General Facts About United Flight 93

This web site was created to explain in detail what really happened to United Flight 93 on 9-11-01. Some people prone to conspiracies say that the government shot down the plane, while others claim no such flight even existed.
In order to find out the truth, I will examine the evidence like a detective trying to solve a murder case. I will first examine the reports of eyewitnesses, then examine photos of the crash site, and other evidence. We will also look at some of the questions that people have about the flight and the crash that has led to several conspiracy theories.

Eyewitnesses

Here are parts of several articles giving details and eyewitness accounts:

A few miles north of Lambertsville, yard man Terry Butler, 40, was toiling away at Stoystown Auto Wreckers.
He thought it was odd that a plane was in the area. He'd heard that all air traffic nationwide had been halted after the World Trade Center disaster about an hour earlier.
"It dropped out of the clouds," too low for a commercial flight, Butler said. The plane rose slightly, trying to gain altitude, then "it just went flip to the right and then straight down."
He radioed back to his office, telling coworkers Homer Barron, 49, and Jeff Phillips, 30, what he had seen.
"I told them a plane crashed. At first they didn't believe it, because you know, we do joke around." Then Barron saw smoke and called 911.
… Barron and Phillips drove to the crash scene and found a smoky hole in the ground. A few firefighters had already begun pouring water onto the debris.
"It didn't look like a plane crash because there was nothing that looked like a plane," Barron said.
"There was one part of a seat burning up there," Phillips said. "That was something you could recognize."
"I never seen anything like it," Barron said. "Just like a big pile of charcoal."
Lee Purbaugh, 32, working just his second day at Rollock Inc., a scrap yard next to the reclaimed strip-mine land, looked up from operating a burning torch to see the jetliner just 40 feet above him. "I couldn't believe this," Purbaugh said.
"I heard it for 10 or 15 seconds and it sounded like it was going full bore," said Tim Lensbouer, 35, Purbaugh's coworker.
The ground shook and the air thundered as the jetliner slammed into the ground about 300 yards away, Purbaugh said.
A mushroom of flame rose 200 feet and disappeared. Then there was a curtain of black smoke and finally a trail of fire as pieces of the fuselage shot hundreds of yards into the woods.
"My instinct was to run toward it, to try to help" said Nina Lensbouer, Tim's Lensbouer's wife and a former volunteer firefighter. "But I got there and there was nothing, nothing there but charcoal. Instantly, it was charcoal."
…
Charles Sturtz, 53, who lives just over the hillside from the crash site, said a fireball 200 feet high shot up over the hill. He got to the crash scene even before the firefighters.
"The biggest pieces you could find were probably four feet [long]. Most of the pieces you could put into a shopping bag, and there were clothes hanging from the trees."
Ten miles away, at a warehouse near Berlin, employee Don Miller and co-workers felt their building shake. (7)
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"It came in low over the trees and started wobbling," said Tim Thornsberg, a resident of Somerset County, who was working near an old strip mine when he saw the plane.
"Then it just rolled over and was flying upside down for a few seconds ... and then it kind of stalled and did a nose dive over the trees. It was just unreal to see something like that."
…
Charles Sturtz, who lives about a half-mile from the crash site, said he saw the plane in the air for a few seconds, and saw no smoke, heard no explosions before the crash and saw no other planes in the sky.
The plane was heading southeast he said, and had its engines running. "It was really roaring, you know. Like it was trying to go someplace, I guess, " the 53-year-old carpenter said. (6)
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One eyewitness to the Pennsylvania crash, Linda Shepley, told television station KDKA in Pittsburgh that she heard a loud bang and saw the plane bank to the side before crashing. … (3)
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Kelly Leverknight was watching news of the attacks on New York and Washington when she heard the plane.
It sounded like it was flying low above her home in rural Pennsylvania, moving from west to east. It was an odd enough sound that she stepped outside to have a look.
"I heard the plane going over and I went out the front door and I saw the plane going down," said Leverknight, 36. "It was headed toward the school, which panicked me, because all three of my kids were there.
