Flight 93's estimated speed at the point of impact was 975kmh. In its final moments, it spun 180 degrees, hitting the ground upside down and at a 45-degree angle.
To the casual eye, it looked like solid, consolidated ground but in reality the reclaimed expanse was loose and uncompacted. When flight 93 hit the ground, the cockpit and first-class cabin broke off, scattered into millions of fragments that spread and flew like shrapnel into and through the trees 20 metres away.
A section of the engine, weighing almost a tonne, was found on the bed of a catchment pond, 200 metres downhill.
Some of the plane's cargo was found intact � 200 kilograms of mail in the hold, a Bible, its cover scorched but its pages undamaged and later, as the excavation began, the passport of one of the four hijackers.
The rest of the 757 continued its downward passage, the sandy loam closing behind it like the door of a tomb. Eventually these pieces and its human cargo � the heroes and the cowards, as a message left at the nearby temporary memorial put it � came to rest against solid rock, 23 metres below the surface.