Fact check: What were the exact times the planes hit the Twin Towers on September 11 2001?

1. What the supplied sources actually assert and why that matters

The dataset presents three clusters of analyses: one cluster offers various timeline and impact descriptions ^{[2] [3] [1]}, and another cluster contains unrelated linguistic material (p2_s1–p2_s3). Only one analysis supplies an exact impact time: the June 2004 study that gives 8:46:40 a.m. for Flight 11’s collision with the North Tower and provides passenger and crew counts ^[1]. The other timeline entries in the set do not specify exact strike times; instead, they report broader or tangential details such as structural effects and percentage figures that appear to address different claims about damage or aftermath rather than clock times ^{[2] [3]}. The presence of unrelated entries underscores that the supplied corpus is incomplete for the user’s direct question.

2. Confirmed detail: Flight 11’s impact time and immediate context

The one concrete verification in the supplied dataset states Flight 11 hit the North Tower at 8:46:40 a.m., 46 minutes after takeoff from Boston’s Logan Airport, and lists the manifest as 81 passengers and 11 crew ^[1]. This is a precise clock reading which allows anchoring the opening of a timeline. The source included in the dataset frames this as an observed, timed event within a technical review ^[1]. This timestamp is the only exact “hit time” present among the provided items, so any authoritative reconstruction based solely on these materials must treat 8:46:40 a.m. as the sole confirmed moment of impact from the supplied evidence.

3. Notable absences: no confirmed times for the other three impacted aircraft

The dataset contains no explicit, corroborated timestamps for the other planes that struck the World Trade Center complex, so the impact time of the plane that struck the South Tower and times for the Pentagon and Pennsylvania crashes are not available here (p1_s1, ^[3], ^[4]–p2_s3). Several entries discuss damage characteristics—swaying, window breakage, gouged facades—and present differing numerical claims that appear unrelated to clock-time reporting ^{[2] [3]}. Because the question asked for “exact times the planes hit the Twin Towers,” the absence of those exact times outside of Flight 11 in this corpus is a critical gap: a complete answer requires additional, time-stamped records not supplied in these analyses.

4. Conflicting and off-topic materials in the set that complicate interpretation

Two items in the first cluster introduce contradictory or non-time-related claims—one reports a percentage figure of 23% and a dramatic description of plane-shaped facade gouging, while another reports 15% growth and structural swaying—both of which do not address impact times and which conflict numerically with one another ^{[2] [3]}. These differences illustrate that the supplied materials mix timeline reporting with other analytic claims, some of which contradict each other and therefore cannot be used to corroborate or replace missing timestamps for the South Tower strike or other events ^{[2] [3]}. The second cluster of documents is purely linguistic and offers no relevance to the temporal question (p2_s1–p2_s3).

5. Conclusion, limitations, and recommended next steps for a complete timeline

Based on the supplied materials, the only fully supported answer available here is that Flight 11 struck the North Tower at 8:46:40 a.m. on September 11, 2001 ^[1]. The dataset lacks corroborated times for the South Tower impact and the other aircraft, and contains unrelated or conflicting analytic claims that cannot fill those gaps (p1_s1, ^[3], ^[4]–p2_s3). To produce a complete, authoritative timeline of all impact times, additional time-stamped primary or investigative records are required; sourcing those records will allow verification and cross-checking against the one confirmed timestamp present in this collection ^[1].