"Then you heard the explosion and felt the blast and saw the fire and smoke." Leverknight and dozens of her neighbors raced to the Shanksville-Stonycreek School where they found their children safe.
…
Witnesses said they thought the wings of the Boeing 757 were wagging from side to side as it plunged toward the earth. …
"When it decided to drop, it dropped all of a sudden, like a stone," said Tom Fritz, 63. Fritz was sitting on his porch on Lambertsville Road, about a quarter mile from the crash site, when he heard a sound that "wasn't quite right" and looked up in the sky.
"It was sort of whistling," he said. "It was going so fast that you couldn't even make out what color it was."
…
Terry Butler works at Stoystown Auto Wreckers, which is in the flight path of the doomed plane. Butler was pulling a radiator from a 1992 Dodge Caravan when he heard the plane's engines.
He was listening to the news and was surprised because he had heard that all flights nationwide were grounded, and he didn't think there were supposed to be any planes in the air at the time. He looked up and behind him saw the plane come out of the clouds, low to the ground.
"It was moving like you wouldn't believe. Next thing I knew it makes a heck of a sharp, right-hand turn." He said the plane banked to the right and appeared to be trying to climb to clear one of the ridges, but it continued to turn to the right and then veered behind a ridge, "like somebody grabbed the wheel."
He said the plane disappeared behind a tree line on a ridge. "I knew it was going to crash," Butler said. About a second after it disappeared, he heard the boom and saw the smoke rise above the trees. "It was eerie." (8)
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"It shook the whole station," said Bruce Grine, owner of an auto service center in Shanksville, about 3 miles from the crash site. "Everybody ran outside, and by that time the fire whistle was blowing." (3)
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Eric Peterson of Lambertsville looked up when he heard the plane. "It was low enough, I thought you could probably count the rivets," Peterson said. "You could see more of the roof of the plane than you could the belly. It was on its side."
"There was a great explosion and you could see the flames. It was a massive, massive explosion. Flames and then smoke and then a massive, massive mushroom cloud."
Peterson called 9-1-1 and ran to the crash site but found only burning jet parts, pieces of clothing, and seat cushions.
….
Rose Goodwin, a freshman at Shanksville Stony Creek High School, was watching the television news in class when Flight 93 went down.
"We felt it. We thought something must have landed on the roof," she said. "It was like, Oh my gosh, what was that?' We looked out the window and saw a black cloud. Everyone started screaming."
Viola Saylor of Lambertsville was outside talking to her sister.
"We didn't hear that plane coming until it was right on top of us," she said. "Then there was a roar."
She said the plane appeared to be gliding into the ground.
"All at once it just stopped. There was no engine noise, nothing. Someone hollered, Oh my God!' and then there was a real loud thud." (11)
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Michael R. Merringer was out on a mountain bike ride with his wife, Amy, about two miles away from the crash site.
"I heard the engine gun two different times and then I heard a loud bang and the windows of the houses all around rattled," Merringer said. "I looked up and I saw the smoke coming up."
The couple rushed home and drove near the scene. "Everything was on fire and there was trees knocked down and there was a big hole in the ground," he said. … (10)
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For Lee Purbaugh, 31, of Listie, the thought of seeing a plane crash right before his eyes still seemed unbelievable to him when interviewed a half-hour later.
“I never in my life thought I would see a plane crash right before my very eyes,” said Purbaugh, who was at the wreckage within minutes after the crash.
Purbaugh’s second day on the job at Rollock Inc., a scrap metal company which owns the Diamond T mine, a former PBS Coals dig directly above the crash site, came with a shocking surprise. The crash happened within 200 yards of Purbaugh’s view.
“I happened to hear this noise and looked up,” said Purbaugh, who indicated the plane was about 40 to 50 feet above him. “I didn’t know if I should duck or what because this plane was so low but then in a split second it hit.”
