The Only Plane in the Sky: The Oral History of 9/11 - by Garrett M. Graff

This book sort of reminded me to the Apollo 13 movie - I knew the outcome of the events, but I was on the edge of my seat. I found the story, told through the eyes of people who were there, absolutely fascinating. It gave me a whole new perspective on the events of that day, but also on how America sees itself. Some of the reading was harrowing and emotional; that was inevitable and I am glad that the prospect didn’t put me off of reading the book.

The book includes some commentary on the events to contextualize the accounts of the witnesses. From this I learned some fascinating trivia/details:

• The World Trade Center was comprised of seven buildings, not just the twin towers. They were all destroyed.
• The South Tower was the first sky scraper ever to collapse.
• The WTC fires burned for 99 days.
• The Pentagon is the world’s biggest low-rise office building.
• The Pentagon not only has five sides, but has five stories and five rings of offices.
• The segment of the Pentagon that was hit was the least occupied and most resistant to the attack. It had recently been refurbished to make it more terrorism-proof and reoccupation had only just started.
• A Boeing 747 can go up to 45000 feet. They did this with Air Force One so that any attack would need to be from below, which could be spotted and only certain other aircraft could achieve this altitude.
• It was suspected that there might be more highjacked planes, other than the four that were known. A number of planes did not respond immediately to the grounding order.
• It was difficult to be sure about where a hijacked plane might be, as they turned off their transponders. All the key radar systems were facing away from US, as it was assume that attack would come from outside of the country.