An astonishing new video of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York has emerged online more than 20 years after the tragic events of September 11, 2001.
The never-before-seen clip, which is almost nine minutes long, was shared on YouTube by Kevin Westley last week and since then has been viewed more than 522,000 times.
It shows a previously unseen angle of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center's South Tower, seventeen minutes after the North Tower was hit by American Airlines flight 11.
The video is shot from a boat, looking up at the towers from amongst a crowd of shocked onlookers.
The first portion of the video focusses on the fire in the north tower, zooming on sheets of paper dancing in the updraught of the flames.
Then at the two-minute mark the video camera pans around in time to capture the second plane flying in over the water before colliding with the South Tower, to screams of horror from the crowd.
Some commenters on the video questioned why it had taken so long for this person to release the footage.
One person asked: "Why did it take Kevin over 20 years to upload the best quality video of the 9/11 attacks?"
In a post alongside the video, uploader Kevin Westley explained: “I posted this video in the 2000s but accidentally left it private for until now. I noticed the video was private and made it public.”
In the long post Kevin shared his thoughts about witnessing the awful attack on 9/11 and spoke poignantly of his subsequent tour of duty in the 2003 Iraq war as an aircraft commander flying combat missions.
“In an instant I saw 2,763 die. 25,000 injured,” he said, recalling the horror of the New York attacks.
“As I was caught in the dust cloud of the collapse, I remember seeing a picture of a child (and am now wondering) if I now was looking at an orphan."
Speaking of his time serving during the Iraq war, declared by the US in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Kevin said: “When I flew the rotator into Iraq, the guy that sat next to me died in a mortar attack the next day. That was my welcome to Iraq.”
He added: “Some days my sleep was interrupted by incoming mortar fire, with one time gravel spraying against my tent woke me up.
“As one of the officers, I would often draw funerary detail. As they wheeled the coffins into or out of the aircraft, I would wonder did they have a wife? Kids? Have their parents been notified yet?”
After talking through his feelings in the form of notes from a service he led, Kevin draws a heartbreaking conclusion: “In war a piece of our soul is lost on the battlefield and it can never be replaced in this life.”
