Posted on 12/13/2004 7:37:47 AM PST by B4Ranch
The personal items belonged to people who were a LONG way from the impact floors, including many people who were in the multi-level underground shopping and parking areas, and others who were already outside the buildings after evacuating when the towers fell -- in other words, a good 80 stories away from the impact. None of that stuff came from the impact floors. Maybe some diamond jewelry could have survived from the impact floors, but even that would have been heavily encrusted with residue from the fire when found.
So, does it mean B.S.? I see the bull's horns there. :-)
I think they listened to the ATC tapes? But yeah, I seem to recall (perhaps incorrectly) that they listened to the cockpit tapes. Perhaps the boxes they're talking about here are the flight data recorders...?
One of these, the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), records radio transmissions and sounds in the cockpit, such as the pilot's voices and engine noises. The other, the Flight Data Recorder (FDR), monitors parameters such as altitude, airspeed and heading. The older analog units use one-quarter inch magnetic tape as a storage medium and the newer ones use digital technology and memory chips. Both recorders are installed in the most crash survivable part of the aircraft, usually the tail section.
For more information see http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/CVR_FDR.htm
I don't recall reading anything about the CVR-FDR being bright and shiny like this new one.
KC >>No, they listened to cockpit tapes too, right up to the crash. Parts that were not released to the public.<<
How could that be? I think you have Flight 93
>>"In Chapter 1, footnote 76, there is the sole but definitive reference to the airline black boxes: The CVRs and the FDRs [voice and flight data recorders] from American 11 and United 175 were not found."<
I was thinking they are on the PLANE. Nothing that was on those planes, or on those floors during the fire, would have survived with its exterior remaining recognizable. These boxes are designed to protect the data on the inside through some pretty severe conditions -- they are not designed to protect the exterior paint jobs through these sorts of conditions. Which brings us to another problem with this story: the boxes are designed to be located by transmitting a signal which can be picked up by crash investigators (i.e. they are not designed to rely on their external appearance to be found). If the data in these boxes was still intact, and if the exteriors were still recognizeable, the transmitters would most likely have been working as well (since they too are designed to withstand extreme conditions), and federal investigators would have been making a beeline for the boxes in the rubble -- not sitting around waiting for some firefighters to stumble upon them.
The story just doesn't hold water. These guys found something they THOUGHT were the flight data recorders, but were almost certainly something else.
"So, does it mean B.S.? I see the bull's horns there. :-)"
That's it. It's pretty universal as an ASL sign, but you won't find it in any ASL dictionaries. I thought the girl was kinda cute, too.
Press reports at the time indicated piles of molten metal in the bottom of the building.
Yes, I meant flight 93, thats the only boxes that were found, and the relatives got to hear more of the tape then the public at large. The boxes from the airliners that went into the WTC would have been ground up with the airliners themselves. How much of the aircraft were ever found? Not much I would bet.
As I posted earlier, I worked in the Pit on the 12th and 13th. While not much survived some surprising things did including Computer screens, shoes and in one case a clear plastic picture frame with the picture still in it.
Wrong. I personally picked up items in the Pit that were from the floors that were hit and were easily identified as such, not many but some.
The Fire in the upper floors didn't melt the structural steel. It simply softened it up and gravity did the rest.
Pools at the bottom are a different thing all together. Drop half a million tons from 1300 feet and you're going to create a massive amount of heat. Enough to melt just about everything.
Most likely things from the perimeter of the floors, that were blown out windows by the force of the explosion. But it's unlikely that the data recorders would have behaved that way, since they're inside the plane. The intense heat they would have been exposed to, given the fire in a more or less enclosed space which melted steel girders, would certainly have roasted the paint off them.
Maybe some lucky coincidence could have blown a recorder clear of the fire within the first seconds, but these guys are claiming they found THREE recorders, so that would have been at least one from each of the planes (since 2 boxes per plane). What are the chances that 1) lucky coincidences caused one or more boxes from BOTH planes to be blown clear of the fires and spared totally disfiguring damage, and 2) the same pair of firefighters found 3 of the total 4 boxes, despite their coming from two different planes that hit two different towers that collapsed at different times (I certainly don't have to tell you how big that pit was, or how many workers were combing through it), and 3) all of the "several" other rescue workers they showed them too decided to hush up when the feds asked them to. I just don't buy it.
The interesting thing is that physics buffs can calculate the potential energy released from the building collapse. All the calculations of which I am aware show that the numbers don't add up, particularly when one takes into account the energy required to turn many floors of concrete into a pyroclastic cloud of dust. Then there are the peculiar seismographic readings, showing the biggest spikes at the beginning of the collapses, not the ends. . .
No, I said in the pit, the center and some of the items were ten feet below the surface in pockets.
GovernmentShrinker wrote: Maybe some lucky coincidence could have blown a recorder clear of the fire within the first seconds, but these guys are claiming they found THREE recorders, so that would have been at least one from each of the planes (since 2 boxes per plane). What are the chances that 1) lucky coincidences caused one or more boxes from BOTH planes to be blown clear of the fires and spared totally disfiguring damage, and 2) the same pair of firefighters found 3 of the total 4 boxes, despite their coming from two different planes that hit two different towers that collapsed at different times (I certainly don't have to tell you how big that pit was, or how many workers were combing through it), and 3) all of the "several" other rescue workers they showed them too decided to hush up when the feds asked them to. I just don't buy it.
I don't believe them either, and for what it's worth I saw no ATVs anywhere near GZ and it would have been impossible to take one into the rubble while I was there. It took me ten minutes of careful stepping/crawling along a narrow "safeway" just to reach the pit.
You saw barely damaged items in the pit that you could trace to the impact floors? And you can be sure that they didn't blow out the windows of those floors at the time of the explosion, and end up in the pit later, after the towers collapsed?
yes.
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