II.

Terror from the Sky

Preparations for the terrorist strike by the 19 men identified as being involved in the hijackings seem to have been extensive. FBI agents later concluded that the ringleader for the entire September 11 operation was an Egyptian named Mohammed Atta. He and six others, who received flying lessons, arrived in the United States in 1999. In addition to learning to fly, the men are believed to have scouted potential routes and flights and travelled extensively around the country. Their accomplices for the operation, who would be responsible for physically subduing the aircraft crew members in the first moments of the hijackings using box-cutting knives as their weapons, arrived later.

A.

World Trade Center

The first two planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, left Boston at around 8.00 a.m. Both were Boeing 767s bound for Los Angeles, and they carried between them 137 passengers and 20 crew members. Just after 8.25 a.m. the first plane turned off course, heading south towards New York. Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8.46 a.m., hitting the 110-storey building between the 93rd and 98th floors. The hijackers of United Flight 175 followed a similar route and crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center, also 110 storeys tall, between the 78th and 84th floors at 9.02 a.m.

New York firefighters rushed to the scene from stations across the metropolitan area and helped thousands of people evacuate the towers and buildings nearby. Many people caught in offices above the floors where the planes had hit had no means of escape—in desperation some jumped from their office windows.

In both towers the intense heat from the burning jet fuel eventually melted their interior steel supports. At 9.59 a.m. the south tower collapsed: the steel supports gave way in the burning part of the tower, the floors above fell into the lower portion of the building, and the weight of the falling sections swiftly caused the lower floors to concertina. The north tower fell in a similar fashion at 10.28 a.m. Including the World Trade Center workers who died and the aircraft crews and passengers, the total death toll in the New York attack was about 2,800—this figure included 85 British and 10 Australian nationals.

B.

The Pentagon and the Fourth Flight

American Airlines Flight 77 to Los Angeles took off from Washington Dulles International Airport at about 8.20 a.m. with 6 crew members and 58 passengers. About 40 minutes into the flight the hijackers turned the Boeing 757 around and flew it back towards Washington, D.C., crashing it into the Pentagon at 9.37 a.m. The attack destroyed part of the office complex and caused extensive fires—it killed 125 civilian and military personnel.

The fourth aircraft hijacked on September 11, United Airlines Flight 93, took off from Newark, New Jersey, at about 8.40 a.m., bound for San Francisco. The Boeing 757 was the last of the four planes to be hijacked, and its passengers heard about the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks following telephone conversations with family members or friends. It is thought that several passengers decided to try to take control of the aircraft from the hijackers. It is not known where the hijackers of Flight 93 intended to crash the plane, but the aircraft was heading towards Washington, D.C., when it crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at about 10.10 a.m.