Read the following witness’ accounts (many thanks to Eric Bart for his collection):
Interestingly is there are accounts stating that there was basically no sound at all from the plane. Often accounts show that people were completely taken by surprise to see a plane all of a sudden flying towards them or just a few feets above their car. I would assume that a Boeing 767 flying at about 500 mph and being 50 feet away makes is quite loud.
Why did nobody hear the plane approaching?
Why did not a single witness at least mention the pain in his ears? Christopher Munsey :
A silver, twin-engine American Airlines jetliner gliding almost noiselessly over the Navy Annex, fast, low and straight toward the Pentagon, just hundreds of yards away. http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-467181.phpMr. Peter M. Murphy :
No Marine Corps offices were closer to the impact point than those of Mr. Peter M. Murphy , the Counsel for the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the most senior civilian working for the Marine Corps. Mr. Murphy and Major Joe D. Baker were having a discussion in Mr. Murphy's office on the fourth floor of the Pentagon's outermost ring, the E-Ring, overlooking the helo-pad. With CNN on a TV monitor across the room, they stopped their discussion when the news of the World Trade Center attacks came on. After watching awhile, Mr. Murphy asked Mr. Robert D. Hogue, his Deputy Counsel, to check with their administrative clerk, Corporal Timothy J. Garofola, on the current security status of the Pentagon. Garofola had just received an e-mail from the security manager to all Department of Defense employees that the threat condition remained "normal." He passed this information to Hogue, who stepped back into the doorway of Mr. Murphy's office to relay the message.
At that instant, a tremendous explosion with what Mr. Murphy said was a noise "louder than any noise he had ever heard" shook the room. http://www.mca-marines.org/Leatherneck/nov01pentagonarch.htmAlan Wallace:
Wallace and Skipper were walking along the right side of the truck (Young was in the station)
when the two looked up and saw an airplane. It was about 25 feet off the ground and just 200 yards away. http://web.archive.org/web/20021027215325/http://www.naplesnews.com/02/09/naples/d655917a.htmFather Stephen McGraw was driving to a graveside service at Arlington National Cemetery the morning of Sept. 11, when he mistakenly took the Pentagon exit onto Washington Boulevard, putting him in a position to witness American Airlines Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon. "The traffic was very slow moving, and at one point just about at a standstill," said McGraw, a Catholic priest at St. Anthony Parish in Falls Church. "I was in the left hand lane with my windows closed.
I did not hear anything at all until the plane was just right above our cars." McGraw estimates that the plane passed about 20 feet over his car , as he waited in the left hand lane of the road, on the side closest to the Pentagon.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/6_39/local_news/10772-1.htmlhttp://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Pentagon%5Fcrash%5Feyewitness%5Fcomforted%5Fvictims.htmlNarayanan Vin
At 9:35 a.m., I pulled alongside the Pentagon. With traffic at a standstill, my eyes wandered around the road, looking for the cause of the traffic jam. Then I looked up to my left and saw an American Airlines jet flying right at me.
The jet roared over my head, clearing my car by about 25 feet. The tail of the plane clipped the overhanging exit sign above me as it headed straight at the Pentagon. The windows were dark on American Airlines Flight 77 as it streaked toward its target,
only 50 yards away. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/17/first-person.htm Mary Ann Owens, a journalist with Gannett News Service - was driving along by the side of the Pentagon. Here, she recalls the events of that horrific day and her feelings about the tragedy 12 months on. The sound of sudden and certain death roared in my ears as I sat lodged in gridlock on Washington Boulevard, next to the Pentagon on September 11. Up to that moment I had only experienced shock by the news coming from New York City and frustration with the worse-than-normal traffic snarl ... but it wasn't until I heard the demon screaming of that engine that I expected to die. Between the Pentagon's helicopter pad, which sits next to the road, and Reagan Washington National Airport a couple of miles south, aviation noise is common along my commute to the silver office towers in Rosslyn where Gannett Co Inc. were housed last autumn.
But this engine noise was different. It was too sudden, too loud, too encompassing. Looking up didn't tell me what type of plane it was because it was so close I could only see the bottom. Realising the Pentagon was its target, I didn't think the careering, full-throttled craft would get that far. Its downward angle was too sharp, its elevation of maybe 50 feet, too low. Street lights toppled as the plane barely cleared the Interstate 395 overpass. Gripping the steering wheel of my vibrating car, I involuntarily ducked as the wobbling plane thundered over my head. Once it passed, I raised slightly and grimaced as the left wing dipped and scraped the helicopter area just before the nose crashed into the southwest wall of the Pentagon. Still gripping the wheel, I could feel both the car and my heart jolt at the moment of impact.
