Forgotten 9/11 video reveals rare angle of second plane hitting tower

A remarkable view that was hidden for years

A remarkable piece of 9/11 footage has given the world another haunting view of the moment the second hijacked aircraft slammed into the World Trade Center's South Tower.

The nearly nine-minute recording was made by Kevin Westley from a boat in New York Harbor as the attacks unfolded on September 11, 2001.

What makes the footage unusual is the angle.

The camera is looking towards the burning towers from the water, capturing the second aircraft approaching from a perspective quite different from the familiar television footage.

And remarkably, the recording apparently remained private for years.

The moment the second plane appears

At first, Westley's camera concentrates on the North Tower, already engulfed in smoke and flames after American Airlines Flight 11 struck it.

Sheets of paper can be seen drifting through the air.

People on the boat are watching the extraordinary scene unfolding across the water.

Then the camera moves.

And suddenly United Airlines Flight 175 appears in the sky.

The aircraft races towards the South Tower before disappearing into the building in a huge fireball.

The screams of witnesses can be heard as the reality of what they have just seen sinks in.

The footage captures not simply the impact, but the reaction of ordinary people witnessing the second attack in real time.

It was hiding in plain sight

There is no elaborate mystery behind why the footage was not widely known.

Westley says he uploaded the video years ago but accidentally left it marked as private.

He eventually discovered the mistake and made it public.

The footage was published publicly on YouTube in February 2022.

That means the remarkable recording has actually been available for several years — but it continues to attract attention because of its unusual perspective and the extraordinary clarity of parts of the recording.

The ferry view

The video was filmed from a vessel in Upper New York Bay, with sources identifying the location as the Staten Island Ferry area.

Several people were filming from the waterfront and ferries that morning, producing different perspectives of the attacks.

That helps explain why another unusual recording can still emerge from an event that has been documented more extensively than almost any other tragedy in modern history.

The second plane was captured by numerous cameras, but every viewpoint tells a slightly different story.

A witness carries the memories into war

Westley's own account adds another dimension to the footage.

He recalls being caught in the dust cloud when the towers collapsed and wondering whether the people around him had survived.

The experience stayed with him.

Years later, he became involved in military operations in Iraq, where he served as an aircraft commander conducting combat missions.

He recalled arriving in Iraq and learning that the man who had sat beside him on the flight had been killed in a mortar attack the following day.

That was, he wrote, his welcome to Iraq.

From one war to another

Westley describes long nights planning and flying combat missions, incoming mortar fire and the grim responsibility of dealing with the dead.

As an officer, he was sometimes involved in funeral details.

He remembered seeing coffins being moved and wondering about the families waiting at home.

Had the dead soldier left a wife?

Children?

Had their parents been told?

His reflections eventually led him to a devastating conclusion about the cost of war:

“In war a piece of our soul is lost on the battlefield.”

The images we thought we had seen

September 11 has been photographed and filmed from almost every conceivable angle.

The first plane striking the North Tower.

The second aircraft disappearing into the South Tower.

People running through Lower Manhattan.

Firefighters climbing towards the burning buildings.

The towers collapsing.

Yet the footage from Westley offers something different.

It puts the viewer among the witnesses.

You see the burning North Tower.

You hear people reacting.

Then the second aircraft comes into view.

For a few seconds, you are looking at the disaster through the eyes of people who had no idea what was coming next.

The human cost remains

Almost 3,000 people were killed in the September 11 attacks.

Among them were 343 firefighters, many of whom entered the towers knowing they were heading into extraordinary danger.

Thousands more were injured, while many first responders later suffered serious illnesses connected to their work at Ground Zero.

The photographs of those firefighters became symbols of courage.

One famous image showed firefighter Mike Kehoe climbing the North Tower as civilians escaped down the stairs.

Kehoe survived.

Hundreds of his colleagues did not.

Another window into that terrible morning

The Westley footage doesn't reveal a new chapter of what happened on September 11.

But it does provide another human perspective on a moment the world has watched thousands of times.

A man standing on a boat pointed his camera towards the burning towers.

He kept filming.

The second plane appeared.

People screamed.

And then the world changed forever.

The extraordinary thing is that the recording then sat quietly, apparently hidden behind a private YouTube setting, for years before Westley realised what had happened.

More than two decades later, it remains a haunting reminder that even one of the most documented events in history can still reveal another view of the moment everything changed.

