9/11 even more destructive...

The Twin Towers attacks the same as otl but in D.C. there are 4 planes instead where they target White House, The Washington monuments, Capitol and the supreme court justice building. Let also say the supreme court justice was able to get out too. The Pentagon plane still hits too. What happens now?

A 9/11 conclude that fighter would have prob not been able to stop plane 93 so let say none of the plane are stopped.
 
It was bad enough as it was, and all al-Qaeda needed was to "run up the score", so to speak. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed went to college in the US at a historically black university--it isn't improbable he might've been introduced to Memphis, Tennessee, and the numerous key sites both cultural, with attacks on Beale Street and Graceland able to hit the heart of Americans, along with monumental architecture to be destroyed for media effect--the Memphis Pyramid, in 2001 home of the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team. and economic (bridges across the Mississippi and especially Memphis International, in 2001 a very busy airport for both passengers and especially for cargo, and one which had been already targetted for a terrorist attack in Auburn Calloway's FedEx Flight 705 hijacking.

As for the capital, the easiest and most deadly attack al-Qaeda could have done in the Capital area was doing an OKC-style bombing one of the airports in DC or Baltimore at a busy moment and killing a thousand people easily. These airports are major hubs and destroying one of them would cause huge damage both short term and long-term.

It is very fortunate al-Qaeda did what they did and not any number of plans they might have devised. A worse 9/11 is easy to imagine.
 
A strike on the Capitol before the members of Congress were evacuated would have seriously impaired the functioning of the government. This think tank report from 2003 provides an illustration of people's fears at the time. Basically, if enough members were killed or incapacitated to prevent a quorum, Congress would be unable to pass any legislation, including an AUMF, for around four months. President Bush would have come under substantial pressure to implement 'emergency measures' and let Congress authorize them after the election.
 
All it would have taken for 9/11 to be much worse is for the first aircraft to hit lower on the North Tower
And, the plane that hit the Pentagon was aiming for the White House but couldn't find it. Since the President was in Florida, he was never at risk. But if that plane had instead hit the capitol building, congress was assembling, wasn't it? I think the senate had not yet convened. But there would have been casualties.
 
And, the plane that hit the Pentagon was aiming for the White House but couldn't find it. Since the President was in Florida, he was never at risk. But if that plane had instead hit the capitol building, congress was assembling, wasn't it? I think the senate had not yet convened. But there would have been casualties.

Both the House and the Senate, as well as the entirety of the Supreme Court plus the Vice President were due to be present later that day for the Australian PM to give a speech before them all. Had they somehow hit that, literally the only person left in the Federal Government would've been President Bush and perhaps one or two cabinet members in a best case scenario.
 
More planes hijacked, Like two in Los Angeles and another 2 in Chicago. Bound for targets outside of the east coast. But I'm not sure about fuel for would make attack on lets say San Francisco or some other midwestern city would be likely.
 
More planes hijacked, Like two in Los Angeles and another 2 in Chicago. Bound for targets outside of the east coast. But I'm not sure about fuel for would make attack on lets say San Francisco or some other midwestern city would be likely.

There was worry that TransAmerica Pyramid would be hit
 
One iteration of the Bojinka plot included plans to crash planes into the Capitol Building, the White House (It would have been unlikely to actually hit the White House, as it's too small a target, but an attempt could very well take out the Washington Monument, the Treasury Department, or one of the Smithsonian Museums), the Sears Tower in Chicago, and the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles. This is probably the worst-case scenario with the resources available to Al Qaeda at the time.
 

hammo1j

Donor
Could the Statue of Liberty have been a viable target? The loss of life would not be as great, but the attack more symbolic.

Would it be possible to crash a plane into her?
 
Could the Statue of Liberty have been a viable target? The loss of life would not be as great, but the attack more symbolic.

Would it be possible to crash a plane into her?
She's just standing there. If you're determined enough and have enough ability to aim and pilot, it wouldn't be an issue.

OTL the plan was far more dramatic; I think there was talk of ten planes being hijacked until it was whittled down into a more manageable number. As someone else said, hit the North Tower lower or go later so that both buildings have more people in them. WMDs would require more PODs which would probably attract more attention to the group.
 
Or if the timing was completely different, and the target was the Capitol during the 2002 State of the Union address. That would take out most of all three branches of the US government, producing a number of serious headaches, as the series of reports TJ refers to above go into great detail on.
 
If the Capitol had indeed been hit, how high might the death toll have been? How high could it get if a lower section of the North Tower was struck?
 
If the 9/11 hijackers targeted federal government buildings around Washington DC, particularly the White House and Capitol, who knows what kind of draconian counter-terrorism laws that a government with a very personal, vengeful motive would come up with?
 
If the Capitol had indeed been hit, how high might the death toll have been? How high could it get if a lower section of the North Tower was struck?

I've seen 50,000 as the worst-possible-case scenario for the WTC, based on the total number of people who would be in the buildings in the middle of the day, not sure about the Capitol. You could easily have a death toll in the five digits by moving the time of the attacks back a few hours.
 
If the towers were hit a few hours later, the death toll would have been much worse. Same if the Capitol hosted a joint session of congress. But the problem is that later flights could have been more crowded and a hijacking could have been foiled. More planes? Sure, that adds to the destruction, but the terrorists only had staffing for four that day. Perhaps the fourth plane could start in the west and hit either the Golden Gate Bridge or the power substation below Hoover Dam? Not to many direct fatalities below the dam but 2 gigawatts of hydropower with no place to go is going to have consequences. That's a lot of power to take off of the grid. Vegas goes dark.
 
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