September 11, 2001
“… one thing that I will always remember… we were on the ramp of 395 down to Washington Boulevard, and I looked over to South Joyce Street… if there was ever an image of Armageddon… all I saw were hundreds and hundreds of people walking with nowhere to go. These were civilians, they were military… there was no one telling them where to go, just a block of humanity going down Joyce Street.”
James M. Daly, lieutenant, Arlington County Police Department,
excerpt from oral history interview, 2006, Charlie Clark Center for Local History
A Nation Forever Changed
On September 11, 2001, the United States suffered a devastating terrorist attack that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people. The coordinated hijacking of four commercial airplanes and attacks on symbolic American targets forever changed the nation, leaving behind deep grief and trauma.
Yet amid tragedy, remarkable acts of courage, sacrifice and resilience emerged.
A tattered American flag waving from broken tree trunk in the foreground, with rescue workers and a car on fire in the distance, following the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, New York City. Photo credit Michael Schwartz.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-01834
Flight 77
It was 9:37 a.m., Tuesday, September 11, 2001, when the American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the western side of the Pentagon, adjacent to the heliport, in Arlington, Virginia.
Less than an hour earlier in New York City, two hijacked planes (American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175) struck the World Trade Center’s North and South Towers, eventually causing both structures and Building 7 to collapse. Everyone on board the planes and hundreds of people inside the buildings, including rescue personnel, were killed.
Flight 93
In the final minutes of United Airlines Flight 93, passengers and crew members attempted to regain control of the aircraft from the hijackers. The plane subsequently crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m., approximately 20 minutes before it would have reached Washington, D.C. All 44 people onboard, including the four hijackers, were killed.
Aerial view of the Pentagon in Arlington, VA, showing the damaged area where the hijacked American Airlines flight 77 crashed during the September 11 terrorist attack. Photo credit United States Department of Defense.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-02093
A Nation In Shock
In Arlington, seconds before the crash, Flight 77 traveled on an east-northeast course above Columbia Pike, at 530 m.p.h., before turning towards the Pentagon. The destructive forces of the plane’s impact and subsequent explosion of 7,000 gallons of jet fuel ripped open the building, leaving behind a path of destruction that killed 189 and injured 106 people inside. Onboard Flight 77, all 64 people, including five hijackers, were killed.
As the events which would come to be known as “9/11” unfolded that day, the region—and the nation—were in shock. The lives of thousands of people, victims and their families, first responders and survivors, would forever be changed.
Want to Learn More?
Click below and find out more about the early civilian an military response, the rescue units and the role of the Arlington County Fire Department during the Pentagon terrorist attack.