WTC2 Witness Reports
Here are some witnesses who claim to have
seen the WTC2 aircraft collision. Many of these reports were recorded
immediately after the WTC2 impact while others were recorded some time after
the event.
"Disappearing Plane" Witness
"The airplane just came in on
itself, you heard the scream of the plane, then a crack crack crack,
boom boom boom and the plane just disappeared, you didn't see the
plane any more, and then you saw the blow-out from the other side."
From CNN News.
Steve Gill
"the second plane passed literally
over my head. I turned and saw it disappear into World Trade Center No.
2."
From 'New Yorkers Try To Carry On' by Linda Bloom.
http://www.wfn.org/2001/09/msg00170.html
Stanley Praimnath
A gray shape on the horizon. An
airplane, flying past the Statue of Liberty. The body of the United
Airlines jet grew larger until he could see a red stripe on the fuselage. Then
it banked and headed directly toward him."
From 'Fighting To Live As The Towers Died'.
New York Times. 26th May 2002.
http://www.mishalov.com/wtc_fightingtolive.html
In "9/11 - The Twin Towers" (Dangerous
Films, 2006) Praimnath recalls...
"And I’m looking toward the Statue of
Liberty, the direction of, with my phone in my hand. That’s when the
plane caught my eyes. And this planes’ bearing down on me, eye level eye
contact. I’m hypnotised standing up there, I’m not having time to
react. All I’m looking at is this plane and it’s getting bigger,
bigger, bigger [unrecognisable] and I dove under my desk."
It would appear from the visual
reconstruction (shown above) that Praimnath was protected from the incoming
Boeing 767-200 solely by his desk.
Mr Arraki
"Yeah. I--I saw--yeah, I saw the
second plane, it go boom. I--I heard, you know. I just wake up my head like
that I saw the side, too"
Arraki claims that the plane that hit WTC2
was identical to the plane that hit WTC1. Arraki's description of the first
plane is reproduced below:
"I saw it come up from the left, and I
saw the plane coming through to the building, go inside, a small plane, no, no,
it was plane, you know, like they teach the people to pilot plane, small plane,
you know, it was that kind of plane, yes, going into the building, and I never
saw that plane before. It's like something, I don't know, it's like they work
with the motors, I never saw a plane like that before!"
From an ABC News Special Report at 9:08 am
on Tuesday 11th September 2001.
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/abc911.htm
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/timeline/2001/abcnews091101.html
"Big Grey Plane" Witness
"...and we were standing there and I
said I can't believe this, and sure enough there it was, another plane.
The plane wasn't no er... airliner or anything, it was a twin engine, big
grey plane..."
From MSN/NBC News.
Reverend Doctor
Daniel P Matthews
"We were on the 24th floor, which has
a view of the World Trade Centre, when we heard the sound, and looked up to see
a ball of fire coming from one of the towers. A few minutes later, we saw
the second plane hit, and again a ball of fire erupted."
From 'Eyewitness To Disaster' by John Allen.
Tuesday 11th September 2001. Episcopal News Service.
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_20738_ENG_HTM.htm
Mr Tractsonburg
"And we went to a high point in our
building, which is on the 25th floor, and you had a clear view of the both
World Trade Centers and the one that was smoking hard, and there was another
plane that was flying low, and we just looked at it, and before we know it,
it was just kamikaze, boom, right into the other tower... but it didn't seem
like a big passenger jet. It was smaller type plane, because it made
some pretty radical turn, and flying low..."
From CNN News. Tuesday 11th September 2001.
Mark Burnback
"...there was definitely a blue logo,
it was like a circular logo on the front of the plane, er...toward
the...er...towards the front, um... it definitely did not look like a
commercial plane, I didn't see any windows on the sides and definitely was
very low... it was not a normal flight that I've ever seen at an
airport..."
WCBS/Fox News. Tuesday 11th September 2001.
