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John Damoose:
John Damoose, a Travis City, Mich. native who was in a meeting said "everybody got nervous. .‚.‚. We didn't know whether to stay inside or go outside. The thing with terrorist attacks is that you don't know what is the next thing that will happen." Damoose said the worst part was leaving the Pentagon and walking along Fort Meyer Drive, a bike trail,
"you could see pieces of the plane."
Wayne Day:
"We had one guy who was standing, looking out the window and saw the plane when it was coming in. He was in front of one of the blast-resistant windows," says Kirlin President Wayne T. Day, who believes the window structure saved the man's life. According to Matt Hahr, Kirlin's senior project manager at the Pentagon, the employee "was thrown about 80 ft down the hall through the air. As he was traveling through the air, he says the ceiling was coming down from the concussion. He got thrown into a closet, the door slammed shut and the fireball went past him," recounts Hahr. "
Jet fuel was on him and it irritated his eyes, but he didn't get burned."
Michael Defina:
"The only way you could tell that an aircraft was inside was that
we saw pieces of the nose gear. The devastation was horrific. It was obvious that some of the victims we found had no time to react."
Michael DiPaula:
"Suddenly, an airplane roared into view, nearly shearing the roof off the trailer before slamming into the E ring. 'It sounded like a missile,' DiPaula recalls . . .
Buried in debris and covered with airplane fuel, he was briefly listed by authorities as missing, but eventually crawled from the flaming debris and the shroud of black smoke unscathed.
Mike Dobbs:
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It was an American airlines airliner. I was looking out the window and saw it come right over the Navy annex at a slow angle. It looked to me to be on a zero-to-zero course. It seemed to be almost coming in in slow motion. I didn't actually feel it hit, but I saw it and then we all started running."
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Daryl Donley:
"It just was amazingly precise," Daryl Donley, another commuter, said of the plane's impact. "
It completely disappeared into the Pentagon."
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Telephone interview:
I saw the plane fly into the Pentagon and turn into a huge fireball two and a half times the size of the Pentagon heightwise. I looked out of my passenger window and the plane was next to me, at level, about probably 100 feet or so away, and then I followed it and saw it fly into the Pentagon.
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Mark Faram:
As I stepped onto the highway next to the triage area, I knelt down to tie my shoe and all over the highway were small pieces of aircraft skin, none bigger than a half-dollar. Anyone familiar with aircraft has seen the greenish primer paint that covers many interior metal surfaces - that is what these shards were covered with.
Kim Flyler:
"At that moment I heard a plane and then a loud cracking noise....
Right before the plane hit the building, you could see the silhouettes of people in the back two rows. You couldn't see if they were male or female, but you could tell there was a human being in there."
Don Fortunato:
"Traffic was at a standstill, so I parked on the shoulder, not far from the scene and ran to the site. Next to me was a cab from D.C., its windshield smashed out by pieces of lampposts. There were pieces of the plane all over the highway, pieces of wing, I think."
Kat Gaines:
Her commute to the airport took her south on Route 110, in front of the parking lots of the Pentagon. As she approached the parking lots,
she saw a low-flying jetliner strike the top of nearby telephone poles. She then heard the plane power up and plunge into the Pentagon.
Fred Gaskins:
"'(The plane) was flying fast and low and the Pentagon was the obvious target,' said Fred Gaskins, who was driving to his job as a national editor at USA Today near the Pentagon when the plane passed about 150 feet overhead. 'It was flying very smoothly and calmly, without any hint that anything was wrong.'"
Mike Gerson:
I didn't see the actual impact, but 395 curves around the Pentagon, and I saw that plane coming in and said to myself, 'That plane is too low; it's going to crash.'
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Matt Hahr:
According to Matt Hahr, Kirlin's senior project manager at the Pentagon, the employee "was thrown about 80 ft down the hall through the air. As he was traveling through the air, he says the ceiling was coming down from the concussion. He got thrown into a closet, the door slammed shut and the fireball went past him," recounts Hahr. "Jet fuel was on him and it irritated his eyes, but he didn't get burned."
Afework Hagos:
Afework Hagos, a computer programmer, was on his way to work but stuck in a traffic jam near the Pentagon when the plane flew over. "
There was a huge screaming noise and I got out of the car as the plane came over. Everybody was running away in different directions. It was tilting its wings up and down like it was trying to balance.
It hit some lampposts on the way in."
Cheryl Hammond:
"I thought they'd put out an alert or something," Hammond said. "
We saw the big American Airlines plane and started running."
Joe Harrington:
Harrington was working on the installation of new furniture in Wedge One, when he was called out to the parking lot to talk about security with his customer moments before the crash. “About two minutes later one of my guys pointed to an
American airlines airplane 20 feet high over Washington Blvd.,†Harrington said. “It seemed like it made impact just before the wedge. It was like a Hollywood movie or something.
