1 - The terrorist pilot of AA Flight 77 was a top gun and a flaky flyer.
According to CBS, Hani Hanjour, the pilot of AA Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon was an ace. http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,310721- 412,00.shtml :
"At 9:33 the plane crossed the Capitol Beltway and took aim on its
military target. But the jet, flying at more than 400 mph, was too fast
and too high when it neared the Pentagon at 9:35. The hijacker-pilots were
then forced to execute a difficult high-speed descending turn.
"Radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete
circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes. "The
steep turn was so smooth, the sources say, it's clear there was no fight
for control going on. And the complex maneuver suggests the hijackers had
better flying skills than many investigators first believed. "The jetliner
disappeared from radar at 9:37 and less than a minute later it clipped the
tops of street lights and plowed into the Pentagon at 460 mph."
Time magazine agrees http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,174639,00.html :
"And each aircraft performed dramatic but carefully executed course
corrections, including a stunning last maneuver by flight 77. The pilot of
that plane came in low from the south of the Pentagon and pulled a 270-
degree turn before slamming into the west wall of the building. "
The Washington Post, likewise http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp- dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A14365-2001Sep11 :
"Controllers had time to warn the White House that the jet was aimed
directly at the president's mansion and was traveling at a gut-wrenching
speed -- full throttle. But just as the plane seemed to be on a suicide
mission into the White House, the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so
tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver. The plane
circled 270 degrees to the right to approach the Pentagon from the west,
whereupon Flight 77 fell below radar level, vanishing from controllers'
screens, the sources said."
But one month before 9-11 Hani Hanjour was a terrible pilot http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny- usflight232380680sep23.story :
"At Freeway Airport in Bowie, Md., 20 miles west of Washington, flight
instructor Sheri Baxter instantly recognized the name of alleged hijacker
Hani Hanjour when the FBI released a list of 19 suspects in the four
hijackings. Hanjour, the only suspect on Flight 77 the FBI listed as a
pilot, had come to the airport one month earlier seeking to rent a small
plane. However, when Baxter and fellow instructor Ben Conner took the
slender, soft-spoken Hanjour on three test runs during the second week of
August, they found he had trouble controlling and landing the single-
engine Cessna 172. Even though Hanjour showed a federal pilot's license
and a log book cataloging 600 hours of flying experience, chief flight
instructor Marcel Bernard declined to rent him a plane without more
lessons."
The Washington Post reports the same [1] :
"The Freeway instructors also were skeptical of Hanjour's skills. 'They
told me he flew so poorly that they were not willing to give him an
endorsement to fly our planes,' Bernard said. Hanjour's two instructors
did not return calls and were not home Sunday, but Ann Conner, the mother
of one of them, said her 19-year-old son, Benjamin, went aloft twice with
Hanjour. They flew the school's routine flight path - half-hour to hour-
long segments in oblong loops over the airport - and did not stray into
restricted airspace over the Pentagon, flight instructor Bernard said.
Hanjour's 'piloting skills were terrible, considering' he was licensed to
fly multi-engine planes, Ann
Conner said..."
2 - Allah blinded the heathens' radar http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp- dyn/A32597-2001Nov2?language=printer :
"Investigators are still piecing together the facts in the hijacking of
American Airlines Flight 77. But the sector of limited radar coverage at
an Indianapolis "en route center" helps explain one of its mysteries: Why
did the Boeing 757 simply disappear from radar screens for a half-hour or
more, turn aroundover southern Ohio and get back into Washington airspace
before anyone noticed it or knew that it had been hijacked?"
When the box-cutter men hijacked 77 over Ohio and turned off its transponder, the plane disappeared from Indianapolis' screens because Indianapolis didn't have a _proper_ radar. It just had a "beacon radar" that picked up transponder signals. That was real lucky for Hanjour because his watch showed about 8:56 and his ETA was 9:45. The second WTC tower would be hit in about 3 minutes. Indianapolis didn't warn anybody because it assumed there was a technical problem. Such was standard procedure.
3 - As the goofy Hanjour, transformed by Allah into a crack pilot, came roaring towards the Pentagon at treetop height, the Good Lord had already seen to it that the damage should be limited. The west wing of the building, called Wedge One, had just been reinforced against bomb attack. If 77 had hit anywhere else, the Pentagon would have been toast http://www.architectureweek.com/2001/1003/news_1-1.html :
"As Pentagon renovation manager Evey grimly concluded, "that the
[terrorists] happened to hit an area that we had built so sturdily was a
wonderful gift."
Which goes to show you the power of prayer, really. You can bet your tush there's a lot more praying Christians in the Pentagon that there were in the twin towers of Mammon. Or maybe the mighty symbol of the Pentagram protected the nations' brave commanders. But hold on, then they would be praying to...nah, that can't be right.
Hakki
[1] John Mintz and Brooke A. Masters: The Washington Post, Sept. 17, 2001. Quoted in http://www.arizonarepublic.com/special43/articles/0917attacks-hijackerscotts dale-ON.html