Quote:
Originally Posted by Grumpy
The fuel capacity of of a B25 was 650 gal. I am not sure of which type of 747 it was that hit the towers but the smallest tank I found in a quick search was 12,000 gal.
According to this site ( not fact checked ) http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question...ry/q0311.shtml the B25 was near its empty. I also found this
"The twin towers of the World Trade Center, by comparison, were struck by Boeing 767 airliners traveling over twice as fast and weighing nearly 15 times as much as a B-25. The energy of impact for the two planes ranged from 2 billion ft-lb (2.6 billion Joules) to 3 billion ft-lb (4.1 billion Joules), some 60 to 100 times greater than that absorbed by the Empire State Building. This estimate is also conservative since it does not account for the energy released by the exploding jet fuel, which greatly exceeded the energy released by the much smaller B-25 fuel supply as well. The greater kinetic energy allowed the 767 aircraft to penetrate much further into the twin towers than the B-25 was able to do at the Empire State Building. Most of the B-25 impact was absorbed by the building's exterior wall leaving very little to damage the interior structure. The 767 impacts, however, not only produced gaping holes in the WTC exterior but also destroyed much of the structural core at the center of each tower.
Even so, the impact alone does not fully explain what doomed the World Trade Center towers. A fatal contributing factor was the fires ignited by the exploding fuel tanks. A 767 has a maximum fuel capacity 35 times greater than that of a B-25D. The aircraft that struck the Empire State Building was nearly out of fuel when it crashed while each 767 still carried approximately half of its maximum fuel load at impact. The Empire State Building fire exhausted its supply of fuel rapidly while that at the World Trade Center ignited the office contents across several floors and burned much longer. The type of fuel carried may also be a significant factor. The B-25 burned avgas, a high-octane version of gasoline still used aboard piston engine aircraft today. The 767 instead uses Jet-A, a derivative of kerosene that fuels all commercial jetliners. Jet fuel tends to reach higher temperatures than gasoline causing the fires in the WTC to burn more intensely than that in the Empire State Building."
So it does apear that the jetliners did have much more volatile fuel. |
Grumpy, you've done your homework, and I salute you.
Myself, I'm just a cretin viewing what I saw. I saw a couple of big assed airliners crashing into the WTC. And I saw 'em with my own lying eyes.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that the towers collapsed. And it doesn't surprise me in the least that Shrub and Chainey (thanks Sandy) went out and started kicking ass and taking names.
I would have done the same thing. Now you can bitch about what they did, but they did something. And I don't give a rat's ass about people playing Monday morning quarterback...it's not as simple as one might imagine.
Shrub an Chainey did the best they could. I don't see this as a political issue, but I'm not a Donk.
Feed ME cold steel,
Chas