What is the Pentagon? Detailed analysis

The article describes what the Pentagon is, when this building was created, what roles it performs and who is its head.

Services

With the development of human society, there gradually emerged a need for various kinds of public services and organizations. And probably, the greatest attention was always paid to those services that deal with ensuring the security of the country and its citizens, for example, the army, law enforcement agencies, etc. And the organization of their work, control and all other things is usually handled by the Ministry of Defense. In the US, this is the Pentagon.

This building of a peculiar shape eventually became very recognizable, and its name was firmly included in the everyday speech of servicemen as a designation of the Ministry of Defense. But what is the Pentagon when it was built? We will talk about this.

History

As already mentioned, the Pentagon is the headquarters of the US Department of Defense. The name comes from the original form of a regular pentagon. And metonymically, it has long been designated by the Ministry of Defense as among the US military, as well as among foreign journalists, observers, military specialists and others. So now we know what the Pentagon is.

This building is also the largest office in the world, and its construction was completed in 1943. In terms of dimensions, the length of each side is 281 meters, the total perimeter is 1405 meters, and the total length of the corridors is 28 kilometers.

The project was designed by architect Bergstrom, and the plan of a new, very roomy and carefully thought-out building was ordered directly by the US Department of Defense. So we sorted out the question of what the Pentagon is.

Features of construction and interesting facts

Despite the general conviction, there is no sacral meaning of the pentagonal form of the building, just in the place where it was originally intended to be erected, had its own peculiarities of terrain, terrain, location of roads and everything else that led the architects to create such a building. However, before the immediate start of construction, the dislocation of the future building of the Ministry of Defense was decided to be replaced. And although there were no restrictions on the new site in the form of external objects, it was decided to leave the pentagonal form as before, so the modern Pentagon turned out to be. The building is recognizable, probably all over the world.

The central lawn of the courtyard has the unofficial name "Ground Zero". This name was given to him by Ministry employees during the Cold War, and it is somewhat ironic, denoting the target for the nuclear missiles of the Soviet Union.

It is also often possible to find the question of where the Pentagon is located. And it is located in the US, in Virginia, next to Washington.

And by the way, the layout of the building was created during the time of racial segregation, and the final stages of construction - after the repeal of this law. And because the number of toilet rooms in the end was exceeded twice, because some of them were intended exclusively for use by blacks. And this fact is probably the most frequent, which is mentioned in the stories about the Pentagon. The building is famous for such a history.

Terrorist act of 11 September 2001

About the tragic events of this date, probably, almost everyone knows. However, in the first place, it is associated precisely with the way planes crashed into skyscraper buildings. But the Pentagon has rammed another one of the hijacked planes, few remember it.

On September 11, the plane crashed into the left outer wing of the building, where at that time the headquarters of the Navy command was located. Part of the wall collapsed, as well as severe damage was caused by fire. As a result of all this, the number of victims was 125 people, 64 of them were passengers of the captured aircraft.

Approximately 20 minutes after the direct collision, another part of the wall collapsed, which greatly slowed down the fire and rescue operations. But for all the tragedy of the victims there could be much more. The thing is that shortly before the terrorist attack in that part of the building, repairs were barely completed, and there were few workers there.

Later, after all the restoration work in the newly rebuilt wing was erected a memorial in memory of those killed on that fateful day.

Head of the Pentagon

The head of the Pentagon is US Secretary of Defense Ashton Baldwin Carter. This post he took on February 17, 2015. Carter is the twenty-fifth under the account of the Minister of Defense of the United States, to this post he was introduced by Barack Obama himself.

Carter has a bachelor's degree in theoretical physics, and many of his rivals have stated that the scientist of it would have turned out to be better than the politician.

After the outbreak of the military conflict in the east of Ukraine, Carter repeatedly stated that Russia should be pressured of various kinds, since, in his opinion, it was she who fueled the war and the unstable situation in Kiev.