A serious argument in favour of the crash of a large airplane, about 100 ft wingspan, is the analysis of the lamp poles hit by the plane before crashing on the pentagon : see The analysis of Ron Harvey. This analysis has been checked by Eric Bart on his lamp poles page.

The position of the hit lamp poles, according to Ron Harvey, shows that the plane should have a wingspan of at least 35 m. Difficult to make one's mind about this fact without going on the site, measuring, seing the lamp poles debris ... Just two hypotheses :

• One of the lamp poles could have been damaged by a heavy debris thrown by the blast, coming from inside the pentagon (piece of concrete...) or from outside (piece of a car, truck or helicopter).
• The hole dug by the explosion into the pentagon has the shape of a cylinder. The blast creates a shock wave towards the exterior, precisely guided by this cylinder. This shock wave could have propagate to the lamp poles, which are precisely on the axis of this cylinder, and damage one or several of them.

If one lamp pole or more have been damaged without having been directly hit by the plane, there could be no conclusion about the plane's size. Looking carefully to the images on Ron Harvey's web site, it seems to be the case for pole Number 2, (now number 4, after Ron Harvey modified his web site) which lays on the grass at some distance (10 m ?) from it's original position, in the opposite direction of the pentagon.

Here is the picture taken from the Citgo gas station showing the hit lamp poles. Notice how close the VDOT camera mast is from the trajectory. The starboard wing of the plane must have skimmed it !

I found recently (april 20 2003) a web site with a text report of the events by the VDOT (Virginia Department Of Transportation). Here is a paragraph copied from it :

Just before impact, the plane clipped off two VDOT light poles on Washington Boulevard, a football field or two away from the Pentagon. In the same area, the blast from the plane's impact damaged the lenses of one of VDOT's traffic monitoring cameras and knocked the camera sideways.

I am surprised of the difference : five lamp poles struck, according to Ron Harvey's web site, two according to the VDOT, which is the official structure in Virginia in charge of these lamp poles !