September 11, 2001: The United States is Attacked on its Own Soil

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, began as an unusually clear and bright late-summer day on the East Coast of the
United States; yet before the day was over, the skylines of two of the nation's largest metropolises, New York City
and Washington, DC, were obscured by ash and smoke from the largest terrorist strike in the nation's history. As
officials tallied a death toll reaching into the thousands, all flights were immediately grounded by the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA); extra security precautions also shut down schools, shopping malls, and government buildings
across the country. An attack unlike any other on American soil, the events of the day upended many common
assumptions about the safety of its citizens and the ability of its government to respond to such a crisis. The day also
marked a renewed scrutiny of the country's international relations; the world's lone remaining superpower after the
collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the United States was now the primary target of terrorist objectives.
Although the terrorist attacks of September 11 ushered in fundamental changes in America's social, economic, and
political terrain, the actual strikes took place in less than an hour, beginning with the midair hijacking of American
Airlines Flight 11 from Boston's Logan Airport. At some point after the plane's 8:00a.m. departure as it climbed over
upstate New York en route to Los Angeles, a team of five men, armed with box cutters and claiming to have a bomb
on board, overpowered the 92 crew members and passengers and took control of the Boeing 767. Turning the plane
south, the hijackers directed the plane toward their target: One World Trade Center (WTC) at the tip of Manhattan in
New York City. At 8:45a.m., Flight 11 crashed into the skyscraper's north side in the upper reaches of its 107 stories,
setting off an intense fire with the twenty thousand gallons of jet fuel that it had carried for its intended cross-country
journey.
With a daily population estimated at fifty thousand workers in the World Trade Center buildings, rescue efforts took on
monumental proportions from the start. As firemen raced up the floors of the WTC North Tower, thousands of office
workers who escaped the effects of the initial impact poured out of the building in an orderly fashion. Workers in the
tower's twin at 2 World Trade Center also began to leave their building; some took to the stairs while others waited for
elevators to take them to the ground. With immediate reports suggesting that an air traffic control mistake might have
sent the plane into its collision course, no one suspected that a second hijacked aircraft was set to attack the South
Tower.
Also originating from Logan Airport, United Airlines Flight 175 was overpowered by a group of five terrorists as it
ascended over New York State en route to Los Angeles. At 9:03a.m., as television networks began continuous
coverage of the first air strike, Flight 175 crashed into the southeast corner of the upper floors of 2 WTC, killing its 65
passengers and crew members upon impact. As media commentators attempted to convey the scope of the crashes
in their initial reports, emergency response teams poured into the WTC complex to locate survivors and assist in the
evacuation of the area as other teams ascended into the buildings to fight the fires. Within minutes, the FAA shut
down all air traffic at New York City area airports, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey closed all
bridges and tunnels leading into the city. In an unprecedented move, the FAA also announced at 9:40a.m. that all
flight traffic across the United States was suspended; all flights already in progress were ordered to land immediately
at the closest airport.
Meanwhile, a third hijacked plane held hostage by a group of five terrorists directed American Airlines Flight 77with
64 passengers and crew members aboard for a flight from Dulles International Airport in suburban northern Virginia to
Los Angelesinto a collision course with the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. military, in Arlington, Virginia,
near Washington, DC. Upon impact at 9:43a.m., the plane ripped a 75-foot hole in the U.S. military building's west
side and ignited an intense fire with its jet fuel. As an estimated twenty-three thousand Pentagon workers fled the
building, staffers from the nearby White House also evacuated the area.
As the crisis on the ground unfolded, a struggle for control of a fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93,
traveling from Newark to San Francisco, took place between a team of four terrorists and the plane's 45 crew
members and passengers. In the minutes since the hijackers seized control of the plane, several of its passengers
had made phone calls to relatives and emergency officials and had learned of the fates of the other hijacked planes.
Determined to prevent the plane from becoming another weapon of attack, a group of the passengers took a vote to
overpower the terrorists. In the struggle to retake control of the plane, Flight 93 went down at 10:10a.m., crashing into
rural Somerset County in southwestern Pennsylvania. Although everyone on board died upon impact, no lives were
lost on the ground.
With the nation now on high alert, the earth shook around the WTC complex as the South Tower at 2 WTC began to
list shortly before ten o'clock that morning. Although the building's innovative design by architect Minoru Yamasaki
with steel pillars serving as exterior supports for each of the building's four wallshad withstood the initial impact of
the airliner collision, the intense jet fuel fire in its aftermath had softened the steel supports with an inferno estimated
at 2,000F. At 10:05a.m. the South Tower collapsed, sending tons of debris into the streets of lower Manhattan and
September 11, 2001: The United States is Attacked on its Own Soil

taking the lives of hundreds of rescue workers and office workers still trapped in the building. At 10:28a.m. the North
Tower collapsed in similar fashion. The two tallest buildings on the New York City skyline had now disappeared in
clouds of choking dust and debris.
Although the death toll fluctuated wildly as lists of victims were compiled and verified, an estimated 3,000 people died
in the WTC attacks. Over 2,100 injured victims received medical treatment by emergency rescue teams in New York
City. 190 victims perished at the Pentagon, as well as 266 airline passengers and crew members on the hijacked
flights. For sheer loss of human life on American soil, nothing like it had been seen since the battles of the Civil War
(1861-65). Adding to the physical damage of September 11, the 47-story building at 7 WTC also collapsed, joined by
the 22-story Marriott Hotel at 3 WTC, two nine-story office buildings at 4 and 5 WTC, and an eight-story U.S.
Customshouse at 6 WTC.
Source Citation:
Borden, Timothy G. "September 11, 2001: The United States is Attacked on its Own Soil." History Behind the
Headlines: The Origins of Conflicts Worldwide. Ed. Nancy Matuszak. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. Discovering
Collection. Gale. Administration - Ft Zumwalt R-II. 17 Aug. 2012
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d=DC&tabID=T001&docId=EJ2309005023&type=retrieve&contentSet=GSRC&version=1.0>.