Because it's easier to hit a building with a missile than it is to conduct a successful hijacking plot to strike a rather low-laying building with a passenger airplane at extremely high velocity.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Pentagon is a pretty big ass building. Sure, hitting that specific point is hard, but he likely wasn't aiming at that specific point. He was aiming for the huge building.

It's similar to winning the lottery. The chances are really low that any particular person wins, but 100% that someone wins eventually. (Obviously this case was not 100%, but the huge building is an easy target.)

[–] MattsAlt@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm sure the pilot didn't know, but the plane hit the most reinforced part of the building. Added to the fact the maneuver to strike that portion is not easy, and it makes you wonder why he didn't just nosedive into the top of it. Easier to do, and (unknown to him) would have caused significantly more damage.

I'm agnostic on what went down that day, but it is rather fortuitous for the Pentagon that the hijacker chose to do what he did there

[–] AOCapitulator@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

why was one part of the 5 way symmetrical building stronger than the rest?

[–] MattsAlt@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago

At the time of the attacks, the Pentagon was under renovation and many offices were unoccupied, resulting in fewer casualties. Only 800 of 4,500 people who would have been in the area were there because of the work. Furthermore, the area hit, on the side of the Heliport facade, was the section best prepared for such an attack. The renovation there, improvements which resulted from the Oklahoma City bombing, had nearly been completed.

It was the only area of the Pentagon with a sprinkler system, and it had been reconstructed with a web of steel columns and bars to withstand bomb blasts. The steel reinforcement, bolted together to form a continuous structure through all of the Pentagon's five floors, kept that section of the building from collapsing for 30 minutes—enough time for hundreds of people to crawl out to safety. The area struck by the plane also had blast-resistant windows—2 inches (5 cm) thick and 2,500 pounds (1,100 kg) each—that stayed intact during the crash and fire. It had fire doors that opened automatically and newly built exits that allowed people to get out.

From the Wikipedia article: https://web.archive.org/web/20150622032541/http://articles.latimes.com/2001/sep/16/news/mn-46435 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon#September_11,_2001,_attacks