63 versus 11

There is a theory as to why it doesn't look like a large commercial airplane crashed into the Pentagon even though one supposedly did. This theory says that the plane essentially "disintegrated upon impact" and any of it left over "melted" afterwards in the very hot fire from the resulting explosion.

Now I can actually buy this theory, especially after seeing that a plane can virtually disintegrate upon impacting a solid object at a very high rate of speed:

(Video source: sandia.gov)

After seeing the huge explosion created from the plane after it hit, it's fairly reasonable to believe that anything left over could have melted:

And when you hear more technical explanations of what happened to the plane after it hit, exploded and then traveled through the building, one wonders how any piece of plane debris, especially inside the building, survived at all:

"In this case, one wing hit the ground; the other was sheared off by the force of the impact with the Pentagon's load-bearing columns, explains Sozen, who specializes in the behavior of concrete buildings. What was left of the plane flowed into the structure in a state closer to a liquid than a solid mass." -Popular Mechanics

"The impact effects may be represented as a violent flow through the structure of a “fluid” consisting of aviation fuel and solid fragments... There is no question that the progress ofthe impacting fluid in the structure must have verged on the chaotic." -ASCE's Pentagon Building Performance Report

Even with the combination of the plane disintegrating, erupting into a huge fireball, and entering the building in more like on a liquid state, some people claim a few pieces of 757 debris did manage to survive inside the Pentagon which are seen on photos posted here.

Now there is controversy as to whether these pieces of debris inside the building are in fact plane debris or that they actually came from Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and some have suggested that these pieces of debris may have planted inside the building before the explosion. Just for the sake of argument, let's just say that all the pieces of debris inside the Pentagon shown at that website actually are authentic 757 debris.

Now I've marked all these pieces of debris with red arrows or circles (even though I do not believe that all these pieces that the website suggests are actually plane debris) to identify those mentioned in that website as debris coming from Flight 77:

Totaling up all the pieces of debris seen comes to 11 pieces. Pretty amazing that any plane debris survived after all the carnage it went through as described above.

But what's even more amazing than these 11 pieces of debris that survived inside the building is that the fact that the remains of 63 of the 64 passengers onboard Flight 77 were said to have survived too. (That's almost six times more than the amount of "plane debris" is seen in photos!)

"...the remains of the passengers and crew onboard American Airlines flight 77 were recovered from the Pentagon crash site. A team of more than 100 forensic specialists and others identified 184 of the 189 people who died in the Pentagon attack (125 from the Pentagon and 64 onboard American Airlines flight 77). All but one of the passengers onboard American Airlines flight 77 was positively identified as a match with DNA samples provided by the families of the crash victims." -US Department of State (06/28/05)

The only passenger claimed not to have been recovered was the youngest and smallest passenger onboard (of course); Dana Falkenberg, age 3. The passenger's remains were identified at Dover AFB by the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner (AFME) which, coincidentally, were the same people who claimed to have identified all but one of the passengers from Flight 93.

(See here for more info about the Flight 77 passengers.)

How were the remains of so many passengers able to be recovered as claimed, but so few pieces of plane debris are seen inside?

Some people say that it's really not unusual that so many passenger remains survived and so few plane debris since apparently human remains have a higher "melting point" than a plane and that you only need a little bit of human remains left, such as a tooth or piece of bone, to extract DNA from. Also, a sifting operation was set up at the Pentagon to recover any human remains:

"Because of the volume of debris inside the Pentagon, front-end loaders were used to load the debris in dump trucks, which carried the debris to a sifting operation in the North Parking Lot.
BATF heavy equipment operators spread rubble from inside the Pentagon. Metropolitan Police Department cadaver dogs worked through the debris, then volunteers carefully raked the area searching for body parts...
The sifting operation produced about 70 percent of the body parts processed at the morgue." -Arlington County After-Action Report

Now before you think that it was just small amounts of the remains of each of the 63 passengers that were found inside the Pentagon (and that you don't think it's nothing short of a miracle that human remains of all of these passengers survived the disintegrating, huge explosion, and chaotic inferno that followed) officials seem to be saying that it was more than just a few "bits and pieces" of the passengers remains that were found.

According to their charts, they were able to map the exact spots inside that Pentagon were all the remains were found, including the passengers (green circles), and not only that, but by the way they marked were the remains were found, it looks as if they found more intact bodies rather than "bits and pieces" of passenger remains scattered everywhere, especially by where they claim to have found the remains of the five hijackers (white circles):

(Graphic source: Pentagon Building Performance Report)

"As they encountered bodies, parts of bodies, and other evidence linked to the crime, they called forward the FBI contingent assigned to each team. Each item was photographed, numbered, and tagged. This information, along with a diagram showing where the evidence was found..." -Arlington County After-Action Report

3.8 FATALITY INFORMATION
"Data provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation included the locations where fatalities were found in the building. This information is reproduced as figures 3.17 and 3.18.

6.1 IMPACT DAMAGE
"A study of the locations of fatalities also yields insight into the breakup of the aircraft and, therefore, its influence on the structure. The remains of most of the passengers on the aircraft were found near the end of the travel of the aircraft debris. The front landing gear (a relatively solid and heavy object) and the flight data recorder (which had been located near the rear of the aircraft) were also found nearly 300 ft into the structure. By contrast, the remains of a few individuals (the hijacking suspects), who most likely were near the front of the aircraft, were found relatively close to the aircraft’s point of impact with the building. These data suggest that the front of the aircraft disintegrated essentially upon impact but, in the process, opened up a hole allowing the trailing portions of the fuselage to pass into the building." -Pentagon Building Performance Report (01/03)

Here is one further account from officials that obviously indicates that enacted bodies were found inside the building:

Pentagon searchers encounter grisly scenes
"On Tuesday, Army Staff Sgt. Mark Williams witnessed a combat zone for the first time in his 11 years of service. He never imagined it would be inside the Pentagon. When Williams discovered the scorched bodies of several airline passengers, they were still strapped into their seats. The stench of charred flesh overwhelmed him." -USA Today (09/13/01)

Now of course comparing the few plane debris seen in photos and the number of passengers claimed to be recovered is not a totally fair comparison since plane debris photographed near human remains wouldn't be publicly released due to not wanting to upset victims families and what constitutes a single piece of plane debris when breaking one into more pieces would increase the number found and finding multiple pieces of the same person's remain only counts as one?

However, wouldn't you expect that if essentially all the passengers bodies were recovered inside the Pentagon as claimed by officials that a lot more pieces of airplane debris should have been seen scattered around in the many many photographs that were taken of the inside damage in the immediate days after the crash such as this one taken on Sept.13th that shows the total carnage inside the building near the point of impact, but seemingly shows no plane debris or bodies:

(Photo source: FEMA, 09/13/01)

Do you really buy that the bodies of 63 of the 64 passengers were said to have survived impacting into the solid Pentagon building at over 500 mph, exploding into a large fireball, "disintegrating" upon impact, traveling through the Pentagon in a "liquid state," and resisting the intense fire inside the building that burned for days?

I have a hard time buying that one.

(More about the odd damage inside the Pentagon.)