Flight data recorders provide an extraordinarily full account of just how the plane was operating in the time before a crash. They indicate the exact working of all the aircraft’s many detailed parts.
‘‘It’s almost unheard of for a black box not to survive and in the case of Lockerbie, the recordings provided vital evidence in the investigation into the Pan-Am crash,’’ said Kieran Daly, editor of the Air Transport Intelligence Internet news service.
http://archives.tcm.ie/breakingnews/2001/09/12/story23443.aspThe effort to better understand the events of the day isn’t being made easier by the fact that the voice and data recorders aboard the two hijacked jetliners that hit the twin towers haven’t been recovered.
The four devices - and all the clues they would hold - have failed to turn up in the 1.25 million tons of steel, concrete and other material taken from ground zero.
“It's extremely rare that we don't get the recorders back. I can't recall another domestic case in which we did not recover the recorders,” said Ted Lopatkiewicz, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.
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The size of a shoe box and painted bright orange, the recorders are built to withstand fire, water and blunt-force impact, and are located in the tail for maximum protection.
But the attacks were an unprecedented survival test for the misnamed “black boxes.” The two wide-bodied jets, carrying a total of 157 people including 10 hijackers, were mostly destroyed by the fires and collapsing towers.
“So little (airplane) debris has been recovered that there's really no way to quantify it,” FBI spokesman Joseph Valiquette said. The only pieces on display at the landfill were a piece of United 175's fuselage and several pieces of landing gear.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/02/25/attack/main501989.shtmlThursday, September 13, 2001 :
Investigators have located the black box flight recorder from the hijacked plane which crashed into the Pentagon in Washington on Tuesday.
However, firefighters are unable to reach the recorder because the structure is still too dangerous.
http://archives.tcm.ie/breakingnews/2001/09/13/story23581.aspFriday, September 14, 2001 :
The black box flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon have been recovered.
The two black boxes are crucial to uncovering details about the doomed flight's last moments.
Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel George Rhynedance says the recorders are in the possession of the FBI.
http://archives.tcm.ie/breakingnews/2001/09/14/story23734.aspIn Washington, workers found the two "black boxes" — the flight data recorder and the voice cockpit recorder — from the plane that slammed into the Pentagon. FBI Director Robert Mueller said investigators got information from flight data recorder, but not the voice data recorder in the Pentagon crash.
Both black boxes in the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania have been found. One black box containing the data recorder was found Thursday, the voice recorder today.
Pennsylvania Sens. Rick Santorum and Arlen Spector, visiting the site of the crash in Shanksville, Pa., today, said they had examined the transcripts of cell phone calls made from the plane before the crash and concluded that the passengers tried to overcome the hijackers. Santorum and Spector's hunch was that the plane was headed toward Washington, but the passengers' actions diverted its course.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/WTC_MAIN010914.htmlBoth black boxes from the hijacked aircraft which crashed into the Pentagon have also been recovered and turned over to the Federal Aviation Administration.
However, according to a report in the Washington Times, investigators have so far failed to extract information from the Pentagon attack voice recorder because it was so badly damaged.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1543564.stmJust how many Gs did that Penta-plane pull anyway?
Commercial aircraft flight recorders are designed to withstand enormous battering. They are constructed to withstand heat, pressure and shock and contain no moving parts, typically recording data in solid state flash memory.
Tests of modern recorders include shooting them from a gas gun in order to generate a maximum force of 3400 g's. They are also subjected to 1100 °C heat and 5000 psi pressure.
Black boxes are in fact painted bright orange to aid recovery. They also emit an acoustic signal to help crash investigators locate them. They are positioned at the rear of an aircraft to avoid bearing the brunt of a collision.
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/usterror/usterror.jsp?id=ns99991302I have said it before and I will say it again,
it really doesn't matter what DulceDecorum thinks,
but I do hope these links help you out, Abe.
Remember,
if the data recorders did NOT survive,
then how do did the rest of the plane make out?
And why is it that the crater in Shanksville was only eight feet deep?
Eight miserable little feet!!