What Hit WTC1?
Dimensional Analysis Of The “Flight 11” Aircraft Seen In The “Fireman’s Video”
Introduction
In this article which should be considered an update for “Flight 11 Unveiled – The X-11 Drone” we will analyse
captured frames from the famous “Fireman’s Video” in conjunction with computer simulations of
the “Flight 11” aircraft’s approach to WTC1 in order to ascertain the basic
dimensions and shape of the aircraft. Some of the images shown on this site
have been enhanced to bring out as much detail from them as possible. While
doing so I have been careful not to add or remove anything from them. Throughout
the analysis and presentation I have tried to remain as objective as possible.
Most of the visual exercises were carried out more than once and often used
varying methodology in their conception and execution. I have assumed that this
“Fireman’s Video” was recorded by Jules Naudet (below left) and that it has
been transferred to DVD format from the original tape.
Picture
Quality Issues
Many sceptics have criticised the “Flight 11” aircraft for being
too “blurry” and have claimed that there is something wrong with the aircraft and
/ or there is something wrong with the video recording itself. It is true that
the “Flight 11” aircraft is blurry, but having watched the 911 DVD from start
to finish I have come to the conclusion that everything in the video is
“blurry”, not just the “Flight 11” aircraft. In essence, the quality of the
video is satisfactory, but not brilliant and it “blurs” everything it records
to the same degree.
When people talk of “blurriness” or use some other abstract
criticism of the video what they are really referring to is image resolution, motion
blur, native blur, compression artefacts, digital noise, digital artefacts ,
post-production scan-interpolation, etc and other effects that degrade the
quality of the picture. Coincidentally, the camera that was used for this
film-footage would not be considered suitable for any type of serious
documentary work:
An overview of the relevant video quality issues are discussed
below using visual examples from the “Fireman’s Video”.
Image Resolution
The size of the “Flight 11” aircraft as seen in the “Fireman’s Video”
is contained on average in a grid of approximately 20 pixels by 20 pixels. In
an area of 400 square pixels there is not sufficient visual information to
positively identify the object that is being represented by those 400 square pixels,
especially when you consider other video effects that degrade the quality of
the image.
In the picture below I’ve paired together two proportionately
sized images of the WTC1 tower from the “Fireman’s Video”. The wide angle low
resolution image is on top and a fully zoomed in high resolution equivalent image
is on the bottom:
In the high resolution image there is a box like structure perched
on the northern tip of the WTC1 tower which I’ve marked in a white circle. Other
higher resolution images taken from different angles with different video cameras
confirm the presence of this structure on the WTC1 tower top that was probably
some kind of radio communication device:
In our low resolution image the box shaped structure has been
reduced to what looks like a large, white, low contrast cloud hanging over the
corner of the tower. This effect is a kind of optical illusion because there is
insufficient visual information to
positively identify the structure. To make matters worse over-exposure of
the frame has caused “blooming” of the highlighted areas (areas of the image
where objects in the field of view are reflecting excessive amounts of sunlight
directly at the camera. Blooming will be discussed later) which not only
removes even more visual information from those areas, it makes the reflecting
surface look larger than it actually was in reality.
Blur Part 1 - Radial Blur
The “Fireman’s Video” seems to have a native blur that is
equivalent to a radius of about 1 and a half pixels. This means that in theory
if we were to focus the image with a blur radius of 1 and a half pixels using
image enhancement software then we could sharpen the image to effectively
remove that native blur. An ingenious software program called “FocusMagic” that
can do just this.
The picture below shows two identical captured frames from the
“Fireman’s Video” extracted from the original DVD at their native resolution.
The entire image on the top has been focused using “FocusMagic” with a blur
radius set at of 1 and a half pixels while the image below remains unprocessed:
The enhanced image looks much sharper, not only across the shape
of the “Flight 11” aircraft, but across the entire field of view, especially over
the brown building on the right of the frame. By definition this proves that
the “Flight 11” aircraft was no more “blurry” than its surrounds. It also shows
us that there is a sufficient amount of detail in the video for effective
visual enhancement.