Teresa Renau
"...there’s another one, another
plane just hit. Another plane has just hit, it hit another building,
flew right into the middle of it. Explosion, it's right in the middle of the
building... yes that was definitely looked like it was on purpose. I just
saw a plane go in to the building... it didn’t look like it
was...er...it didn't look like it was a commercial a jet...it was a smaller
plane. It was definitely a smaller plane..."
CBS News. Tuesday 11th September 2001.
Haleh Nazeri
"Then all of a sudden I saw another
plane, it was so loud and so low and so wrong. I knew before it even hit in
the fraction of a second that something was terribly wrong and that my world
would never be the same."
From 'The Iranian: Eyewitness, Attack On New
York', 21st September 2001.
http://www.iranian.com/Features/2001/September/911
Evan Fairbanks
"It just disappeared. It disappeared
like a, like a, bad special effect. Disappeared right into the building."
KETV/ABC News.
Dr. Suzan Russell
"Being a few blocks away from the site,
Ms. Russell said she saw the second plane fly by, turn around, then hit
the other tower."
From MyWestTexas.com. By Nora Frost, Midland
Reporter-Telegram 10/17/2002.
http://www.mywesttexas.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=5734620&BRD=2288&PAG=461&dept_id=475621&rfi=6
"Rick"
"Rick saw the WTC disaster from his
bicycle on West Side H/way. He saw the second plane coming for some moments,
coming over the Statue of Liberty and people ran, screaming..."
http://www.newcleanwars.com
Saw Teen See
"...we saw the, this blue and red
plane coming by and er... smash into the, er... south tower..."
From 'How The Twin towers Collapsed'. A
Darlow Smithson production in association with Channel 4 Television. Channel 4
Television Corporation 2001.
Karen Lane Gilsenan
"Then, it happened again. We saw an
airplane, coming from the south and headed right toward the second WTC
tower. It looked so odd there"
http://www.wheaton.edu/front/911/eyewitness.html
Rita Lasar
"I ran across the hall to my friends
apartment. Her windows looked out on the World trade Centre and I got there in
time to see the second plane hit the second building."
From 'Breaking The Silence' by John Pilger.
Transmitted in September 2003 on ITV in the U.K.
Andrea Refol
"We were driving down Sackett Street in
Brooklyn, and we watched the second plane make contact."
From 'The New York Metro: WTC Testimonials 6
Months Later'.
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/articles/wtc/6months/testimonials/3.htm
Dr. J. Atlasberg
"I'm actually uptown at 86th and Riverside.
I can see the World Trade Centre from about half the building up to the top.
And about five minutes ago, as I was watching the smoke, a small plane -- I
did -- it looked like a propeller plane, came in from the west. And about
20 or 25 stories below the top of the centre, disappeared for a second, and
then explode behind a water tower, so I couldn't tell whether it hit the
building or not. But it was very visible, that a plane had come in at a low
altitude and appeared to crash into the World Trade Centre.."
From a CNN news report on Tuesday 11th
September 2001.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/11/bn.01.html
Rose Arce
"I got within a few blocks of the
World Trade Centre when suddenly there was this second sort of, um, roar that
came out of the sky and everyone just looked right up and another plane
just barrelled into the other tower."
From 'CNN Tribute - America Remembers' -
Produced by Ken Shiffman and Brian Rokus. 2002 Cable News Network.
Mitchell Simmons
"As we watched the building burn, we
saw the second plane come around. It was very surreal because it felt like
a movie, but it was reality."
From 'Marketers Are Eyewitness To History',
September 12th 2001. By Kris Oser and Richard H. Levey.
http://directmag.com/news/marketing_marketers_eyewitness_history
Delirium Tremens NY
Report
Then one of the workers yelled, "Look,
another plane..." Before the sentence was finished there was another
massive "Boom" and the flames blew out windows from the east face of
the second tower and within seconds a huge fireball enveloped the upper portion
of the building in heavy black smoke. The plane had completely disappeared
inside the building. LeHavre couldn't believe his eyes - he had seen the
plane for a second, or less - it had curved in a beautiful arc and crippled
the building by tearing out the corner and had then been swallowed whole."
