Perceval said:
several witnesses testified that they saw a small commerical jet-like aircraft. I understood that the CIT research proposed a decoy 757 that followed the path you described (banked right to the north of the Citgo station in front of the Pentagon)
Well not necessarily a 757, but all of the witnesses report a "large commercial aircraft".
Let's examine all of the alleged "small aircraft" witnesses:
Lon Rains said:
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 oclock 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.html
You referenced Lon Rains in another thread, but as you can see from his account, the only thing he actually saw was the fireball. One witness down...
Don Chauncey said:
Andrea: Don Chauncey, are you there?
Don: Yes I am.
Andrea: You witnessed what happened at the Pentagon. What did you see.
Don: From my office I was able to see ah A white jet, like a gulf-stream type commuter jet, I guess, just came at a high rate of speed, ah, I can see National Airport’s tower from our office, and it just increased its speed as it got closer to the Pentagon, and then I just saw the big yellow ball of fire.
Andrea: Don exactly where is your office? From where are you watching this?
Don: …ah, we’re, our, offices are off Brannon? and St. Barnabas? at the Beltway, so I overlook the Beltway from my office.
Mike: Could you tell Don, did the plane come out of National?
Don: (Emphatically) No, no, absolutely not! (Quickly) There was a, it appeared to be, a US Air commuter jet that went over the top of our building, which is a normal flight pattern, I guess for the commuters. And this looked like it was coming…from (pause) I’m guessing, coming down Columbia Pike in Arlington, down that way, and then just picked up a high rate of speed, I mean from my desk right now I can see the Pentagon, basically where the metro station is, and the buses, I can see that and to the right, but I can’t see the, I guess, the south parking area.
Mike: Right.
Andrea: Don what’s the reaction of others in your office? I mean watching the world trade center and then seeing this right, literally, in your own backyard
Don: Well myself and another coworker who sits beside me, both of us were actually on the phone looking out the window when it happened and we both dropped the phone, and we picked it back up, and said we got to go, it looks like somebody…there’s been a plane crash at either the airport or the Pentagon.
Here is his exact location:
Note that he is six miles from the Pentagon. Might he be reporting a small plane because it appeared small from 6 miles away? Could he even see a "small commuter plane" from six miles away.
D. S. Khavkin said:
"We were watching the events unfolding on TV in New York. Then, at about 9:40 am Eastern Daylight Time, my husband and I heard an aircraft directly overhead. At first, we thought it was the jets that sometimes fly overhead. However, it appeared to be a small commercial aircraft. The engine was at full throttle.
First, the plane knocked down a number of street lamp poles, then headed directly for the Pentagon and crashed on the lawn near the west side the Pentagon. A huge fireball exploded with thick black smoke."
A resident of Arlington made
a few interesting discoveries about Khavkin's acount. For example:
22205 from CIT's forum said:
she lives (or lived) on the 8th floor - which fits khavkin's account. plus - only on the top floor of an apartment building would the sound and the roar/vibrations of a large jet be most evident and most felt (especially on approach from the west). if she was lower than the top floor, she would be shielded from the sound by neighboring apartments ON TOP of hers. we know she wasnt on the west side of the building, or she would have ZERO view of the event, so she had to be on the east side, which faces the sheraton and the pentagon. so she was definitely shielded to some extent by sound from BEHIND (west of her) apartment due to other apartments, which means her reaction to the event would be delayed somewhat. this suggests that by the time she got to her window she was watching the plane making its way PAST overhead and somewhere between her and the SHERATON. but after the sheraton, she could NOT see what became of the event. this is a FACT.
As you can see, her view of the Pentagon, lightpoles, etc. is completely blocked by the Sheraton:
If she is embellishing these details, it seems likely that the "small commercial jet" is also an embellishment. It certainly isn't a corroborated claim.
Steve Gerard said:
"Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this plane coming down. I was talking on my cell phone to my wife about how close I was to the airport and then I saw the fireball."
In the tv interview he makes clear that it was "maybe a 20 passenger corporate jet". CIT interviewed Gerard:
Craig Ranke said:
We spoke with Steven Gerard, who WORKS FOR THE DoJ and describes the "20 passenger corporate jet no markings on the side". He was very evasive and very uncooperative. He said, "My story is it was it is. It's on the record"..."I don't want part in any conspiracy theory". We told him his account as the reason for a lot of conspiracy theories. We asked why he also told his story like this on 9/11/01 as well:
"Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this plane coming down. I was talking on my cell phone to my wife about how close I was to the airport and then I saw the fireball."
He really didn't have an answer, instead seemed to get defensive.
Steve Patterson said:
Steve Patterson, 43, is a graphics artist who works at home in a 14th-floor apartment in
Pentagon City. While watching events unfold on TV he saw a silver commuter jet fly past
his window about 150 yards away, approaching from the west about 20 feet off the ground,
He said it appeared to him that a commuter jet which appeared to hold about eight to 12
people, headed straight for the Pentagon but was flying as if coming in for a landing on a
nonexistent runway.
The plane, which sounded like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter jet, flew over Arlington
cemetery so low that he thought it was going to land on I-395. "at a frightening rate ... just
slicing into that building." He saw bright orange flames shoot out the back of the building.
-Barbara Vobejda Washington Post Staff Writer/ Sept. 11, 4:59 PM
However, locating Patterson proved impossible.
Joel Skousen reported that: "I have, so far, been unable to locate a Steven Pattersonin the Pentagon City area of Arlington, Va. None of the graphic design firms in the area that I called have heard of him. Barbara Vobejda told me she didn't have a contact number for him either since his testimony was picked up by one of the dozens of "stringers" they had out in the field that day interviewing people on the ground.
And those are essentially all of the "small commuter plane" witnesses. If we take out Rains for not witnessing anything, and Chauncey for being too far away too judge the size of the plane, we are left with three extremely dubious second-hand media accounts.
Also note that none of these accounts contradict the north side flight path. So even if the plane was a small commuter jet, it still wouldn't have been able to fire a missle and line up with the damage in the building.
See
The Witness List Broken Down
Finally, there are some physical objections to the global hawk theory as well.
For example, in "Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn't Impact the Pentagon on 9/11 and Neither Did a Boeing 757" you cite Sami Yli-karjanmaa's analysis of the ASCE report.
In the above picture from the analysis, the purple line is the 42 degree approach angle matching the damage to the building, the green line is the 31 degree angle matching the hole in the fence, the white stars are intact light poles, and the red stars are downed lightpoles.
In order for a missle to be shot at a 42 degree angle consistent with the physical damage to the building, it would have to travel at a 42 degree approach angle. As you can see, the light poles along this path are still intact, therefore no plane could have approached from 42 degrees, ruling out the global hawk-missle hypothesis.
The only explanation which fits all of the evidence is a flyover with staged damage.