Flight 93

As told: debris was scattered too widely for a single ground impact, some witnesses reported a second aircraft, and a shoot-down authorisation existed that day — so the aircraft, the claim goes, was destroyed in the air.

The claim took hold in the weeks after the crash, encouraged by early conflicting reports and by the government's own confirmation that an engagement order had been issued.

Accounts are deliberately not collected here. This entry documents a historical case rather than a circulating remedy.

An engagement authorisation was real, and it is a matter of record that it reached pilots late and imprecisely; the Commission found no interceptor was ever in position. The debris field is consistent with a high-speed nose-down impact into soft reclaimed ground. The cockpit recorder captured the struggle at the cockpit door and the aircraft's final manoeuvres, and phone calls from the cabin were logged and received by named relatives. The passenger revolt is one of the better-evidenced events of the day.