From 'Delirium Tremens NY' by James Graham.
http://directmag.com/news/marketing_marketers_eyewitness_history
Owen May
"As I'm standing there and all of
these things going through my mind I'm watching a plane come in from the
Statue Of Liberty... and as the guy got closer and closer I'm saying "Oh
you know what, he must be here to drop water"... so as this plane
starts coming closer I'm wondering "Where's the water? Doesn't look
like one of these water planes" and I remember the engines just
roaring and I could kind of hear this guy like hit the throttle and all of
a sudden he starts to dip his wing..."
From 'A Tale Of Two Towers' - Michael
Attwell Productions Ltd. Produced and directed by Michael Attwell. Channel 5
Broadcasting Ltd 2002. First transmitted in the U.K approximately 1 year after
911.
"Woolworth"
Witness
"The first one they think was a guy
shooting the missiles off the Woolworth Building and the second one they think
is an airplane that was circling to watch it, and hit the WTC."
Philadelphia Inquirer 8/29/03.
Park Foreman
"I heard a plane fly overhead,"
said Park Foreman, 37, an Internet security consultant. "Then I looked out
the window and saw the first tower on fire. I saw another airplane
approaching from the south. I put my camera on it and followed it straight into
the building. It looked like it went right through."
From The Solupress Journal. Hijacked Jets
Fly Into Trade Center, Pentagon. Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
http://www.inspironetworks.com/solupress/solupress/news/articles/article48.asp
From Polytechnic Online. Hijacked Jets Fly Into Trade Center, Pentagon.
09-12-2001, 2:02PM.
http://poly.union.rpi.edu/article_view.php3?view=793∂=1
Click
here for an analysis of the Park Foreman Video.
Amanda Mark
"Someone's like...a plane hit the
World Trade Centre... so we all go into the conference room to look at this, and
you can't really tell, it's burning, whatever. We're all watching that and another
plane goes in..."
From '9/11 The Plane That Fought Back'.
Directed by Bruce Goodison. Produced and written by Phil Craig.
Barry Mawn
"We were observing the evacuation when
we actually saw the second plane come down, flying north to south,
actually turn around. And then we lost it momentarily behind the buildings, and
then the next time we saw it, it was headed straight for the south tower."
From 'CNN Live Today'. February 18, 2002 -
13:34 ET
http://www-cgi.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0202/18/lt.17.html
Richard Polatchek
"Then I heard this terrible roar, just
over my right shoulder. The plane was so close I could read the BOEING
767 painted under the cockpit window. Then all of a sudden, the pilot cut
the engines. That's what no one talks about. He just glided in for the last
couple hundred yards. There was this weird, horrible silence right before
that plane hit."
Examination of United Airlines Boeing
767-200 photographs show that there is no "BOEING 767" marking under
the cockpit windows. The closest text is "WORLDWIDE SERVICE" and is
located behind and below the cockpit windows.
From 'The New York Metro: WTC Testimonials 6
Months Later'.
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/articles/wtc/6months/testimonials/3.htm
Kerry Cashelof
"At this point I was still under the
impression that this was an accident and after watching and filming this
other plane make a U turn and head back towards the towers nothing in the
world could have prepared me for what would happen next."
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=58174&start=200
Svetlana
Finkelshteyn
"I turned right to hear their
response; just then I heard a sonic boom. I turned back and saw the second
tower engulfed in flames. By then a group of 10-12 people had gathered to watch
this. Two people said they saw another plane go into the South Tower..."
