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Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef (Part 12, Final)
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11All the following is from an article written by William F. Jasper and published by The New American in 1997. .... Led by Brigadier General Benton K. Partin (USAF, ret.), former director of the Air Force Armament Technology Laboratory and one of the worldâs premier explosives and ordnance authorities, critics have argued compellingly that the blast wave from the ANFO [ammonium nitrate/fuel oil] truck bomb was totally inadequate to cause the collapse of the massive, steel-reinforced concrete columns of the federal building in Oklahoma City. This fact ... points inescapably to the conclusion that additional demolition charges had to have been placed on columns inside the building. .... The new Eglin [Air Force Base] blast study convincingly proves the fundamental points set forth by General Partin: That air blast is an inefficient mechanism against hardened, reinforced concrete structures, and that "the pattern of damage [to the Murrah Building] would have been technically impossible without supplementing demolition charges." Entitled Case Study Relating Blast Effects to the Events of April 19, 1995 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, (hereafter referred to as the Eglin Blast Effects Study, or EBES), the 56-page report includes photographs and data from the Eglin blast tests, as well as extensive technical analysis of those tests ..... As General Partin has taken great pains to emphasize, the inefficiency of a blast wave through air is dramatic -- particularly outdoors, where the blast energy is dissipated in all directions -- with its pressure and destructive force falling off more rapidly than an inverse function of the distance cubed (distance expressed in radius units). This means that the blast wave from an explosive device which yields a maximum blast pressure of one-and-a-half million pounds per square inch at the center of the device will have dropped off to under 200 pounds per square inch by the time it has traveled 20 radii. This makes air blast alone very ineffective against hardened concrete structures, such as heavy, steel-reinforced columns. .... Accordingly, the EBES found: "A limited area of the third and fourth floors of the Murrah Federal Building immediately adjacent to the position of the Ryder truck would be affected. .... the EBES conclusions have a built-in margin of error that, if anything, overstate the extent of damage to be expected at the Murrah Building. Moreover, the computations for the Ryder truck bomb also are overly generous. "Because ANFO is also a low-energy explosive (approximately 30% that of TNT) and due to the inherent inefficiency of eight barrels forming the explosive assembly [according to the governmentâs estimates], it is doubtful that the device produced blast pressures close to the calculated maximum potential blast pressure," the study asserts. "This being the case, it is doubtful that the radius of damage even approached the 42.37 foot range as calculated herein." Finally, the EBES concludes: [quote] Due to these conditions, it is impossible to ascribe the damage that occurred on April 19, 1995 to a single truck bomb containing 4,800 lbs. of ANFO. In fact, the maximum predicted damage to the floor panels of the Murrah Federal Building is equal to approximately 1% of the total floor area of the building. Furthermore, due to the lack of symmetrical damage pattern at the Murrah Building, it would be inconsistent with the results of the ETS test [number] one to state that all of the damage to the Murrah Building is the result of the truck bomb. The damage to the Murrah Federal Building is consistent with damage resulting from mechanically coupled devices placed locally within the structure.... It must be concluded that the damage at the Murrah Federal Building is not the result of the truck bomb itself, but rather due to other factors such as locally placed charges within the building itself.... The procedures used to cause the damage to the Murrah Building are therefore more involved and complex than simply parking a truck and leaving.... [unquote] Mike Smith, a civil engineer in Cartersville, Georgia commissioned to review the Eglin Blast Effects Study, states: "The results of the Blast Effect Test One on the Eglin Test Structure present strong evidence that a single Ammonium Nitrate and Fuel Oil device of approximately 4800 lbs. placed inside a truck could not have caused the damage to the Murrah federal Building experienced on April 19, 1995. Even assuming that the building had structural deficiencies and that the ANFO device was constructed with racing fuel, the air-coupled blast produced from this 4800 lb. device would not have damaged the columns and beams of the Murrah Building enough to produce a catastrophic failure." Robert Frias, president of Frias Engineering of Arlington, Texas, after examining the EBES, concluded: "The Murrah Building would still be standing and the upper floors would be intact had the truck loaded with explosives been the only culprit. .... Explosives had to have been placed near, or on, the structural columns inside the building to cause the collapse that occurred to the Murrah Building." Likewise, Alvin Norberg, a licensed professional engineer ... writes that evidence from the ETS data "verifies that the severe structural damage to the Murrah Building was not caused by a truck bomb outside the building," and that "the collapse of the Murrah Federal Building was the result of âmechanically coupled devicesâ (bombs) placed locally within the structure adjacent to the critical columns." .... Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-04-23 |
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