in my soul, that the plane that went down in PA was shot down by our Gov.
I agree that it was shot down, but it didn't go down in Shanksville PA...no way.
Agree...no plane went into that field.
Nope...
Agreed 👍
Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on 9/11: The Mysterious Plane Crash Site Without a Plane - United Airlines Flight 93
William Baker, of the Somerset County Emergency Management Agency, recalled: “When they said it was a 757, I looked out across the debris field. I said, ‘There is no way there is a 757 scattered here.'” Baker said, “The biggest piece of debris I saw would have probably fit in my pocket.” [19] And Paul Bomboy, a paramedic who responded to the initial call for help, commented: “It was a very strange thing that there weren’t normal things going on that you would have expected. When a plane crashes, there is a plane and there are patients.”
Patrick Madigan, a commander with the Pennsylvania State Police, described: “When I looked at the pit, I didn’t realize that was where the plane had crashed. I thought, at first, that it was a burn pit for the coal company.” A fireman said this was where the plane went into the ground. “I was amazed,” Madigan recalled, “because it did not, in any way, shape, or form, look like a plane crash. I thought I would see recognizable plane parts. But at the pit, there was nothing that looked like a plane.” [17] Craig Bowman, a colleague of Madigan’s, recalled: “Until that point, I had never been to a large plane crash. I was thinking that I should be seeing parts of the plane, seats, etc.” However, he said, “There was nothing that was recognizable to me as a plane.”
http://themillenniumreport.com/2014/09/shanksville-pennsylvania-on-911-the-mysterious-plane-crash-site-without-a-plane/
Yep, I've read things like this before which makes me think no plane went down in that field.
A crash is one thing, a missile strike is another. https://www.businessinsider.com/iran-plane-crash-video-missile-2020-1 https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/10/middleeast/iran-air-flight-655-us-military-intl-hnk/index.html
And most anti-aircraft missiles are made to down a huge and fairly well armored airplane, bombs, fuel, everything into dust is possible. So imagine this thing getting turned into bits smaller than a soup can. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Tupolev_Tu-95
If it was an AIM-54, an AMRAAM, or SM-2.. Most Navy missile boats have the SM-2/RIM-67B ready to go to intercept any sub launched short range missiles, they have the AEGIS coverage so they're more selective at range, and it'll simply get there before anything else. Or, what was AEGIS, before it was full blown AEGIS.. Which is a fucking 1300 page novel if there ever was one.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/RIM-67_Standard https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Aegis_Combat_System