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Originally Posted by CheeseFrog
Don't bother to introduce logic into this. Remember, you're dealing with plane crash experts who KNOW what should be left over after a 600mph crash with subsequent 1600F incineration.  |
From the experts:
A devil's advocate might bring up the fire that burned inside the building for approximately seven minutes before being extinguished. Although the colour temperature of the fire appears too bright for kerosene (i.e., jet fuel), we will invoke the White House interpretation of events, as mentioned earlier. Kerosene burns at approximately 860 degrees celsius in ambient air and less in a confined space where the fire tends to use up oxygen. (ASCE 2003)
Fireball From Initial Hole in Pentagon, or secondary explosion?
Could such a fire have destroyed both wings to the point of near invisibility? The simplest answer is that the left wing was exposed to fire only near the wing root, the more distal portions being completely beyond the reach of flames or heat sufficient to melt the aluminum, let alone to burn it. The window frames to the left of the initial hole are all intact, so any heat radiated from the fires in the building would have had to come through the windows to the outside, largely missing any sections of wing that might have been lying outside them.
At six meters from the fire, even under direct exposure, the heat would have been insufficient to raise the temperature of the aluminum skin much above 500 C, well below the melting temperature of aluminum, namely 660 C (NASA 2003).
In other words, it would have been a physical impossibility for any portion of the port wing beyond about four meters from the fire to be melted, vaporized or in any way destroyed by it. Thus, at least 16 m (52' 6") of that wing ought to have remained (and to have been clearly visible) on the left of the entrance hole. In fact, no such debris appears in any of the pictures taken of the Pentagon that morning.
A. K. Dewdney, mathematician/computer scientist
G. W. Longspaugh, aerospace engineer