Heroic tales from the Pentagon on 9/11/01
WASHINGTON: New video released by the FBI shows what was left after the irresistable force of a 90 ton airliner traveling at 530 miles per hour plowed into the immovable object called the Pentagon.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports 7,000 gallons of fuel sent up a 200 foot fireball while the fuselage knifed through the ground floor, punching out a hole and into an alleyway 210 feet inside the Pentagon.
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"There's broken bodies and pieces of airplane and piles of broken people," said Admiral David Thomas. "It was just horrific."
Thomas, driven by the knowledge that the Navy Command Center was inside the hole, was one of the first to arrive on the scene.
"My best friend in life was on watch in the Navy Operations Center," Thomas said.
Thomas had just talked to Bob Dolan on the phone, telling him that with two planes already having hit the World Trade Center they'd better skip their morning coffee break and remain at their desks.
"The plane flew right exactly through the command center," said Jerry Henson. Henson was at his desk in the same offices as Bob Dolan.
"It was just one loud 'kaboom,'" Henson said. "And then after that it was pretty much silent - except you could hear the pools of jet fuel exploding."
The alleyway where the airliner's landing gear came to rest offered an escape from the flames and smoke.
"Some people had said they heard voices so we were trying to find a way in," said Navy Commander David Tarantino. Tarantino got there shortly after Admiral Thomas and realized that smoking hole could be an escape hatch.
"This giant gapping hole we figured was our only way in to where people were trapped and so we got fire extinguishers and started to fight our way in," Tarantino said.
In the minutes after the plane struck, the Pentagon was an inferno outside and in.
"There were arcing wires," Tarantino said. "There was water dripping from burst pipes, some of the parts of the ceiling were melting, would drop down and melt through your skin."
"As I'm screaming for my friend and looking where I think his desk is," Thomas said, "I see what appears to be a face just sort of staring at me. He's obviously trapped. A part of a wall has trapped him to his desk in his chair."
The face Thomas saw was Jerry Henson's.
"My left ear was pinned to my shoulder and I could feel very heavy things all over the other side of me," Henson said. "Also I was pinned to my chair because the desk had leaped up and fell across the arms of the chair."
Thomas tried to lift the desk off of Henson.
"I'm lifting and I'm screaming, 'Help! Help! Somebody come in here and help me. I can't lift this up,'" Thomas said. "There's flames right behind him. He's about to burn at his desk - I look over and here comes this other Naval officer, this other guy."
That other guy was Dave Tarantino.
"He comes crawling in like a commando," Thomas said. "He gets underneath this thing and he leg presses it with all this stuff melting and coming down on us. It was just the most incredible feat of bravery I ever saw."
Tarantino lifted the desk up just enough that Henson was able to escape being pinned. They then scrambled out.
"Just as we came out into here that whole area kinda collapsed behind us and we weren't able to go back in there and search for anybody else," Tarantino said.
Bob Dolan, who had been Thomas' roomate at the Naval Academy, was still inside. "He was killed at his post in the Pentagon," Thomas said.
But Henson is alive. He said they "unquestionably," saved his life. "I was a dead guy sitting there and there was nothing I could do about it until they came and took care of me."