Blur Part 2 - Motion Blur
As Jules Naudet swung his camera to the left to capture the last
moments of the “Flight 11” aircraft everything the video camera recorded was subject
to motion blur. This is not the same as ordinary “blur” which is normally the
result of the subject being out of focus or any “blur” produced by the video
recording process.
In the picture below the right hand frame shows a capture taken when
the video camera was at rest, and on the left is a frame captured when the video
camera was in the process of turning sharply to the left. Notice that in the
left hand image the WTC1 mast, the illuminated side of the WTC1 tower and the
“Flight 11” aircraft itself all appear to be horizontally “stretched” and
lacking in contrast. By comparison the stationary image on the right is clear
and sharp. These are the effects of motion blur, in this case horizontal motion
blur:
As most of the appearance of the “Flight 11” aircraft was recorded
when the camera was in motion you can see why the image quality is not as good
as it could have been. Not only is it suffering from the native blur induced by
the video camera itself, it now has additional motion blur added on top of that.
Both of these effects are in a sense obscuring detail in the image, but a great
deal of that detail can be recovered with image enhancement software.
Incidentally, the motion blur began as soon as the camera started turning
to the left and long before the “Flight 11” aircraft even appeared in the
camera’s field of view. Below left is an image of a street lamp-post and its respective
shadow cast on the background building which was captured when the video camera
was in motion. On the right we have the same structure and its shadow recorded
just before the camera began turning to the left:
Just as in the previous example the image that was recorded when
the camera was in motion has weaker contrast and suffers from horizontal motion
blur.
To end this blur sub-section I’ve enhanced an entire frame from
the “Fireman’s Video”. You may recognise it because it’s the same frame I used
for the introduction picture at the top of this article. In this example the image
on top has been heavily processed over entire frame to remove radial blur and
motion blur using “FocusMagic” and I’ve lightened the darker areas to make it look
much closer to what an observer would have seen had he or she been watching the
event from the same place as the cameraman:
Blooming
Blooming is caused by localised over-exposure of the video frame and
it removes visual information from the picture that can not be recovered. In the
background of the image below I’ve marked out a parked car and it’s surrounds
in a red rectangle. The camera is in shadow and most of the shot was filmed in
a shadowy area. The video camera’s aperture control would have been set to
automatic and therefore it would have been adjusting itself to correctly expose
the image based on the average amount of light coming into the camera’s lens.
As most of the shot has been recorded shadow, the sun lit background has been
over-exposed resulting in the blooming of these over-exposed areas, which in
this case is the car and its surrounds. Consequently
we can make out very little detail in this part of the image:
Compression Artefacts
Compression artefacts are the visual side effects of using
compression technology to reduce the file size of a video recording. They
typically manifest as block-like echoes over boundaries of high contrast and
become increasingly more noticeable as the amount of compression is increased. In
the case of the “Fireman’s Video” additional artefacts would have been
introduced into the video during conversion to the MPG2 format for DVD release.
The image below has been enhanced to highlight these compression
artefacts around areas of sharp contrast. Notice vertical ripples to the right
of the WTC1 mast and a “chequered” effect on the WTC1 tower, the brown building
to the right and on the impact event on the north face of the tower:
Compression engines introduce other visual aberrations into video
recordings. In our next comparison image the CG Boeing 767-200 on the right has
been deliberately compressed to show the visual side effects of compression. You
can just make out a faint cloud of artefacts around the airframe and that some
of the darker areas have become bloated and accentuated, but what stands out
the most is that a lot of colour detail has been removed from the image of the
airframe. It seems that a blue cast has covered the lighter areas, almost as if
the background had bled into the silhouette of the airframe washing out the
colour, distorting its outline and leaving it a darkened monochromatic blue
that looks different from the original image:
Noise
In the “Fireman’s Video” you can see a lot of what looks like
noise in the sky. I’ve marked the densest patch with red arrows but the whole
image is affected to a greater extent:
Conclusion To Picture Quality Issues
When we consider the
effects of blooming, compression artefacts, noise, blur, image resolution etc, it is technically correct to state that the “Flight
11” aircraft is “blurry” because this is exactly how we would expect a camera
of this quality (Jules Naudet’s camera is shown below) to render such any
object in the frame.
