I decided to browse the September 11 forum today and read a few of the topics, which meant I clicked link after link and wound up here, posting this.
I live near DFW airport, headquarters of American Airlines, so I've seen AA jets as long as I can remember. I'm also a bit of an aviation nut, so when I saw this photo on the 9-11 Research site, something about it caught my eye:
http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/photos/hullpiece.htmlWhich red areas on an American 757 have white pinstriping around them? The striping on the sides are equal width red, white and blue bands. The lettering is the only type of marking I can find with this feature. The red with white pinstriping area appears to be curved in relation to the rivet line to the right of the outer edge of the white pinstriping, in relation to the rivet line to the right of that, and in relation to the shorn edge (presumably along a similar rivet line) to the left of the inside edge of the white pinstriping. Photos I've looked at on airliners.net of the nose of other AA 757s do not resemble the figure painted on this piece of debris, not to mention the pinstripe, so that can't be it. Which letters have curved surfaces? "m" "e" "r" "c" "a" and "n". Of these letters, which are painted on a gray painted background? None that I can find. I can only find these curved letters applied to the polished aluminum finish of the fuselage. The large "AA" on the tail has a light gray background, but those letters aren't curved. And I can't imagine how a polished aluminum finish could appear as gray paint in this photo, since there would surely be some amount of reflection of the sky, grass, etc. rather than the even, dirty, satin finish I see.
So, if this piece of debris fits on an American Airlines 757, where exactly does it fit? I don't have anywhere near enough time to spend the next several days at the computer trying to answer this, so I'm hoping someone else can. Surely, someone has noticed this before or I'm missing something obvious (which wouldn't surprise me).