An instant inferno blazed about 125 yards from me. http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/display.var.624436.Top+Stories.0.htmlEyewitness: The Pentagon By Lon Rains Editor, Space News - In light traffic the drive up Interstate 395 from Springfield to downtown Washington takes no more than 20 minutes. But that morning, like many others, the traffic slowed to a crawl just in front of the Pentagon. With the Pentagon to the left of my van at about 10 o'clock on the dial of a clock, I glanced at my watch to see if I was going to be late for my appointment. At that moment
I heard a very loud, quick whooshing sound that began behind me and stopped suddenly in front of me and to my left. In fractions of a second I heard the impact and an explosion. The next thing I saw was the fireball. I was convinced it was a missile. It came in so fast it sounded nothing like an airplane. http://www.space.com/news/rains_september11-1.htmlMickey Bell : The jet came in from the south and banked left as it entered the building,
narrowly missing the Singleton Electric trailer and the on-site foreman, Mickey Bell. Bell had just left the trailer when he heard a loud noise. The next thing he recalled was picking himself off the floor, where he had been thrown by the blast.
Bell, who had been less than 100 feet from the initial impact of the plane, was nearly struck by one of the plane´s wings as it sped by him. http://www.necanet.org/whats_new/report.cfm?ID=1003Donald R. Bouchoux, 53, a retired Naval officer, a Great Falls resident, a Vietnam veteran and former commanding officer of a Navy fighter squadron, was driving west from Tysons Corner to the Pentagon for a 10am meeting. He wrote: At 9:40 a.m. I was driving down Washington Boulevard (Route 27) along the side of the Pentagon
when the aircraft crossed about 200 yards (should be more than 150 yards from the impact) in front of me and impacted the side of the building. Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2001
http://web.lexis-nexis.com...Traffic was at a standstill.
I heard a rumble, looked out my driver's side window and realized that I was looking at the nose of an airplane coming straight at us from over the road (Columbia Pike) that runs perpendicular to the road I was on. The plane just appeared there- very low in the air, to the side of (and not much above) the CITGO gas station that I never knew was there. My first thought was "Oh My God, this must be World War III!" In that split second, my brain flooded with adrenaline and I watched everything play out in ultra slow motion, I saw the plane coming in slow motion toward my car and then it banked in the slightest turn in front of me, toward the heliport.
In the nano-second that the plane was directly over the cars in front of my car, the plane seemed to be not more than 80 feet off the ground and about 4-5 car lengths in front of me. It was far enough in front of me that I saw the end of the wing closest to me and the underside of the other wing as that other wing rocked slightly toward the ground. I remember recognizing it as an American Airlines plane -- I could see the windows and the color stripes. And I remember thinking that it was just like planes in which I had flown many times but at that point it never occurred to me that this might be a plane with passengers. In my adrenaline-filled state of mind, I was overcome by my visual senses. The day had started out beautiful and sunny and I had driven to work with my car's sunroof open. I believe that I may have also had one or more car windows open because the traffic wasn't moving anyway. At the second that I saw the plane, my visual senses took over completely and
I did not hear or feel anything -- not the roar of the plane, or wind force, or impact sounds. http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/supporting.asp?ID=30William Largasse:
I saw the aircraft above my head about 80 feet above the ground , 400 miles an hour. The reason, I have some experience as a pilot and I looked at the plane. Didn't see any landing gear. Didn't see any flaps down. I realized it wasn't going to land. . . . It was close enough that I could see the windows and the blinds had been pulled down. I read American Airlines on it. . . .I got on the radio and broadcast. I said a plane is, is heading toward the heliport side of the building.
http://web.lexis-nexis.com...http://www2.hawaii.edu/~julianr/lexisnexis/lagasse1.txt Maj. Leibner drove in and made it as far as the south parking lot, where he got out on foot. "I heard the plane first," he said. "I thought it was a flyover Arlington cemetery." From his vantage point, Maj. Leibner looked up and saw the plane come in.
"I was about 100 yards away," he said. http://www.usmedicine.com/article.cfm?articleID=384&issueID=38David Marra, 23, an information-technology specialist, had turned his BMW off an I-395 exit to the highway just west of the Pentagon when he saw an American Airlines jet swooping in, its wings wobbly, looking like it was going to slam right into the Pentagon:
"It was 50 ft. off the deck when he came in. It sounded like the pilot had the throttle completely floored. The plane rolled left and then rolled right. Then he caught an edge of his wing on the ground."
There is a helicopter pad right in front of the side of the Pentagon. The wing touched there , then the plane cartwheeled into the building.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,174655-4,00.htmlMcCusker
Traffic is normally slow right around the Pentagon as the road winds and we line up to cross the 14th Street bridge heading into the District of Columbia.