All of these video effects will change the way the “Flight 11”
aircraft appears to the viewer in the video, but they don’t make it any less
real than it actually was (assuming the video is genuine). It is possible with
careful visual enhancement to bring out more detail from any given image. Under
the circumstances the “Flight 11” aircraft is sufficiently sharp to perform an
analysis of it without enhancement, especially when the WTC1 tower is directly behind
the “Flight 11” aircraft:
Computer
Simulation Of An American Airlines Boeing 767-200
Strike At WTC1
In order to analyse the “Flight 11” aircraft we need something to
gauge its dimensions by. The official story tells us that WTC1 was hit by a
hijacked American Airlines Boeing 767-200. If we were to use an identical
camera used by Jules Naudet and could position a Boeing 767-200 at precisely
the same bearing, distance, aircraft attitude and in the same meteorological
conditions as the “Flight 11” aircraft seen in the “Fireman’s Video” then it would be
possible to do a direct comparison between the re-created CG video and the
authentic video.
As I do not have the time or resources to re-create this event in
real life using Jules Naudet’s video camera and a real Boeing 767-200 I have
chosen to simulate the scenario in Microsoft's “Flight Simulator 2004 - A
Century Of Flight” using a high quality iFDG 767-200 freeware add-on and a
custom made patch that restores the former World Trade Centre Complex to the
native flight simulator scenery.
I checked the
WTC patch with the iFDG 767-200 to real world dimensions. The simulated scenery
and aircraft add-ons were strikingly accurate.
Next I had to position the virtual camera precisely at precisely
the point where Jules Naudet was filming when the aircraft struck. I achieved
this with a street map of lower Manhattan and knowing that the Jules Naudet was
in Canal Street I positioned the virtual camera respectively and made fine
adjustments to the position so that zoomed in shots of the tower just after it
had been hit by the “Flight 11” aircraft matched as closely as possible to what
could be seen from the simulated view point at the same zoom setting.
During the creation of this article I did my own work and some
research in to the “Flight 11” aircraft’s flight path, attitude and the viewing
angle of the camera Jules Naudet used to record the WTC1 impact.
Flight Path and Attitude
datums:
Flight path - Descent path approximately
15 degrees calculated by Professor A. K. Dewdney, confirmed by the author…
…and then backed
up by the 911 Omission:
Aircraft pitch - Negative at
approximately 15 degrees. Deduced by the author from the “Fireman’s Video”:
Aircraft assumed to be heading directly
at WTC1 hitting at a perpendicular angle to the North face of the tower.
This information is sourced from FEMA,
NIST and MIT (see below):.
Camera Viewing Angles:
If positioned at the WTC1 gash looking
straight out, the camera position from the observer would be:
Declination angle of approximately 19
degrees.
Relative bearing from WTC1 North face of
approximately 14 degrees positive from perpendicular:
For the purposes
of this exercise I have chosen the following CG Boeing 767-200 attitude datums:
CG Boeing 767-200 attitude
datums:
Pitch – Approximately 15 degrees
negative:
Yaw - 0 degrees.
Bank - 24 degrees port approximately –
deduced from WTC1 gash photographs:
Altitude - Visually matched to the respective
“Flight 11” aircraft extracted from the Naudet footage.
With the camera positioned as accurately as possible and the
aircraft position / attitude adjusted to match the “Flight 11” aircraft as seen
in the “Fireman’s Video” using “Flight Simulator 2004 - A Century Of Flight” we
can re-create an image of what Jules Naudet’s camera should have recorded on
911 if the WTC1 tower had been hit by a Boeing 767-200.
