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):