Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud
December 18 2007
last update 1/2 1am
I'm still working out my analysis of the trailers-in-the-impact-zone situation: were they exploded to string airliner-ish confetti across the lawn and helipad as some have speculated? Were they removed entirely before the event as satellite images (see left) suggest is quite possible? Attack witnesses Micheal DiPaula gives a picture of an amptying but not empty construction zone: “we were in the process right prior to September 11 cleaning out the area. We just – we moved all the trailers. Actually, on the tenth we had some other trailers that were just leaving because we were getting ready to turn it back over to the building. And we had one trailer left, which was the – we had the Singleton trailer out there. And – and then we had some other trailers over here. So that’s the lay down area, were the plane actually came over.” So it seems possible there were trailers right there, and gone after, presumably removed by the plane on its way in. Are there any photos of trailers inside the Pentagon? What constitutes a trailer exactly? Why the hell am I still wasting time on things like this? These are the questions I've been tackling for the last three days. In this case just the graphics and a few notes and links should suffice. Thanks to John Farmer for bringing up this issue again and spurring me with his post The Trailer (redirecting at the moment). Until I read that, I'd been baffled by the melty cheesy form seen in the construction area just north of impact, by the burning SUV (see below), seeing an orange tarp - or something - though others had previously identified this as some type of trailer. More accurately, as Farmer proposed, I'd consider it a steel cargo container, the angle from it being tipped over by the left wing, and the warping mostly due to fire that gave it the rust color. It seems it may have been ON a towable trailer, judging by the floor remaining beneath it and apparent wheel axle. This graphic represents what I feel is the most likely style matching the Pentagon sample, with various matching features highlighted.
Doesn't look quite right? For comparison, see these sample images of cargo containers subjected to explosion and fire aboard the M/V Hanjin Pennsylvania, which burned for four days off the coast of Yemen in November 2002 after a nasty fireworks mishap. The twisted shapes are those that fell to the bottom of a massive container cell that collapsed. Note the different appearance of corrugated vs. bare-ribbed walls, perhaps different styles of container. The pictures and info were found at this site. 
Compare again to this stray scrap photographed from at least two angles, found just inside the Pentagon. It appears to be neither part of the plane nor of the building. In fact it looks kind of like somethinng from the Pennsylvania. Below are the shots these are from, the second (by FEMA's Jocelyn Augustino) I've labeled with the likely column assignations. There are no supports on line 10 in this area, and by looking at the photo index in the ASCE's Performance Report, I've pegged this snake skeleton of a remnant as that of column 9B. 
Below is the ASCE's column damage pattern laid over a rendering of the September 7 satellite image (lined up along expansion joints, in black). The trailer location on the right (the plane's left) corresponds roughly with the tipped and melted trailer seen above. The one on the left more closely matches the position to have wound up at column 9B given the 'official' 757 trajectory (red arrows represent approximate angle and impact points of engines and fuselage). 
Therefore I speculate that we're dealing with two similar cargo containers in the spots where containers and trailers had previously been seen. One remained outside, the other inside, battered, and invisible in the available photos but for this good-sized scrap (and possibly others if I dug deeper). The intact one shows no sign of exploding to scatter debris, being as it is intact. The other possible container or trailer would have had to undergo a peculiar directed explosion to put it inside the building while leaving no similar traces I've seen in the other direction, away from the building. So while both possible trailers are possibly compatible with a plane strike (no detailed forensics yet), neither seems to make sense from the explosion and fakery hypothesis. ---
Update: Two more pictures of a rather shiny looking warped trailer, near the same construction scaffolding seen in other photos of the trailer.
These are close-up crops of Jason Ingersoll high-res photos provided by CIT. Another from that batch also has background details useful here, from later in the day, after it dried up:
