The September 11 Attacks Strike the United States

On the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers affiliated with the militant group al-Qaeda commandeered four commercial airliners departing from airports on the East Coast of the United States. Armed with utility blades, mace, and purported explosives, the teams forced their way into the cockpits. American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan at 8:46 a.m., followed seventeen minutes later by United Airlines Flight 175 striking the South Tower. Both towering skyscrapers collapsed within an hour and forty-two minutes, destroying the remaining five structures in the complex.

The remaining two flights unfolded in Virginia and Pennsylvania. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the western side of the Pentagon in Arlington County, triggering a partial structural collapse. On United Airlines Flight 93, passengers and crew members received word of the Manhattan strikes through telephone calls and organized an uprising against the hijackers. The hijacker-pilot pitched and rolled the aircraft to disrupt the revolt, and it crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m., preventing it from reaching its suspected targets in Washington, D.C.