Purbaugh describes the crash as “just like a big mushroom cloud.” He says when it hit, it “shook the ground, rolled over in some way and then collapsed.” … (12)
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A witness said he heard two loud bangs before watching the plane take a downward turn of nearly 90 degrees. … Many witnesses said that their homes were shaking violently as the plane flew low overhead. A witness told WTAE-TV's Paul Van Osdol that she saw the plane overhead. It made a high-pitched, screeching sound. The plane then made a sharp, 90-degree downward turn and crashed. (9)
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The plane seemed to be fully, or largely, intact. "I didn't see no smoke, nothing," said Nevin Lambert, an elderly farmer who witnessed the crash from his side yard less than a half-mile away.
Lambert also said he also later found a couple of pieces of debris, one a piece of metal, less than 12 inches across, with some insulation attached. … (15)
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Then a call came in from one of Madigan’s troopers: He had just heard an explosion so violent it shook his home. Soon phones at the barracks were ringing off the hook. Madigan and other troopers rushed to the scene, …
Rick King, 42, of Shanksville, was behind the wheel of the first fire truck to arrive at the crash scene, …
The former assistant chief of the Shanksville volunteer fire department had heard Flight 93 scream overhead, seen a massive fireball light up the sky and felt an explosion rock the entire town of Shanksville. …
But besides a burning landing-gear tire, smoldering branches in the nearby woods and a few brush fires, there was little to indicate a jetliner had just crashed, he says. “Where is this plane? And where are the people?” he remembers thinking as he stepped off the truck. (16)
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Minutes later, the plane crashed in rural Somerset County, about 20 miles away.
"It was like an atomic bomb hit," said John Walsh, 72, who heard the crash and drove to the site while still in his bathrobe. "When I got there, the plane was obliterated. You couldn't see the cockpit or the wings or nothing." (20)
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Witnesses said they thought the wings of the Boeing 757 were wagging from side to side as it plunged toward the earth. (19)
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Larry Williams, a former state police trooper who is now a private investigator, was golfing on the 17th green at Oakbrook Golf Course about eight miles away when he heard the engines "roar real loud and shut off." …
Blair, of Stoystown, a driver with Jim Barron Trucking of Somerset, was traveling in a coal truck along with Doug Miller of Somerset, when they saw the plane spiraling to the ground and then explode on the outskirts of Lambertsville.
"I saw the plane flying upside down overhead and crash into the nearby trees. My buddy, Doug, and I grabbed our fire extinguishers and ran to the scene," said Blair.
"I saw the mushroom cloud and we called 911 right away," added Blair. "I knew with that crash that it wasn't likely there were survivors, but we had to go anyways. The plane was coming in on a slant and really hit the treeline at an angle."
“[Lucy] Menear, who lives across from the Lambertsville Road at the intersection where a graveled road leads to the crash site near the strip mine, said, "I felt the ground shake with the impact. I didn't know the plane had crashed. It was just a big jolt."
Laura Temyer of Hooversville …."I didn't see the plane but I heard the plane's engine. Then I heard a loud thump that echoed off the hills and then I heard the plane's engine. I heard two more loud thumps and didn't hear the plane's engine anymore after that."....
Kim Custer, 15, a tenth grader at Shanksville Stonycreek High School, said she was on the second floor of the school, located only a few miles from the crash site, when the plane went down.
"I looked up and saw the ceiling tiles jump up and down, then I felt the whole building shake," she said. "Then we heard a big boom, …. (14)
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Ok, we have a pretty good picture of the last few minutes of United Flight 93, as viewed from the ground. It descended quickly, was traveling very fast and low, banked hard to the right, flipped over completely, and nosedived straight into the ground. On impact there was a huge fireball that rose up about 200 feet followed by a mushroom cloud. Afterwards, there were only small pieces of the plane and its contents to be found anywhere.
About the loud bang noises, some people said the engines were very loud, others that the engines did not sound right, some that they made a loud bang, and some said it made no sound. Either some people were farther away than others, or the plane’s engines were cutting off and on, which was probably what caused the loud bangs. If you recall, there were witnesses who said the plane's engines were making the loud bang noise just before they cut off; or perhaps off and on with a bang. Look at the bold type in the last quote above.