Original Content — Sources: The Daily Express and the original Kevin Westley YouTube footage. The video itself identifies Westley and contains his personal account; independent online records also place its public release in February 2022.

A sad day indeed.

And they’re still fools who believe explosives were planted by whoever.

15 minutes ago, HolmesEquivelant said:

A sad day indeed.

And they’re still fools who believe explosives were planted by whoever.

True.

Dick Cheney was happy to see so many foolish people who fell for this perhaps planted obfuscation (?), sure took the heat off him and others in pnac.

“A 2000 PNAC policy paper, written by a group that included senior Bush officials Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, said U.S. military transformation would likely be slow ‘absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.’ There is no evidence in that document that they called for creating such an attack.”

Amazing how a building could collapse directly down, at freefall speeds only an hour after being hit on the corner like that.

Also amazing how building 7 could collapse at freefall speeds neatly into its own footprint an hour after being hit by some debris from the towers.

Also amazing how the BBC reported building 7 had collapsed 20 minutes before it actually collapsed.

Weird...

16 minutes ago, JonnyF said:

Amazing how a building could collapse directly down, at freefall speeds only an hour after being hit on the corner like that.

Also amazing how building 7 could collapse at freefall speeds neatly into its own footprint an hour after being hit by some debris from the towers.

Also amazing how the BBC reported building 7 had collapsed 20 minutes before it actually collapsed.

Weird...

Structural engineer, are you? I'm guessing NO!

Some people seem to need to believe in conspiracies. Reality just isn't good enough for them, so idiocy comes to the fore.

As for Building 7, let's say, just for fun, the agency had its NY base in that building. Let's say the Chief of Base was a woman---we'll call her Mary Margaret---and she was on the phone to HQ when the first plane hit and her entire building shook, after being struck with debris. Mary- Margaret stayed on the phone for the next few hours. She watched the explosion when the second plane hit. She watched people jumping from the top floors of the North Tower, choosing that form of death rather than fire. She heard her own building rumbling as the debris had damaged the structure and she found out her building was also on fire. When the North Tower fell her building was damaged even more. She was ordered to evacuate all the staff. She saw the fires and the damage in her building as she fled. Many hours later, after the fire burned for nearly seven hours, her building---built over a central atrium---collapsed. It came as no surprise to her.

It still surprises you, as you seem to need to believe hundreds, possibly tens of thousands of people who would have to have been involved in any "inside job", have kept their silence for 25 years.

As for one terrorist's passport being found, that is not a surprise either. Lots of wallets and documents of victims were found during the cleanup. All the material taken from the site was gone over with a fine tooth comb, because people wanted to find all the human remains possible. The hundreds of other documents found were not reported, as they were victims, not terrorists. The terrorist's passport was noted because it was significant to the crime.

1 hour ago, Wingate said:

As for one terrorist's passport being found, that is not a surprise either.

Lol.

So the guy flying the plane that was engulfed in a massive ball of flames and a fire hot enough to melt steel, had on his person a passport that somehow dodged through all the flames and fell safely to the sidewalk. 😄

Sounds perfectly legit. 😄

3,000 people died in NY that day.

About 46,000 to 47,000 Afghan civilians died in Afghanistan in the following revenge attack

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_war_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%932021)), [2] (https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/afghanistan-47-600-civilians-killed-in-20-years-of-deadly-war/2219156)

The pilots were Saudi Arabian. No revenge attack there.

2 hours ago, JonnyF said:

Lol.

So the guy flying the plane that was engulfed in a massive ball of flames and a fire hot enough to melt steel, had on his person a passport that somehow dodged through all the flames and fell safely to the sidewalk. 😄

Sounds perfectly legit. 😄

If you want to believe idiotic conspiracies, knock yourself silly....or better put, knock yourself sillier.

6 hours ago, HolmesEquivelant said:

A sad day indeed.

And they’re still fools who believe explosives were planted by whoever.

So you calling out your own cult members, as the majority of the conspiracy theorists are MAGA's. There is one just 2 posts below your post

Some of the responses, by non-Americans, in this thread, deserve no reaction, supportive or otherwise. Absolutely disgusting.

12 minutes ago, Roadsternut said:

Some of the responses, by non-Americans, in this thread, deserve no reaction, supportive or otherwise. Absolutely disgusting.

Don't worry Roadsternut I got this one. It is indeed ridiculous that someone suggested the first and so far only use of NATO Article 5 was for a revenge attack.