But before we do this we’ll take a look at a frame of the “Flight
11” aircraft on its own and see what we can learn from the image without the
aid of comparative CG analysis.
The
“Flight 11” Aircraft – A Basic Analysis
What we have here, recorded in the “Fireman’s Video”, is most
definitely an aircraft in the way most people would know an aircraft. You can
clearly see the white tail fin, the white port side of the fuselage, the underside
of the port wing, the underside of the port elevator and the nose tip. If you
look more closely the port wing root is just visible.
The annotated airframe of the “Flight 11” aircraft shown below has
been rotated 45 degrees to the right to put the airframe in an attitude that
should make it easier for the reader to perceive:
The starboard side of the airframe is something of a mystery. The
starboard wing is obscured by the fuselage, but where the end half of where the
starboard wing should be, there is a large dark “blob” which looks like it is
almost as wide as the fuselage itself. This eliminates any possibility of the “blob”
being the starboard engine nacelle, it can’t be
because it’s much too large, in the wrong place and the wrong colour. The
object in question could be a visual blend of elements of the outer half of the
starboard wing with some other kind of device attached to that wing, or mounted
on the relatively darker starboard side of the fuselage.
In the next section we’ll look at different frames of the “Flight
11” aircraft from the “Fireman’s Video” and see how they size up next to our CG
Boeing 767-200 and the CG WTC1 tower. This will allow us to build up a basic
picture of the “Flight 11” aircraft using comparative CG analysis. All of my CG
images have been matched to the original “Fireman’s Video” footage in terms of environmental
conditions, blur, compression artefacts and other video aberrations native to
the video camera so as to allow for as an effective visual analysis as is possible.
Approximation
Of The “Flight 11” Aircraft’s Airframe Dimensions
Fuselage Length
The image below shows
the CG Boeing 767-200 as close to the CG WTC1 tower as possible (right) with
the same attitude as the “Flight 11” aircraft (left):
Straight away we can see that the “Flight 11” aircraft is significantly
shorter than a Boeing 767-200, in fact by a factor of about 25%. This visual analysis gives the “Flight 11” aircraft’s fuselage length at approximately
36 meters compared to the Boeing
767-200’s fuselage length of precisely 48.51 meters.
Airframe Reflectivity
Out of all the frames that were captured and analysed for this
article I never found anything that looked remotely like engine nacelles on the
“Flight 11” aircrafts wings despite the suns position at approximately 24
degrees above the horizon and approximately 15 degrees to the left and behind
of aircraft’s lateral axis that would have provided ample illumination for both
engines, assuming the aircraft was indeed a Boeing 767-200:
We should note that the engines and airframe of this Boeing
767-200 aircraft were finished with a reflective white and metallic material
respectively and that these finishes should have been more than adequate to
reflect a sufficient quantity of light to have been registered by Jules
Naudet’s video camera:
Wing Sweep-back Angle
The “Flight 11” aircraft has a different wing sweep back angle to
a Boeing 767-200. The wings on the “Flight 11” aircraft
almost perpendicular to the airframe by comparison. The sweep back angle
on the Boeing 767-200 is 31.50 degrees as can be seen in the CG Boeing 767-200
in the image pair below. In this particular pair I’ve pasted the CG Boeing 767-200
back into the original frame from the “Fireman’s Video”:
With this wing sweep back problem in mind we can eliminate most
commercial aircraft including all of the Boeing and Airbus types in service at
the time of the 911 attacks.
Wing Span
Not only is the wing sweep-back angle less than it should be on
the “Flight 11” aircraft, the wing span appears to be significantly shorter
than that of a Boeing 767-200 (below), though this point is speculative as the
wing sweep-back angle and wing dihedral angle could produce the illusion of a
bigger or smaller wing
span compared to the CG Boeing 767-200.
