ERROR: 'The C-Ring Punch-Out Hole Was Made by a Warhead'

The Pentagon crash punctured walls both in the building's outer facade and in walls facing an interior courtyard. The most prominent interior puncture is in the inward-facing wall of the C-ring, and is referred to as the C-ring punch-out hole.

The C-ring punch-out hole is frequently cited as evidence that a dense "warhead", from a missile or cruise missile, was used in the attack. According to the argument, the object that produced the hole had to travel through five masonry walls: The facade and inward-facing wall of the E-ring, two walls of the D-ring, and two walls of the C-ring. That would seem to be too much material for any component from a passenger jet to penetrate.

This argument is based on a misunderstanding of the Pentagon's design. In fact, the light wells between the C- and D-ring and D- and E-ring are only three stories deep. The first and second stories span the distance between the Pentagon's facade and the punctured C-ring wall, which faces a ground-level courtyard. There are no masonry walls in this space, only load-bearing columns. Thus it would be possible for an aircraft part that breached the facade to travel through this area on the ground floor, miss the columns, and puncture the C-ring wall without having encountering anything more than unsubstantial gypsum walls and furniture in-between.

These sections of the Pentagon show that the light wells between all but one pair of adjacent rings only went down to the base of the third floor. Thus, contrary to frequent assumptions, the first-floor span between the E-ring facade and the exterior wall of the C-ring punctured by the 'punch-out' hole was not interrupted by any masonry walls.