From '9/11 forces student to think about the
thinkable' by Svetlana Finkelshteyn.
http://www.pacepress.org/media/storage/paper424/news/2002/09/11/WtcFeatures/
911-Forces.Student.To.Think.About.The.Thinkable-269953.shtml?norewrite
200604040851&sourcedomain=www.pacepress.org
"U-Turn"
Witness
"On September 1, my buddy and I went
to NYC to work as Ironworkers. We got dispatched to work on a high-rise in
Queens. We stopped working for about twenty minutes as the first building
burned wondering what we could do, when we saw the second plane come around
the corner of the other tower. He made a u-turn and crashed into it right
before our eyes..."
http://www.journalregister.com/towntalk/html/messages/4
Saw Teen See
"...we saw the, this blue and red
plane coming by and er... smash into the, er... south tower..."
From 'How The Twin towers Collapsed', A
Darlow Smithson production in association with Channel 4 Television. Channel 4
Television Corporation 2001.
Tanya Lett
"I was on my way downtown for the
second time. I parked my car and entered the train station to catch the PATH,
and I missed it. I caught the next train, and as we pulled off from Newark we noticed
that the first tower was on fire...we pulled into Jersey City, and before we
pulled up we saw the second plane hit the second tower..."
Tanya Lett, Hillside, N.J. USA Today.
09/27/2001.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/17/where-were-you.htm
Jennifer Spell
"...just about 5 minutes after I got
outside and was shooting, the second plane...circled around and it flew over
New Jersey and it came in and just..."
How was Spell able to film the aircraft and
watch it at the same time and why don't we see video footage of the aircraft as
it "circled around" and "flew over New Jersey"?
From '7 Days In September' - 2002
CameraPlanet Inc. Produced and directed by Steve Rosenbaum.
Anonymous Report
From WNYW
"We saw clearly -- we didn't see the
first one, but we saw clearly that a plane deliberately crashed into the --
one of the upper floors of the World Trade Centre, that was the second plane...
I don't know whether we've confirmed that this was an aircraft, or to be more
specific, some people said they thought they saw a missile. I don't know how
people could differentiate, but we might keep open the possibility that this
was a missile attack on these buildings"
CNN (airing feed from WNYW[TV] New York) at
9:08am on 11th September 2001.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/11/bn.01.html
Anonymous Witness
"As I watched the first tower burn
from 24th Street & Madison on the 28th floor, a colleague said, "Looks
like that other plane is going to fly into the other tower." I said,
"No way because that would mean that the first one was no accident."
My co-worker fell to his knees in front of the window as we watched the
plane hit the second and I began to cry."
Anonymous, Manhattan - Nymag.com.
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/survey/2.htm
"Airbus Or 767" Witness
"It was either an Airbus or a 767,
just came up, swerved, aimed right into it... was not an accident, absolutely
not, aimed right to the middle, aimed right to the middle of the second
building."
From New York 1 News.
James Murphy
"We were watching it. We could see it
from here. We have an unobstructed view. The other guys came up too. All six of
us were on the roof. Then we saw the second one come up. It looked like
it was coming up the East River from here. I guess it was coming from the
south. I thought it banked over the East River, which is what it looked like. I
thought it made a left over the East River and went right into it going from
east to west. But as it turns out, it came from the south.
Then we saw it just go right into the building and explode. I remember
talking to Eric. I remember Eric saying something, "Oh, my God, there's
another plane." I was saying to him, "That plane is closer to us.
It's really not a big plane going towards the building." Two seconds later
it rammed into the building. "
Firefighter James Murphy.
http://www.flcv.com/wtcplane.html
Brian O'Flaherty
"Just then out of the corner of my eye
could see this plane just remember the dark it was in the shadow it
looked low thought what the heck is the guy doing watched it watched him turn
and crash right into the south tower. I said thought that that second plane
that went into the south tower was military plane like transport or small cargo
military.
The reason thought that found out later the sun never shined off it was dark
color plane it ended up found out later it was why it was United Airlines. They
paint their planes dull gray and blue didn't see any shine off the plane when
it went from dark to sun."
