May 3, 2002: Report Fails to Explain ‘Exit Hole’ in Pentagon Wall

A report about shoring used in the Pentagon submitted to the University of Maryland makes reference to a hole created in a wall inside the Pentagon on 9/11, near the end of the path of damage caused by the aircraft that hit the building. However, the assessment gives no specific explanation for what exactly caused the hole. The hole was on the ground level in a brick wall of the C Ring (the third of five concentric rings that form the Pentagon), on the A-E Drive, a service roadway that runs round the building between its C and B rings. The report says, “a nine foot diameter exit hole was created in the wall of C ring and the remainder of the debris from the impact ended up in the […] A-E Drive.” [Titus, 5/3/2002, pp. 9 ] Similarly, other reports do not offer any conclusive explanation for what caused the hole. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ Pentagon Building Performance Report, published in 2003 January 23, 2003, will show the hole’s location in several diagrams, but explain only that “there was a hole in the east wall of Ring C, emerging into A-E Drive, between column lines 5 and 7 in Wedge 2. The wall failure was approximately 310 ft from where the fuselage of the aircraft entered the west wall of the building.” [Mlakar et al., 1/2003, pp. 28 ] The Arlington County After-Action Report, published in 2002, contains a photo of the exit hole with the note “the damage extended all the way through the inner wall of the C Ring, a distance of approximately 285 feet.” It offers no further explanation for what precisely caused the hole. [US Department of Health & Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A8] Various explanations of how the hole came about are advanced after 9/11 (see September 15, 2001 and After).