Steve Anderson:Shortly after watching the second tragedy, I heard jet engines pass our building, which, being so close to the airport is very common. But I thought the airport was closed. I figured it was a plane coming in for landing. A few moments later, as I was looking down at my desk, the plane caught my eye. It didn't register at first. I thought to myself that I couldn't believe the pilot was flying so low. Then it dawned on me what was about to happen.
I watched in horror as the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly to the left, drug it's wing along the ground and
slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon exploding into a giant orange fireball. Then black smoke. Then white smoke.
Deb Anlauf:
Anlauf was watching TV coverage of the Trade Center burning shortly before 9:30 a.m. when she decided to return to her 14th-floor room from another part of the hotel. Once in her room, she heard a "loud roar" and looked out the window to see what was going on. "
Suddenly I saw this plane right outside my window," Anlauf said during a telephone interview from her hotel room this morning. "You felt like you could touch it; it was that close. It was just incredible. "
Then it shot straight across from where we are and flew right into the Pentagon. It was just this huge fireball that crashed into the wall (of the Pentagon). When it hit, the whole hotel shook."
Arlington police transmission:
Motor 11: There is visible smoke coming from that area...high, visible smoke.
Dispatcher: Motor 11 direct.
Motor 14: Motor 14, it was an American Airlines plane, uh, headed eastbound over the Pike (Columbia Pike highway), possibly toward the Pentagon.
Dispatcher: 10-4. Cruiser 50 direct.
David Battle:
Earlier Tuesday, Battle, an office worker at the Pentagon, was standing outside the building and just about to enter when the aircraft struck. "It was coming down head first," he said. "And when the impact hit, the cars and everything were just shaking."
Gary Bauer:
I had just passed the closest place the Pentagon is to the exit on 395 . . . when all of a sudden I heard the roar of a jet engine. I looked at the woman sitting in the car next to me. She had this startled look on her face. We were all thinking the same thing. We looked out the front of our windows to try to see the plane, and it wasn’t until a few seconds later that we realized the jet was coming up behind us on that major highway. And it veered to the right into the Pentagon. The blast literally rocked all of our cars. It was an incredible moment.
Maurice Bease:
Sergeant Maurice L. Bease had worked around Marine aviation long enough to know what a fly-by was, and it sounded like one as he stood outside his office near the Pentagon on Sept. 11. Turning around expecting to see a fighter jet fly over, he saw only a split-second glimpse of a white commercial airliner streaking low toward the building, and him! He did not even have time to duck before it plowed into the side of the Pentagon around the corner and about 200 yards from where he stood. Immediately, a ball of flame shot up the side of the building, followed by smoke, lots of it.
Paul Begala:
Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant, said he witnessed an explosion near the Pentagon. "It was a huge fireball, a huge, orange fireball," he said in an interview on his mobile phone.
Mickey Bell:
Bell, who had been less than 100 feet from the initial impact of the plane, was nearly struck by one of the plane´s wings as it sped by him. In shock, he got into his truck, which had been parked in the trailer compound, and sped away. He wandered around Arlington in his truck and tried to make wireless phone calls. He ended up back at Singleton´s headquarters in Gaithersburg two hours later, according to President Singleton, not remembering much.
The full impact of the closeness of the crash wasn´t realized until coworkers noticed damage to Bell´s work vehicle. He had plastic and rivets from an airplane imbedded in its sheet metal, but Bell had no idea what had happened.
Susan Bergen:
Susan Bergen was sitting in a hotel room near the Pentagon on Tuesday morning, glued to TV news coverage of the World Trade Center attack. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a plane outside the window of her 11th floor room.
She turned just in time to see a big jetliner skim the treetops and slam into the side of the Pentagon, less than a half mile from her hotel room. It looked like the plane sped up just before hitting the building, she said.
Brian Birdwell:
LTC Brian Birdwell. He was just heading back down the hall to his office when the building exploded in front of him. ... Once they stabilized Brian, they transferred him to George Washington Hospital where...the best, cutting edge burn doctor in the U.S. The doctor told him that had he not gone to Georgetown first, he probably would not have survived because of the
jet fuel in his lungs.
