Debunking Scholars for 9/11 Truth on the Pentagon

[Kevin Fenton]

Scholars for 9/11 Truth has an article on the Pentagon, it’s by Michael
Meyer, who claims to be a mechanical engineer, and you can find it here:
http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/ArticlesMeyer3March2006.html

Meyer’s premise is:
“... it is a physically provable fact that some of the damage done to the
Pentagon could not have occurred from a Boeing 757 impact”

The key claim:
“We are lead to believe that not only did the 757 penetrate the outer
wall, but continued on to penetrate separate internal walls totaling 9
feet of reinforced concrete. The final breach of concrete was a nearly
perfectly cut circular hole (see below) in a reinforced concrete wall,
with no subsequent damage to the rest of the wall. (If we are to believe
that somehow this aluminum aircraft did in fact reach this sixth final
wall.)”

“American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, is alleged to have punched
through 6 blast-resistant concrete walls‹a total of nine feet of
reinforced concrete‹before exiting through this hole.”

Anyone who has a nodding acquaintance with the Pentagon’s structure knows
this is patently false and that he pulled the figure of “9 feet of
reinforced concrete” out of his ear. First off, the aircraft did not
penetrate 6 walls of any type. Of the six walls Thierry Meyssan claimed it
passed through, four were figments of his imagination (the inner wall on
E-ring, the two walls on D-ring and the outer wall on C-ring).
www.911review.com puts it very nicely:
“… the light wells between the C- and D-ring and D- and E-ring are only
three stories deep. The first and second stories span the distance between
the Pentagon's facade and the punctured C-ring wall, which faces a
ground-level courtyard. There are no masonry walls in this space, only
load-bearing columns.”
http://www.911review.com/errors/pentagon/punchout.html

That there were only three stories in the light wells can be seen very
clearly in the following photo:


Well, that’s got rid of four of the alleged reinforced concrete walls, now
for the inner one on C-ring. Here’s a picture of it:

A double layer of masonry is visible, reinforced concrete is not.

However, the outer wall in E-ring did have a reinforced concrete frame:
“The perimeter exterior walls of Ring E are faced in limestone and backed
with unreinforced brick infilled in the concrete frame.”
Pentagon Building Performance Assessment, FEMA/ASCE, p. 6
http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/build03/PDF/b03017.pdf

The concrete frame comprised horizontal elements (floors) and vertical
elements (columns) – there was no continuous reinforced concrete wall. I
really see no problem in a 757, with its tanks more than half full, making
a 90-foot hole in a limestone and brick wall.


OK, so this is not representative of the quality of work at the site, but
it’s so transparently false that it detracts from the good stuff. What is
the point of setting up an organisation called “Scholars for 9/11 Truth”
and then taking it out to the fringe of the “9/11 truth movement”?

On edit: layout

[spooked911]

1. are you saying there were no inner walls?

because surely there were walls between the rooms, and in this older style of building, they would not be flimsy drywall.

[Kevin Fenton]

2. That is exactly what I am saying

There were no inner walls. Meyssan made them up. If you want to claim there were inner walls, please produce a photograph and/or a diagram and/or some other piece of evidence that they were present. The upper stories were held up by columns, of which there are lots of pictures in the Building Performance Assessment.

I suppose it is because, before the US military bureaucracy burgeoned out of control and needed all that office space, the Pentagon was supposed to be used as a munitions store.

[Make7]

3. I would think that it might be possible....

... for an organization of scholars to institute some kind of process that would review information before it is presented in order to verify that it is accurate. This obviously does not presently seem to be the case.

- Make7