Did a plane hit the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001?

1. What the official record says: a hijacked 757 struck the Pentagon

Government histories and archival collections state clearly that American Airlines Flight 77 struck the western flank of the Pentagon at approximately 09:37 on September 11, 2001. The Navy’s Pentagon 9/11 collection describes the aircraft hitting the E Ring at the first-deck level and tracks the path of destruction toward the inner rings ^[2]. Encyclopedic summaries and major reference sources likewise identify Flight 77 as the jet that was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon ^{[1] [6]}.

2. Casualties and memorialization: how history records the human toll

Federal memorial and Pentagon sources record 184 deaths associated with the Pentagon impact: 59 people aboard Flight 77 and 125 people in the building and nearby grounds, numbers reflected in the Pentagon Memorial and Department of Defense materials ^{[3] [7] [8]}. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum and other institutional accounts list the Pentagon as one of the three main crash sites of the coordinated attacks ^[9].

3. Eyewitnesses, photos, and video: contemporaneous evidence

Numerous eyewitness accounts and photographs were taken at the time; survivors and Pentagon employees have provided on-the-record recollections of the explosion, the damage, and evacuation ^{[1] [10] [11]}. The FBI and Department of Defense have released photos and footage tied to the crash, and the FBI’s video archive includes security-camera material of the Pentagon on 9/11 ^{[12] [4]}.

4. Structural and forensic analyses: how the crash is explained technically

Engineers and structural experts who examined the site explain why visible wreckage and window damage differ from lay expectations of a “clean” aircraft outline. Structural analyses describe wings shearing and fuel-driven fires that caused much of the aircraft to disintegrate or be driven into the building; professionals have used these observations to rebut claims that a smaller object or missile hit the Pentagon ^[5]. The DoD’s official history also documents the response, damage pattern, and timelines from multiple technical and human sources ^[13].

5. Conspiracy claims and official rebuttals: what skeptics assert and how reporting responds

Conspiracy narratives—prominently those arguing no airliner struck the Pentagon or that the event was staged—have circulated widely, including books like Thierry Meyssan’s 9/11: The Big Lie. Fact-checking outlets and official disclosures counter these claims by pointing to released photos of wreckage, published flight-tracking and DoD investigative reports, and the documented course of Flight 77 showing it was not intercepted before impact ^{[4] [13]}. Popular Mechanics and other technical analyses explicitly address and debunk common Pentagon-focused myths by explaining structural behavior and the condition of aircraft remnants ^[5].

6. Limits of the available sources and persistent disputes

Available sources do not mention every single piece of physical evidence skeptics cite in forums; rather, the public record rests on consolidated government histories, engineering assessments, eyewitness testimony, memorial records, and released images ^{[2] [5] [12] [4]}. That consolidated record consistently attributes the Pentagon strike to Flight 77, but because some original raw materials (certain high-resolution tapes, security footage angles) were limited in circulation for years, gaps in publicly seen media have fueled ongoing skepticism—an implicit driver of conspiracy attention ^[4].

7. Bottom line for readers

The weight of institutional records, engineering analysis, eyewitness testimony, and memorialized casualty counts establishes that American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 ^{[1] [2] [3] [6]}. Counter-claims have been investigated and rebutted in published fact-checks and technical explainers that cite released photos, trajectory data, and structural reasoning ^{[4] [5]}. If you want primary documents and images, the Department of Defense, FBI archives, and the Pentagon’s historical collections are the first places cited in these sources ^{[2] [12] [13]}.