This “Flight 11” aircraft could easily be a Boeing 737-NG or similarly
proportioned aircraft if it weren’t for the incorrect wing sweep back angle. The
relatively small size of the “Flight 11” aircraft might go some way to explain
why we don’t see any engines on the wings. Being sized in proportion to the
rest of the airframe they would have been too small to show up on the video.
To conclude this section we can say with certainty that the “Flight
11” aircraft’s airframe is significantly smaller that that of a Boeing 767-200
in practically every respect. It has a shorter fuselage, a smaller wing span
and a slimmer fuselage. There is some evidence to suggest that the wings of the
“Flight11” aircraft were mounted to the top of the fuselage and not on the
bottom. Most modern commercial passenger jets like the Boeing and Airbus types
have the wings attached to the bottom of the fuselage, not on the top.
The
Question Of Video Authenticity
Some sceptical
members of the 911 research community have stated that:
“The object seen in the
Fireman’s Video is a shapeless blob and therefore it can’t be an aeroplane of
any sort.”
This is untrue
as demonstrated by the previous ”The Flight 11
Aircraft – A Basic Analysis” section which identifies key airframe elements.
“The aircraft seen in the
Fireman’s video does not conform to the Laws of Perspective and therefore the
Flight 11 aircraft can not be an aeroplane of
any sort or the video is not genuine.”
Typically people
that make this kind of sweeping statement can’t define perspective and probably
have never objectively studied the WTC1 strike from the “Fireman’s Video” in
its entirety. Thus this comment is a speculative one that can easily be disproven
as is graphically demonstrated below using points 1 and 2 as simple definitions
of perspective that were synthesised from the “Oxford Illustrated Dictionary”
for the purpose of this analysis.
1 – “Increased distance from the viewer
or camera produces an apparent decrease in the objects size.”
When the “Flight
11” aircraft disappeared inside the WTC1 tower it was far smaller than when it
first appeared in the camera’s field of view. Despite reducing in size the
Flight 11” aircraft held its shape throughout the WTC1 strike sequence:
2 – “Apparent compacting of linear spaced
objects with increased viewing distance.”
As the “Flight 11” aircraft flies away from the camera toward the
WTC1 tower the apparent distance between each consecutive captured image of the
aircraft taken at linear time intervals appears to decrease the further and
further away it flies away from the camera (see below).
This scenario is analogous an observer watching cars driving down
a freeway. As the cars get further and further away from the observer they
appear to get relatively smaller and smaller and the apparent distance each car
gets smaller and smaller, but each individual car maintains its apparent shape
as it travels away from the camera.
So in terms of perspective
the “Flight 11” aircraft as it appears in the “Fireman’s Video” conforms to the
Laws of Perspective just like any other moving object in an environment. This
could be considered a sign of authenticity or just a sign that the video is a
well made fake. If this video is fake then why didn’t
the fakers use the image of a Boeing 767-200 instead of some other type of
aircraft that is visibly smaller than a Boeing 767-200?
The matter of authenticity is hotly disputed, but having studied
the DVD version of this video I can see no obvious signs of forgery or
manipulation. This does not prove that the video has not been forged or manipulated.
If the video is fake, then it is a very well made
fake, and in many respects. In my view it is up to the reader to make up their
own minds over the question of authenticity.
Conclusion
The “Fireman’s
Video” does not provide any video evidence for a Boeing 767-200 strike at Tower
1 of the former World Trade Centre Complex in New York on the morning of
September 11th 2001. As demonstrated herein images of a simulated Boeing
767-200 strike at the WTC1 tower compared to images of the “Flight 11” aircraft
strike at WTC1 as seen in the “Fireman’s Video” shows little or no similarity
between the “Flight 11” aircraft and the simulated Boeing 767-200. If the “Flight 11” aircraft had been a Boeing
767-200 then it should have appeared as just that in the “Fireman’s
Video”.
Whatever hit WTC1 was no Boeing 767-200,
it was a much smaller non-commercial aircraft of unknown origin that functioned
more like a missile than a passenger jet.
