The Telegraph reports on the contents of the cockpit voice recorder on American Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on 9-11.
At 9.57am, the cockpit voice recorder picked up sounds of a struggle with one passenger shouting: “Let’s get them.” The struggle appeared to prompt the terrorists to squabble among themselves, with one calling on his henchmen to keep the passengers out, while another suggests cutting off oxygen to the cabin. “Take it easy,” says another, while the fourth suggests using a fire axe kept in the cockpit to scare the passengers into submission. The sound of dishes and trays being thrown can be heard in the background as the terrorists yell at each other and appear to fight over the controls, with one saying: “Give it to me.”
The man at the controls then apparently decided to try to knock the passengers off their feet as a last line of defence by putting the plane into a dive.
In the last seconds of the flight, one hijacker yells to another to let “the guys in”, which investigators think is a reference to two of the four hijackers who were standing outside the cockpit door. Then they can be heard talking about “finishing off” the plane, before crying “Allah akbar” – “God is great” – just before the plane crashed.
The saga of Flight 93 was the subject of almost instant myth-making, with the reports of cell phone conversations in which some of the passengers said they were going to try to retake the plane gaining quick play in a media looking for heroes. It seems, from the cockpit record, that the myths turn out to be more or less true — a concerted effort to retake the plane, leading to the terrorists crashing it intentionally rather than being taken prisoner themselves.
Cockpit voice recorder transcripts always give me an eerie feeling, usually because we only read them when something tragic has happened. In this case, it’s also a spine-tingling tale of, yes, heroism, that should serve as an object lesson to the next folks who try to hijack a plane.
(Via OpinionJournal)