September 11, 2001. It started as a "severe clear" day in New York City. That’s a pilot term for perfectly blue skies with zero visibility issues. People were voting in the primary elections. Commuters were grabbing coffee at the Path station. Then, the world broke. If you’re asking when was the twin towers hit, you’re likely looking for more than just a timestamp on a Wikipedia page. You’re looking for the sequence of a morning that fundamentally shifted how we live, travel, and even talk to each other.
It wasn’t one single event. It was a rolling trauma.
The first strike happened at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 carrying 81 passengers and 11 crew members, slammed into the North Tower (1 World Trade Center). It hit between floors 93 and 99. In that instant, the building became a chimney. Because the plane hit the center of the tower, it severed all three emergency stairwells. Anyone above the 92nd floor was effectively trapped. There was no way down.
The Second Strike and the Shift in Reality
For about seventeen minutes, the world thought it was an accident. News anchors speculated about a "small twin-engine plane" or a catastrophic mechanical failure. I remember the footage. It looked like a freak occurrence, a horrible mistake.
Then came 9:03 a.m.
United Airlines Flight 175 curved over the New York harbor and sliced into the South Tower (2 World Trade Center) between floors 77 and 85. This was the moment everything changed. Millions saw it live on television. It wasn't an accident. It was an attack.
Unlike the North Tower, the South Tower was hit at an angle. This proved to be a grimly significant detail. One stairwell, Stairwell A, remained miraculously intact. While the South Tower was hit second, it actually collapsed first, at 9:59 a.m., after burning for 56 minutes. The North Tower stood until 10:28 a.m.
When Was the Twin Towers Hit: Minutes That Felt Like Hours
The timeline is deceptively short when you look at it on paper.
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- 8:46 a.m. — North Tower hit.
- 9:03 a.m. — South Tower hit.
- 9:59 a.m. — South Tower collapses.
- 10:28 a.m. — North Tower collapses.
But inside those buildings? Seconds were lifetimes.
The heat was the real enemy. We often talk about the impact, but the jet fuel was the catalyst. It didn't "melt" the steel beams—a common misconception people still argue about on Reddit—but it did weaken them. Steel loses about 50% of its strength at 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit. The jet fuel acted as an accelerant, igniting office furniture, paper, and carpeting. The structural integrity simply gave way under the weight of the upper floors.
The Ground Zero Perspective
Down on the street, it was chaos. Debris rained down. People were running toward the water, toward the Brooklyn Bridge, anywhere away from the dust. The "dust" is a polite word for what was actually in the air: pulverized concrete, asbestos, glass, and lead.
First responders from the FDNY and NYPD were heading into the buildings while everyone else was heading out. Joseph Pfeifer, an FDNY Battalion Chief, was one of the first on the scene. He had been nearby investigating a gas leak when he saw the first plane go over. He went into the North Tower lobby and set up a command post. His brother, Kevin, was also a firefighter who went up those stairs and never came down.
We lost 343 firefighters that day. 23 NYPD officers. 37 Port Authority officers.
The Science of the Collapse
Why did they fall the way they did? Some people expected them to topple over like trees. Instead, they "pancaked."
Once the floor trusses failed at the impact zone, the mass of the top sections of the buildings began to drop. There is no structural design on Earth meant to stop a dozen floors of a skyscraper falling onto the floor below it. It's a kinetic energy nightmare. As each floor hit the one beneath it, the load doubled, tripled, and then became unstoppable.
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The North Tower actually stayed up longer because it was hit head-on, so the load was distributed more evenly for a while. The South Tower was hit toward the corner, putting immense torsional (twisting) stress on the remaining supports. That's why it went first despite being hit second.
The Flight 77 and Flight 93 Connection
While NYC was burning, the attack was still unfolding elsewhere. At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
Then there was Flight 93.
This is the one that really gets to me. The passengers on United 93 found out what was happening in New York via air-phones. They realized their plane was a missile. Todd Beamer, Sandy Bradshaw, Mark Bingham—they fought back. At 10:03 a.m., the plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was likely headed for the Capitol Building or the White House.
What Most People Forget About the Timeline
Most people focus on the big two towers. But World Trade Center 7 also fell.
WTC 7 was a 47-story building nearby. It wasn't hit by a plane. It caught fire from the debris of the North Tower and burned for seven hours. At 5:20 p.m., it collapsed. This has fueled conspiracy theories for decades, but the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) report basically explained it as "thermal expansion." The steel beams expanded, pushed a girder off its seat, and triggered a progressive collapse.
It was the first time a steel-framed skyscraper collapsed primarily due to fire.
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The Aftermath and Modern E-E-A-T Standards
If you look at the reports from the 9/11 Commission or the investigations by groups like NIST, the level of detail is staggering. We know the tail numbers of the planes. We know the names of the hijackers. We know the exact temperature the jet fuel reached.
But for those who lived it, the question of when was the twin towers hit isn't just about a clock. It's about a "before" and an "after."
The legacy of that morning is everywhere. It's in the way we take our shoes off at the airport. It's in the Department of Homeland Security. It’s in the "Tribute in Light" that shines every September.
Practical Insights and How to Learn More
If you are visiting New York or researching the event, don't just look at the dates. Look at the stories.
- Visit the 9/11 Memorial & Museum: They have the "Last Column" and the "Slurry Wall." These aren't just artifacts; they are engineering marvels that survived the collapse.
- Read the 9/11 Commission Report: It’s actually surprisingly readable for a government document. It reads like a thriller, and it's devastating.
- Check out the Voices Center for Resilience: They focus on the long-term health effects for survivors and first responders. Many are still getting sick from the air they breathed in October and November of 2001.
Honestly, the best way to understand the impact is to look at the "Reflecting Absence" pools where the towers once stood. They are the exact footprints of the buildings. When you stand there, you realize how massive those structures were—and how haunting it is that they were erased in less than two hours.
Next time you see a clear blue sky in September, you'll probably think of that morning. Most of us do. The timeline is fixed in history, but the ripple effects are still moving. If you're looking for deep dives into the architectural failures, search for the NIST NCSTAR 1 report. It's the definitive technical deep-dive into the collapses.
To honor the history properly, focus on verified archives like the National September 11 Memorial & Museum digital collection rather than speculative social media threads. True history is found in the flight data recorders and the testimony of those who were on the stairs.