Monday, September 12, 2011

The Conspiracy of Flight 175


A friend at work introduced me to the Conspiracy of Flight 175, you know, the one about the pod being attached to the right side of the fuselage under the wing. Having never heard of this before, my first thought was perhaps a cargo door had opened. Then I asked about the model of the aircraft and upon learning it did some quick internet research on the Boeing 767-222. I found many instances of ‘photographic evidence’ of the ill-fated flight before it impacted with the South Tower. And yes there was something like a pod on the aircraft. But I found the image that I wanted, a side view of the 767 and knew what this pod most likely was.

I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories. In order for a conspiracy to be successful it must employ the minimum amount of people. The more people that are involved is more mouths that might disclose the conspiracy. When we are talking of events of this magnitude, the number of people involved would have to be large, unless of course they are mere 19 Al Qaeda operatives and their higher ups, including Osama bin Laden. But we aren’t talking about that kind of conspiracy. We are talking conspiracies that involve a pod on an aircraft. Why would Al Qaeda put a pod on the jet?  What is the purpose of the pod? For the pod to be put on the aircraft would require an airline or military maintenance depot. And that means more mouths to blabber later on. If you run a search and find the same image I did, you’ll note that the 767-222 does not have external hard points along the fuselage under the wing and forward of the landing gear door in which to secure this mysterious pod. Thus, in order for a pod to be placed there, someone has to upgrade the aircraft to support this pod. That doesn’t mean just some low ranking Joe told to remove panels and install the hardware, it also means an aerospace engineer to  figure out how the pod will affect flight, after all the doomed aircraft has to make it to the South Tower without crashing in route. Otherwise what is the point? Putting a secret mysterious pod on an aircraft is going to take some people, and how can you be sure all of them are Republican and support the Bush Administration? Wouldn’t a Democrat say something like: “Those guys put a pod on that jet. I towed it into the hanger and was told not to say anything.” If that happened, CNN would still be playing it to this day.

Some say, but wait, it wasn’t a commercial flight at all, it was a military plane, the kind that have those funny radomes slung under the fuselage. Well, yes, under the fuselage, but not under the wing that close to the fuselage. Reviewing the ‘photographic evidence’ this pod is the length of the wing root and would obstruct the main landing gear door. So I guess the pod was installed sometime after take-off and before the plane became a murderous manned missile. Well that doesn’t make any damned sense at all. Even if the external hard points were installed, how can anyone hang one there in flight! The problem with conspiracy theories of this scope and magnitude is that they require a suspension of disbelief.

And if it was a pod, then what the hell is the significance of that? What is the pod supposed to do? According to one youTube video my friend showed me, a man in a airline pilot’s uniform claimed it contained an incendiary device, because you see, as you look at the videos of the moment of impact, there is a small orange explosion right were the pod is! As if a fully fueled aircraft requires assistance exploding as it impacts a building. I guess if you want to make damn sure it explodes, you need to strap on a rather large pod that obstructs the landing gear door and carries a rather small incendiary device.

But even if we suspend our disbelief and entertain the idea that the Bush Administration was responsible for the attack, what goal was intended? To wage war? Were not there other valid Al Qaeda attacks against military installations and ships? The USS Cole was attacked in 2000, the barracks at Khobar Towers in 1996. Not to mention embassies worldwide. The United States was attacked plenty of times by terrorist organizations. It wouldn’t take, say the murder of nearly 3000 innocent lives, to justify bombing bin Laden in Afghanistan. There were plenty of other justifications. Ronald Reagan didn’t murder 3000 people and pin it on Grenadians to justify invading that place to save American students. He just went and did it, to hell with the handwringers.

Oh, but it was about invading Iraq. People, if 9/11 had not happened, we still would have invaded Iraq, unless Hussein complied with the UN resolutions as part of the Cease Fire agreement to end, as the UN called it, the Conflict between Iraq and Kuwait. He didn’t, we invaded, he hung. We didn’t need the excuse of 9/11.

Oh, but the Jews did it. Again—and excuse my language, but—what the fuck for? “Hey, we have some trouble over here with Muslims, so if you could help out . . . No? (Well I guess we’ll have to set up a rather complicated conspiracy and attack your economic and military centers to foment a hatred and desire for war against our enemy, the Muslims.)” As if we didn’t have problems with Muslims (see the above paragraph, specifically about the attacks.) Don’t forget to add the pod to the airplane while you are at it.

Some conspiracy theorists are certain that the jet that hit the South Tower was not flight 175. It was some other aircraft. Their proof lies in the frame captures of CNN and A B C News video footage. You see, they know the length of the aircraft and using diagrams marked out where the wings should start and end, and something just wasn’t adding up. Perhaps, as every photographer knows, the problem with using camera or video footage to determine the size and scale of an object without another known reference in the photograph or video is going to be next to impossible due to the natural distortion of the object caused by the lens length. A perfect example is seeing a football stadium on TV, then seeing it in person with your own eyeballs. It looks larger on TV. The methods these idiots use to determine the size of the 767 hitting the WTC can be used against other 767s going about their daily business and they will note the same kinds of discrepancies in scaling. If you take a picture of a aircraft (or anything) with a 100mm lens, and snap another of the same jet with a 35mm lens, there will be a difference in how big the jet looks.

The answer to this riddle my friends is very simple. There is no pod. It’s an optical illusion caused by the geometry of wing carriage and the United Airlines paint scheme. At first I thought the most likely explanation for this so-called ‘pod’ is that the maintenance and landing gear doors along the wing root popped open. Directly ahead of the gear door is a large panel that appears to have latches along its bottom edge, and ahead of this door is a panel with a small air inlet for either a ram air operated generator, or ram air cooling duct. It is possible than in the attempt to fly the aircraft into the building, steep banking maneuvers could have over-stressed (over-geed) the aircraft. In a left hand bank, that force would be exerted on the right side of the aircraft, and latches and rivets could have popped loose. The force of the stress could have sufficiently damaged the doors and panels so that they were wedged open. It is also possible that over-stress could have failed the longeron (framework) that the latches and rivets hardware are secured too, and they were blown open. The flaw is that they remained open. Would they have slammed open and stuck? I think the probability of that is too high. Not impossible though.

But having looked at the photos and frame stills more carefully, I’m more convinced that the doors and panels did not open and the speculation of the sun upon the geometry of the bottom of the aircraft lend to an optical illusion. Especially since this is a video of jet some distance away so that the scattering of the light makes the reflections of the sun of the fuselage look larger than what we would assume, compounded with magnifying the still frame of the video.




Oh yeah, I almost forgot . . . why didn’t the other jets have these mysterious pods too?

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