Reply #60: Trail of smoke in Pentagon crash pictures

[crispy]

First of all hello everyone, I'm new to these forums. I'm looking forward to exchanging ideas with you all about the Pentagon crash.

Now down to business:

I read through most of the Pentagon crash threads on the old DU forums and didn't see that the trail of smoke in the Pentagon crash photos was discussed much at all. I think it's a pretty important piece in the puzzle.

Here are the crash photos:

1) 2)
3) 4)
5)


Some have said that the white blur to the right of the rightmost pylon in photo 1 was the airplane itself. The ASCE's building performance study (BPS) team in The Pentagon Building Performance Report labels this white blur as the plane. I disagree.

In photo 2, a light gray trail of what seems to be smoke running to the base of the explosion is easily discernible. In photos 3, 4, and 5 the trail dissipates, rising slightly, and takes on a slightly darker hue. If we know that as time progresses, the smoke trail rises (due to its dissipation) and gets darker in hue; and if we assume that because in photo 2 the explosion has already begun, the smoke cloud in the same photo has already begun to dissipate, then we can apply this logic in reverse to what we would expect to see in photo 1 - a trail of smoke which was slightly lower than the trail in photo 2, and which was lighter in hue than light gray - i.e., white. This is exactly what we see when looking at the white blur to the right of the pylon in photo 1. Further confirmation is visible behind that pylon - what looks to be a tailfin and is thus most likely the plane.

What we can gather from all this is that the white blur in photo 1 is not the plane, but a trail of what is most likely smoke, which started out as white.

The question that follows from such a conclusion is: Under what circumstances does a Boeing 757 create a single white trail of smoke? Or is that not smoke?

I am looking forward to your replies.