Battalion Chief Brian O'Flaherty.
http://www.flcv.com/wtcplane.html
Kenneth Davis
"As we were driving over the 59th
Street bridge, just looking out the window, we saw a plane hit the World
Trade Center, what we thought was a plane. When they looked, you could see
the flames and the smoke starting and they're like, wow, it must have been one
of the little planes. I said, no, it looked like a jet."
Paramedic Kenneth Davis.
http://www.flcv.com/wtcplane.html
"Frenetic" Witness
"...this is a U.S. airliner, it was
a plane, commercial plane coming towards us. I said "it's going
to hit my building, it's going to hit my building!". All of a sudden it
made a left hand turn then a right and then hit. All of a sudden the whole
downtown area just shook, it just literally, I though it was an
earthquake..."
From '9/11: The Firefighters' Story' -
Anglia Television LTD 2002. Filmed, Produced and Directed by Paul Berriff.
Narrated by Battalion Chief Mike Puzziferri with support from Assistant
Commissioner Stephen Gregory and Battalion Chief Arthur Lakiotes. Transmitted
in the U.K. approximately 1 year after 911. Recorded prior to WTC2 collapse at
9:59am.
Craig Gutkes
"After the first plane hit the World
Trade Center, New York City firefighter Craig Gutkes was part of a ladder
company in Brooklyn that was called in to Manhattan. When he was still on the
Brooklyn side, his company saw the second plane roar over their heads,
"It sounded like a freight train," he said. They watched that
plane plow into Tower No. 2..."
http://www.asne.org/index.cfm?ID=3426
Rich Bautista
"Bautista's co-worker Ernie Kneuer,
29, saw flames pouring out of the building. They went up to the 40th floor of
their building just in time to see the second plane collide."
From the New York Metro - 'The Longest
Week'.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/sept11/features/5183/index.html
Victor Rao
Victor Rao had just stepped off the
elevator on the 11th floor of a building a block away at the corner of Murray
and Church streets, humming a "silly Beatles song," when he heard a
sound like a low-flying plane.
"I turned and said to my friend, `Man, that plane is flying low,' "
he recalled hours later. "Before I could even get the last word out, it
hit the side of the building and just blew the other side out."
From Terror and Response - 'Not In Our
Backyard, It Couldn't Happen Here'. By Ryan Teague Beckwith.
http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/terror/sep11/backyard.asp
Tom Vallebuona
"After I hang up the cell phone, a
plane came over our heads. I watched it sort of lumber around on a turn. It
was almost over our heads...So the plane seemed to come, but it was in
front of us, really close. You couldn't get the perspective of the size of
the plane because I saw two engines. It seemed to make a turn and it was
coming over our heads, and it seemed to go slow and I'm saying to the aide,
Steve, what's going on, what's that plane doing because it still hasn't
registered. We were there for a couple of minutes. And all of a sudden, it was
like it just took off across the bay. I couldn't believe how fast it went. At
first, I thought it was just somebody trying to take a look at Manhattan. And
it just went right across right into the building. It looked like it got sucked
into the building. You couldn't even see it disintegrate. It just went so fast
and it looked like it just disappeared in the building and I heard it seconds
later."
From the August 2002 Firehouse Magazine.
http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/vallebunoa.html
Stephen Gregory
"The building material was sort of
gray and you could see it, you know, how it differed from the plane. I was
listening to the tape this morning of the people calling up and they were
describing the plane that hit the building. Actually, so many people saw it.
They actually described the plane as it came in. They said it was a military-type
plane and it was green and it was this. I mean, I never saw the color of
the plane."
Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory,
FDNY.
http://www.flcv.com/wtcplane.html
None of these witnesses report seeing a
United Airlines 767-200 collide with the WTC2 tower but they all appear to have
seen some sort of aircraft fly directly into WTC2.