Frequently
Asked Questions
Why Can’t We See The Nose Section Of The “Flight 11” Aircraft?
Well actually
you can see the nose of the “Flight 11” aircraft as illustrated in the graphic
below:
The viewer sees proportionally
less the nose section because of the camera viewing angle and the attitude of
the “Flight 11” aircraft that gives the viewer the illusion that the nose
section of the airframe is small or absent (compare distance B to distance A in
the graphic below):
Here’s a greatly
exaggerated example of this optical illusion using an Airbus A340. Notice how
the front half of the fuselage (A) seems to be disproportionately longer than
the rear half of the fuselage (B), yet in the plan view (inset) the distances A
and B are practically identical:
Poor quality
versions of the video eliminate the smaller details will add to this optical
illusion but in the high quality region 1 NTSC DVD version the nose section is
largely self-evident throughout the entire sequence although it appears to be
very small or altogether absent. The relative size and appearance of the nose
section is dependant on other factors like the compression artefacts, changes
in viewing angle and any other aberrations in the video recording process like
blooming or noise as previously mentioned.
Here’s another
way to prove that there was a significant amount of fuselage ahead of the wings.
Consider frames 1 and 2 below which show the shadow cast by the fuselage of the
“Flight 11” aircraft as its passes through the towers facade:
Fuselage contact
occurs just before frame 1 and a significant amount of the fuselage has
penetrated the façade by frame 2, yet in both frames we can clearly see the
port wing. This proves that there was a significant portion of fuselage ahead
of the wings. The wings vanish during the flash frame (right of frame 2) never to
re-appear.
It would seem
that the wings on the “Flight 11” aircraft are in roughly in the place we would
expect them to be for a normal aeroplane. Below is an enlargement of frame 1,
except this time I’ve marked the point where the fuselage contacts the façade
with a red line, thereby allowing us to obtain a rough visual estimate of the
relative position of the wings on the fuselage:
Why Can’t We See Any Engines On The “Flight 11” Aircraft?
The reason we can’t see any engines on the “Flight 11” aircraft is
because it probably didn’t have any, or because they were so much smaller than
the Boeing 767-200 engines that they weren’t recorded by Jules Naudet’s video
camera.
In the earlier sections of the video that had favourable camera
viewing angles we should have been able to identify something that looked like,
or inferred, the presence of wing mounted engines on the airframe that would be
consistent in size and positioning with the engines on the Boeing 767-200, but
we didn’t:
The “Flight 11” Aircraft Looks Like A “Blob”
And Therefore It’s Not An Aeroplane!
It has been said
that the “Flight 11” aircraft recorded by Jules Naudet’s video camera is nothing
more than a “blob” and therefore it can not be an aircraft of any kind, but this
is precisely how Jules Naudet’s mediocre quality video camera would record an
object such as the “Flight 11” aircraft given the meteorological conditions on
911, the camera viewing angle and the attitude of the “Flight 11” aircraft.
The “Flight 11”
aircraft is only rendered by a small amount of pixels and is further subject to
native blur, compression artefacts, digital noise and other degrading effects
of the video recording process.
To illustrate
this point consider the following image pair. On the left is the picture of an
American Airlines Boeing 767-200 taken from a documentary about the 911
atrocities and on the right is the identical picture with the resolution
dropped to the same level as the “Fireman’s Video” with the correct amount of native
blur and compression artefacts added:
In the image on
the right all of the aircrafts aerofoils have apparently vanished as have both its
engines. It bears practically no resemblance to the original image leaving the
viewer guessing or using their imagination to work out what the “blob” actually
was had it been recorded at a higher resolution.
This simulated
example above of the degrading effects of the video recording process are directly
applicable to the “Flight 11” aircraft seen in the “Fireman’s video” and
therefore the argument that because the “Flight 11” aircraft appears to be
nothing more than a “blob” in the “Fireman’s Video” it can not be an aircraft of
any kind is technically incorrect.
Version 1.3 - August
2006.