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Even before September 11, they didn’t let Atta photograph their planes or even sit in the cockpits.

Moreover, the crop duster community is very close, small, and wary. Maneuvering a Boeing 767 is probably easier, as long as you don’t have to land. (Can we please move those radioactive wastes to the relative safety of Yucca Mountain in Nevada?)įortunately (for us), it turns out that the Air Tractor is notoriously difficult to fly, particularly when fully loaded, and even more so if kept at very low (radar-avoiding) altitude. (I virtually held my breath during these recent events.) Or the pilot might target a petrochemical plant, or a nuclear waste facility near a large city. The deaths, including trampling, might exceed those at the World Trade Center, with everything broadcast live on international TV.

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What could a single suicide pilot do with a full crop duster? Crash into Yankee Stadium during the World Series, or into the Superbowl, or the Olympics opening ceremony.

Fill ‘er up with 1,700 liters of gasoline, and you are carrying roughly 2.1 to 2.4 tons, the energy equivalent of 32 to 36 tons of TNT. It flies close to the ground, where it cannot be seen by most radar technologies.

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It has fertilizer containers that hold roughly 1,200 liters of liquid, plus a 500-liter fuel tank. Even if a hijacker kills the pilots, the courage and the fury of the passengers and crew will be unleashed.Īn Air Tractor 502 Crop Duster airplane is far smaller than a 767, but it is also a flying tanker. No pilot ever again will willingly hand over the controls to a terrorist. After September 11, sky marshals are hardly necessary. A near-identical attack felled the south tower.Ītta knew that September 11 would be the last day on which an airplane could be hijacked with ease. The building’s structure finally failed, the columns buckled, the upper floors fell like a pile-driver on the lower floors, and they collapsed in turn. A long slow burning can be more terrible than an explosion. When it hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, it didn’t all explode, but it continued to burn for over an hour. It gives 15 times the bang per ton.Ītta and his terrorists hijacked a Boeing 767 that carried 60 tons of fuel, equivalent to 900 tons of TNT, nearly a kiloton. So don’t drop TNT if you can drop gasoline. Why were these so dreadful? Because 7 tons of gasoline, mixed with air and detonated from a parachute, release the energy of over 100 tons of TNT. killed and demoralized Taliban troops with “fuel-air” explosives. Vietnam made gasoline-based Napalm famous. In World War II, what the flame throwers really threw was burning gasoline. The history of gasoline as a weapon dates at least to the Molotov cocktail of the 1930s. Let me lead you to my conclusion by starting with a review of what happened on September 11-and more importantly, what didn’t. I have a totally different interpretation of al Qaeda’s interest in crop dusters. (I know nobody takes that one seriously.) Maybe he actually did have stores of chemical or biological agents, and we’ll uncover them soon. Why? Maybe bin Laden just wanted to dust crops. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that Osama bin Laden wanted to buy a crop-dusting business.

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trial of the four men accused in the 1998 U.S. A federal witness, Essam al Ridi, testified at U.S.

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A crop duster manual was found in the possession of Zacarias Moussouai, who prosecutors think would have been the 20th suicide hijacker, if he hadn’t been arrested first. Searches in Afghanistan turned up no major chemical or biological facilities-nor is there evidence the group somehow had access to stockpiles in the United States. But there is no evidence that al Qaeda had stores of such materials. Why? Most people think he was interested in spreading chemical or biological terror over a major city. Before murdering thousands at the World Trade Center, Mohammad Atta made repeated trips to rural airports, trying to learn everything he could about crop dusters.