Ed Blunt:
Engine 101 actually saw the jetliner plow into the northwest side of the Pentagon. The radio crackled, “Engine 101—emergency traffic, a plane has gone down into the Pentagon."
Sean Boger:
Sean Boger, Air Traffic Controller and Pentagon tower chief - "
I just looked up and I saw the big nose and the wings of the aircraft coming right at us and I just watched it hit the building." "It exploded. I fell to the ground and covered my head. I could actually hear the metal going through the building."
Donald Bouchoux:
Donald R. Bouchoux, 53, a retired Naval officer, a Great Falls resident, a Vietnam veteran and former commanding officer of a Navy fighter squadron, was driving west from Tysons Corner to the Pentagon for a 10am meeting. He wrote: At 9:40 a.m.
I was driving down Washington Boulevard (Route 27) along the side of the Pentagon when the aircraft crossed about 200 yards (should be more than 150 yards from the impact) in front of me and impacted the side of the building. There was an enormous fireball, followed about two seconds later by debris raining down. The car moved about a foot to the right when the shock wave hit.
Pam Bradley:
I work in Washington DC area, and was on my way to work, in my car, sitting on a bridge, and
saw the plane hit the Pentagon. I am in a complete state of shock.
Chris Braman:
The lawn was littered with twisted pieces of aluminum. He saw one chunk painted with the letter "A," another with a "C." It didn't occur to Braman what the letters signified until a man in the crowd stooped to pick up one of the smaller metal shards. He examined it for a moment, then announced: "This was a jet."
Mark Bright:
"I saw the plane at the Navy Annex area," he said. "
I knew it was going to strike the building because it was very, very low -- at the height of the street lights. It knocked a couple down." The plane would have been seconds from impact -- the annex is only a few hundred yards from the Pentagon. He said he heard the plane "power-up" just before it struck the Pentagon. "
Omar Campo:
It was a passenger plane. I think an American Airways plane, Mr Campo said. "I was cutting the grass and it came in screaming over my head. I felt the impact. The whole ground shook and the whole area was full of fire."
Joseph Candelario:
As I was looking across the river towards the direction of the Pentagon,
I noticed a large aircraft flying low towards the White House. This aircraft then made a sharp turn and flew towards the Pentagon and seconds later crashed into it.
Susan Carroll:
I was standing on the platform high above the [Washington Reagan] airport awaiting a Metro subway train to my office in the heart of the district, on Constitution Avenue, admiring the lovely blue skies when
I saw the plane hit and the fireball and explosion at the Pentagon.
James R. Cissell:
''Out of my peripheral vision,
I saw this plane coming in and it was low - and getting lower. ''If you couldn't touch it from standing on the highway, you could by standing on your car.'' ''I thought, 'This isn't really happening.
That is a big plane.' Then I saw the faces of some of the passengers on board,'' Cissell said. ''I remember thinking, 'The World Trade Center was just the beginning, there's going to be more.' '' He remembers the helipad the plane flew over before smacking into the Pentagon was close enough to him that ''I could have thrown a baseball at it and hit it.''
Allen Cleveland:
Allen Cleveland of Woodbridge Virginia looked out from a Metro train going to National Airport, to see a jet heading down toward the Pentagon. "I thought, 'There's no landing strip on that side of the subway tracks,' " Before he could process that thought, he saw "a huge mushroom cloud. The lady next to me was in absolute hysterics."" . .
a silver pasenger jet, mid sized"
Dan Creed:
He and two colleagues from Oracle software were stopped in a car near the Naval Annex, next to the Pentagon, when they saw the plane dive down and level off. "It was no more than 30 feet off the ground, and it was screaming. It was just screaming. It was nothing more than a guided missile at that point," Creed said. "
I can still see the plane. I can still see it right now. It's just the most frightening thing in the world, going full speed, going full throttle, its wheels up," Creed recalls.
Originally Posted by BombDr 
