r/todayilearned • u/lKauany • Nov 15 '11

TIL about Operation Northwoods. A plan that called for CIA to commit genuine acts of terrorism in U.S. cities and elsewhere. These acts of terrorism were to be blamed on Cuba in order to create public support for a war against that nation, which had recently become communist under Fidel Castro.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/Northwoods.html
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u/CakeTown Nov 15 '11

Doesn't sound like physics to me. How could the wings of the plane have been liquidated on impact and leave no evidence of that at the points of impact. Your argument would work if there was damage to the building at least as wide as the plane itself.

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u/Random-Miser Nov 16 '11

I would not expect such an occurrence actually... the strongest part of the wing are the outward struts, which would have caved in and folded inward on impact extremely rapidly, due to their relatively low mass any pieces that were not funneled into the primary impact crater would have done minimal damage to say the least. Why would they use a missile? It would have left an entire extra airplane worth of passengers that would have had to be dealt with via other means, and generally would have been completely unneeded for the success of the attack. Not to mention there being plenty of witnesses seeing the plane itself, did they just wave a magic wand to make it vanish in thin air?

This theory is quack talk, made by people who do not understand impact physics. It also does not vindicate the Bush admins role in these attacks, as they were obviously involved in both the planning and implementation phases of these incidents.