“The irony of the situation was something Sato would never learn. Though there were numerous fighter aircraft based at Andrews, at Langley Air Force Base, at Patuxent River Naval Air Test Center, and at Oceana NAS, all within a hundred miles of Washington, it had never occurred to anyone to have a fighter aircraft aloft over the capital on any other night like this one…
“Sato brought his aircraft around at a painfully slow rate to simulate a crippled jumbo…He advanced his throttles, accelerating his aircraft up from approach speed of one-hundred sixty knots, holding to his altitude of one thousand feet for the moment…
Sato had been to Washington often and done all the usual tourist things, including visiting the Capitol Building more than once…he adjusted his flight path so that he was now roaring right up Pennsylvania Avenue, crossing the Anacostia River…
His last voluntary act was to select the point of impact, two thirds of the way up the stone steps. That would be just about perfect, he knew…
“Nearly three hundred tons of aircraft and fuel struck the east face of the building at a speed of three hundred knots. The aircraft disintegrated on impact.
No less fragile than a bird, its speed and mass had already fragmented the columns outside the walls. Next came the building itself. As soon as the wings broke up, the engines, the only really solid objects on the aircraft, shot forward, one of the actually smashing into and beyond the House Chamber.
The Capitol has no structural steel within its stone walls…
“The entire east face of the building’s southern half was smashed to gravel, which shot westward – but the real damage took a second or two more, barely time for the roof to start falling down on the nine hundred people in the chamber…
A second later it ignited from some spark or other, and an immense fireball engulfed everything inside and outside of the building. The volcanic flames reached out, seeking air and corridors that held it, forcing a pressure wave throughout the building, even into the basement.â€