Sept 11th

Shoud the Air Force been able to stop the jets that hit NYC and Washington. And if thay could have how come it did not.

 

all countries have the right if they feel a plane has been hijacked to shoot it down

 

I doubt any American leader would consciously give the order to shoot down a plane full of Americans even if there were a few terrorists among them. You never know what their aim is, you don't want to risk lives for a few million dollars or some other standard hijacker goal.

 

Plus, G.W.Bush was just reading a book for children in a school, so he was busy.

 

Well, there is the view that the plane that crashed (not on target) had been shot down rather than simply crashing. Various aviation 'experts' have pointed out that the way the debris is distributed etc it must have gone 'boom' mid-air at least in part.
This seems fair enough to me, but if it did happen that way, the US Government really do not want to tell us.

 

Why should they? That would not sound nice. And they have already created a media picture that created heroic passengers etc. Why dig in it once again?

 

Oh I agree, it is far too late now to dig up that story again. Let the unfortunate victims rest in peace.
Plus an official U-turn would, as you say, be extremely embarrasing for the government.
I was just pointing out that at least one plane may well have been shot down. However, nothing was said, nothing was proven. I'm sure it will enter 'conspiracy theory' folklore...

 

Indeed it has. No real evidence to support it and lots of evidence to the contrary but then conspiracy theorists never let a little detail like that trouble them

 

Hmm, I never really saw any convincing evidence either way. But that is probably because I did not really pay too much attention to it (the theory, not the events).

 

Getting back on track... (and away from my 'conspiracy theories' tangent )

In the case of the aircraft that were targetted at the twin towers, I'm not sure if anything could have been done. How long does it take to get interceptors up to stop them? Remember, you cannot shoot them down over urban areas...

For the aircraft that hit the Pentagon - surely there are some air defenses up aound there? Surely?

However, what must be considered is this: who would have predicted that this would happen?
Hijacking is not as common as it once was, but generally the point of hijacking a plane has always been either to take the occupants hostage, or to get a flight to some location you are unable to get to by other means (the cliche is, of course, "take me to Cuba"). Nobody as far as I know had undertaken such a drastic course of action with a civil airliner full of passengers. You can hardly blame the Americans for not realising what would happen. And who in their right mind would sanction the shooting down of a hijacked plane?

 

IIRC there are recordings of very confused ATC personnell wondering what the hell was going on and as Ricky has said, crashing airliners into buildings hadn't been done before - outside outside of a Tom Clancy novel that is although there was that incident with the light plane and the White House a few years ago.

American air defence has been largely concerned with bombers coming from a known direction rather than aircraft taken over INSIDE the US and the ending of the Cold War probably meant less (if any) QRA aircraft were avaialble - perhaps our US members could say what kind of standing alert aircraft would have been available.

 

Plus, a good question, the answer to which I don´t know, would be: How long time passed from flight control (or some other, maybe military observation systems) saw that the airliners were off their course till the planes were above urban areas. Anybody here knows that? How much time was there to intercept each of the planes?

 

I read that in Britain (and I'd be amazed if something similar wasn't also the case in the US and elsewhere) if an aircraft is under terrorist control it is directed to land at a specific airport (Stanstead I think), if the plane does not head to Stanstead it is shot down before it passes over a major built up area (assuming the Prime Minister gives the order)

 

Are these post- 9-11 regulations?

 

Think so

 

BBC occasionally have an interesting series called Crisis Command - three members of the public become Ministers for the session and have to deal with crisis hitting the country with an advisor in the background (military, economic and PR I think).

One of the episdoes had a plane heading from Spain to the UK where radio comms had been lost, when they eventaually got in contact the aircrew said they needed an emergency landing but wouldn't state why. There was plenty of evidence they had been hijacked and the planes was cruising up the French west coast passing god knows how many airports where they could have made an emergency landing - the flight crew said it HAD to be Stanstead.

RAF fighters intercepted it over the English Channel but the 'team' dithered and lost the chance to shoot it down despite the advice they were getting - the aircrfat eventually crashed into Big Ben and Parliament - one the team said they had done the right thing in not shooting down the aircraft, I can only think he had something against Government!!

They also lost the London Underground to terrorist attack on an underground train while it was ujnder the Thames by not closing flood doors on the under Thames section as people were still trapped in the train wreckage.

The interesting thing was watcing the dove of the group quickly turn into a hawk as he listed to the advice being given - he wanted to shoot the plane down and close the flood doors but was outvoted by the other two in the team.

 

Sounds like a very interesting show.

 

All I can say is that I would not want to be the one to have to order a fighter to shoot down an airliner full of innocent people, and God prevent President Bush, or any other world leader, from having to do so.

 

Or to be the one ordered to shoot. Particularly not necessarily knowing why. My G-d!
Remember the Korean airliner over Kamchatka? That was communist morality exposed for all to see.

 

There are lots of conspiracy theories about KLA flight 007. Probably most of them are just bulls**t but there is something weird in that whole thing.