JH,
Your question was in jest, but thinking back on it all now is interesting. I've always been an aircraft buff, so it was an interesting day from that perspective. No, I was not real close to the Pentagon, though I do know people who claim they saw the 757 "almost fly down a street" seconds before it hit. Here's my story:
I was in FOB-8 (FDA) about 3 blocks from the Capitol, watching CNN on my PC because I had been told by a colleague across the hall that a plane had hit the WTC. (Our Center runs CNN off a Netshow encoder 24/7 so we can get news on the network.) I watched the second plane hit the WTC and shortly after that my wife called to tell me there was smoke showing from further down the Mall in the direction of the Whitehouse. (The Whitehouse is in the same direction as the Pentagon from our location at the foot of Capitol Hill.) There were then many rumors spreading in the hallway that car bombs had gone off on the Hill and near the State Dept, supposedly smoke was showing there as well. We now know that the car bomb rumors were false.
My Team Leader came in to say as he was coming in to the building, he saw a 757 flying in a peculiar location roughly over the Mall. (We now know that was the 757 that hit the Pentagon as it did circle downtown DC, supposedly looking for a target, possibly the Whitehouse which is not as easy to pick out from the air as the Capitol or the Pentagon, before heading west again, then turning east for its final run at the Pentagon.)
About that time, I suspected that there might be other hijacked aircraft targeting other buildings in the area (remember, we thought there might have been car bombs going off too at this point) so I walked across the hall to the lab of the colleague who initially told me the WTC had been hit by an aircraft. Looking out of the north facing 4th floor window, I saw the outline of a 747-400 flying slowly south to north nearly directly over head at a low altitude. Planes never flew there as it is restricted airspace, almost over the Capitol. As it turned over NE DC, roughly Union Station I guess, and banked east, the sun hit the pale colored paint and I could see that it was an Air Force E-4 and not a commercial 747. It was going so slow, it appeared to hang in the air over the Hubert Humphrey (HHS) building (across the street from FOB-8). For a moment it crossed my mind that such an aircraft carries much more fuel and could do considerably more damage than the aircraft that had hit the WTC (at this time it was being reported that those aircraft were commuter planes, we didn't know for sure they were 767's, though the outline sure looked like it to me when I saw the second one disappear into the building on CNN). Us chemists were already thinking of fuel loads and explosive equivalents, combustion temperature, melting point of steel, etc. when we watched the first tower collapse. (I'm hazy in my recall of the exact time we watched this relative to the Pentagon crash.)
Must have been around 10:00 or 11:00 AM we did get word to clear all FDA campuses of non-essential employees. I made my wife and anyone else I could find use the stairs, as I thought there was the possibility of a disruption in electric power. As we made our way out of the parking lot in my truck and onto the jammed street, several police cars came speeding down the wrong side of the street and spun out in the middle of the intersection avoiding other cars and pedestrians. One police car rode up on the sidewalk.
Once out in the stop and go traffic on I-295 south, we were sitting in the cloud of smoke from the Pentagon when a lone F-16 flew over. Probably about that time, the pilot was getting the orders from the Secret Service to protect the Whitehouse at any cost. We now know that was a commercial pilot serving in the Air National Guard (as I recall the news story went) and had been dispatched from Langley AFB about 80 - 100 miles south of DC, in VA. When the F-16 flew over, some construction workers sitting in the back of a pick-up truck in fron of us stood up and cheered.
It took a little under 3 hours to get home and the stink from the fire in the Pentagon could be smelled as far south as Accokeek, MD. Later, on the radio at home, I heard that an E-4 "Looking Glass" plane had been seen by some in the area. It was reported to have been in the area to handle DoD coordination and communications if operations in the Pentagon proved difficult. I never fully bought that explanation, why did it have to be so low and fly straight over downtown DC like it did? No, not a conspiracy though.
So you see JH, I was accounted for. It wasn't me. I think the article was interesting and does properly point out how flimsey a 757 is compared to a concrete and steel building like the Pentagon. Hopefully they will at least replace the silly wooded roof!
Hope that didn't put anyone to sleep.
__________________
mole
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I know you dislike your job .... But exactly where were you on the morning of Sept. 11? .... In Maryland I presume!
conspiracy theories!!! 
techguy.org/72752 
couple of links may be dead sorry !! 