Albert Hemphill:
All in all,
I probably only had the aircraft in my field of view for approximately 3 seconds. The aircraft was at a sharp downward angle of attack, on a direct course for the Pentagon. It was "clean", in as much as, there were no flaps applied and no apparent landing gear deployed. He was slightly left wing down as he appeared in my line of sight, as if he'd just "jinked" to avoid something. As he crossed Route 110 he appeared to level his wings, making a slight right wing slow adjustment as he impacted low on the Westside of the building to the right of the helo, tower and fire vehicle around corridor 5.
Fred Hey:
Congressional staff attorney Fred Hey was driving by on Route 50 at that moment. "I can't believe it! This plane is going down into the Pentagon!" he shouted into his cellphone. On the other end of the line was his boss, Rep. Bob Ney (R) of Ohio. Representative Ney immediately phoned the news to House Sergeant-At-Arms Bill Livingood, who ordered an immediate evacuation of the Capitol itself.
Nicholas Holland:
Nicholas Holland, an engineer with AMEC Construction Management of Bethesda, Md., had spent the last two years working to reinforce the walls. Two summers ago, a blast wall of reinforced steel and concrete was installed right where the plane hit.
Tom Hovis:
The plane came up I-395 also known as Shirley Hwy. (most likely used as a reference point.) The plane had been seen making a lazy pattern in the no fly zone over the White House and US Cap.
Why the plane did not hit incoming traffic coming down the river from the north to Reagan Nat'l. is beyond me . Strangely, no one at the Reagan Tower noticed the aircraft. Andrews AFB radar should have also picked up the aircraft I would think. Nevertheless, the aircarft went southwest near Springfield and then veered left over Arlington and then put the nose down coming over Ft Myer
picking off trees and light poles near the helicopter pad next to building. It was as if he leveled out at the last minute and put it square into the building. The wings came off as if it went through an arch way leaving a hole in the side of the building it seems a little larger than the wide body of the aircraft. The entry point was so clean that the roof (shown in news photo) fell in on the wreckage.
Will Jarvis:
From time spent on military aircraft as part of his job at the Pentagon,
Will Jarvis ... knows what aviation fuel smells like. That smell was his only clue that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, where he works as an operations research analyst for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Jarvis, who was around the corner from the disaster, tried but failed to see the plane when he left the building. "
There was just nothing left. It was incinerated. We couldn't see a tail or a wing or anything," he says. "Just a big black hole in the building with smoke pouring out of it."
Andrea Kaiser:
Fire Truck 101 from the Arlington County Fire Department was one of the first on the scene Tuesday morning.
The truck was coming back from a training exercise, and one firefighter on board noticed a plane flying too low as they drove past the Pentagon. "Suddenly, we saw the huge explosion of the crash," said firefighter Andrea Kaiser.
Terrence Kean:
Terrance Kean, 35, who lives in a 14-story building nearby, heard the loud jet engines and glanced out his window. "I saw this very, very large passenger jet," said the architect, who had been packing for a move. "
It just plowed right into the side of the Pentagon. The nose penetrated into the portico. And then it sort of disappeared, and there was fire and smoke everywhere. . . . It was very sort of surreal."
Lesley Kelly:
On Sept. 11, I was standing in a break room of an office . . . in downtown D.C., when I looked out the window to see an airplane descend into the side of the Pentagon, where the Navy offices where five friends and colleagues of mine were located.
D. S. Khavkin:
Then, at about 9:40 am Eastern Daylight Time, my husband and I heard an aircraft directly overhead. At first, we thought it was the jets that sometimes fly overhead. However,
it appeared to be a small commercial aircraft. The engine was at full throttle. First, the plane knocked down a number of street lamp poles, then headed directly for the Pentagon and crashed on the lawn near the west side the Pentagon. A huge fireball exploded with thick black smoke.
Aydan Kizildrgli:
Aydan Kizildrgli, an English language student who is a native of Turkey, saw the jetliner bank slightly then strike a western wall of the huge five-sided building that is the headquarters of the nation's military. "There was a big boom," he said. "Everybody was in shock. I turned around to the car behind me and yelled ‘Did you see that?' Nobody could believe it."
K.M.:
I live in Pentagon City (part of Arlington) and can see the Pentagon when I look out my window. ... It was so shocking, I was listening to the news on what had happened in New York, and just happened to look out the window because
I heard a low flying plane and then I saw it hit the Pentagon. It happened so fast... it was in the air one moment and in the building the next...
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Peter Kopf:
Peter Kopf, director of information technology at USA TODAY, was stalled in traffic about 9:30 a.m. when the jet hit the Pentagon, creating a "huge fireball." "People (on the highway) were freaking out," he said. "People were turning around and driving the opposite way getting out of their cars, talking on cell phones, crying."
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Telephone interview:
Everybody loves a good yarn I guess, but I saw what I saw. It was definitely an airplane.
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