I don't know what made me look up, but I did and I saw a very low-flying American Airlines plane that seemed to be accelerating. My first thought was just 'No, no, no, no,' because it was obvious the plane was not heading to nearby Reagan National Airport. It was going to crash.
http://depts.washington.edu/uweek/archives/2001.10.OCT_04/_article9.htmlThe worker, William Middleton Sr., was running his street sweeper through the cemetery
when he heard a harsh whistling sound overhead. Middleton looked up and spotted a commercial jet whose pilot seemed to be fighting with his own craft. Middleton said the plane was no higher than the tops of telephone poles as it lurched toward the Pentagon. The jet accelerated in the final few hundred yards before it tore into the building.
http://www.s-t.com/daily/12-01/12-20-01/a02wn018.htmI was right underneath the plane, said Kirk Milburn, a construction supervisor for Atlantis Co. , who was on the Arlington National Cemetery exit of Interstate 395 when he said he saw the plane heading for the Pentagon. "
I heard a plane. I saw it. I saw debris flying. I guess it was hitting light poles," said Milburn. "It was like a WHOOOSH whoosh, then there was fire and smoke, then I heard a second explosion." - (Washington Post, September 11, 2001) -
http:// www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/sep01/attack.html
Steve Patterson, who lives in Pentagon City, said it appeared to him that a commuter jet swooped over Arlington National Cemetery and headed for the Pentagon "at a frightening rate .‚.‚. just slicing into that building." Steve Patterson, 43, said he was watching television reports of the World Trade Center being hit when he saw a silver commuter jet fly past the window of his 14th-floor apartment in Pentagon City.
The plane was about 150 yards away, approaching from the west about 20 feet off the ground, Patterson said. He said the plane, which sounded like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter jet , flew over Arlington cemetary so low that he thought it was going to land on I-395.
Barbara Vobejda - Washington Post Staff Writer - Sept. 11, 4:59 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/sep01/attack.htmlRecognition of Master Sergeant Noel Sepulveda : (…) on September 11, 2001, Master Sergeant Noel Sepulveda was on assignment at the Pentagon as a Medic. He was standing in the parking lot at the Pentagon when he noticed a jetliner lower its landing gear as if to make a landing an then he realized that the airplane was actually heading towards the southwest wall of the Pentagon;
and he was standing only 150 feet from the point of impact and for a brief moment he could see the body of the plane sticking out from the side of the building, followed by an explosion; and the blast of the impact was so tremendous, that from his vantage point, it threw him backward over 100 feet slamming into a light pole causing him internal injuries; and despite his internal injuries, Master Sergeant Noel Sepulveda remained on his duty station at the Pentagon for seven days after this attack while manning a triage station to assist the other victims of the attack.
http://www.lulac.org/Issues/Resolve/2002/30%20Sepulveda.htmlMike Slater, a former Marine : Then the Pentagon, built to withstand terrorist attacks, shook like a rickety roller coaster. A section of it collapsed and burned.
"It sounded like a roar," said Mr. Slater, who was 500 yards away from where the jet slammed into the Pentagon's west side. "I knew it was a bomb or something." http://www.americanmemorials.com/memorial/tribute.asp?idMemorial=1316&idContributor=7466USAToday.com Multimedia Editor, saw it all: an American Airlines jetliner fly left to right across his field of vision as he commuted to work Tuesday morning. It was highly unusual.
The large plane was 20 feet off the ground and a mere 50 to 75 yards from his windshield. Two seconds later and before he could see if the landing gear was down or any of the horror- struck faces inside, the plane slammed into the west wall of
the Pentagon 100 yards away. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,9306,00.aspSuchermann :
I heard a sonic boom and then the impact, the explosion. ... (Audio)
http://play.rbn.com/?url=usat/usat/g2demand/010911sucherman.ra&Terronez :
Around 9:40 a.m. I reached the heliport area (beside the Pentagon).
So I got about 100 yards or so past the heliport and then all of the sudden I heard this loud screeching sound that just came out of nowhere and it intensified. This huge WHOOSH!
http://www.counseling.org/ctonline/news/amazing1001.htm Ian Wyatt glanced into the sky just as a commercial airplane roared by about 100 yards off the ground. "I was so scared I thought it was coming after me and just ducked for cover," said Wyatt, a 1999 graduate of Mary Washington College who was walking to his federal job when terrorists struck at the heart of the nation's defense yesterday morning. "It was going so fast and it was so low," he said, standing on Army-Navy Drive.
http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2001/092001/09122001/390193/printer_friendly Is this what the people heard a Boeing 767? 
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