Posted on 09/11/2014 10:43:28 AM PDT by lbryce
One of the first two U.S. combat pilots in the air on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 took off from Andrews Air Force Base in an F-16 with a mission to bring down United Flight 93 — and without any missiles or ammunition.
“We wouldn’t be shooting it down. We’d be ramming the aircraft,” Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney said describing her orders to The Washington Post. “I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot.”
The fourth recently identified hijacked plane appeared to be on a heading for Washington, and there was no time to arm the base’s fighter aircraft before Penney and her commanding officer took off to intercept the rogue Boeing 757 passenger plane.
“We had to protect the airspace any way we could,” Penney said.
Penney, the first female F-16 pilot of the D.C. Air National Guard’s 121st Fighter Squadron, had just completed two weeks of combat training on that historic Tuesday, and the bases’s fighters were still equipped with dummy ammunition. According to the report, there were no armed aircraft ready for immediate scramble over post-Cold War Washington in the fall of 2001.
The third plane had just struck the Pentagon and the base was at least an hour away from arming combat-ready aircraft, with the fourth already thought to have been identified.
“I’m going to go for the cockpit,” Col. Marc Sasseville told Penney as they donned their flight suits.
“I’ll take the tail,” Penney replied.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
LOL!
Great! our nations capital has/had no armed aircraft on the ready? What kind of fools run this country?
/sarc
“What kind of fools run this country?”
I meant to say... Is this a serious question?
I agree with you, but how much did it end up costing
to not be on alert?
While I agree with you, the first thing that falls off a budget is 'preventive maintenance' especially the kind that implies we aren't at peace. Look at SAC as an example.
HA!
Here is my totally unofficial two cents:
The F16s from DC are mud movers not air to air units. They were the ones you saw out of the AF One windows. The real air combat Falcons flying escort were not visible to the reporters on AFOne. They came out of Ellington Field in Houston and went supersonic over the Gulf to pick up the Pres. And go with them to Barksdale first and then on to Offutt. Later on to Andrews.
During the Cold War we had something like 28 bases with alert flights around CONUS. After the first Gulf War and then the Clinton regime they were down to seven. My remembrance of some is Otis Mass F15s/ Homestead Fla F16 s/ Ellington F16s/Alamogordo F16s/ I think Davis-Monthan F16s/ somewhere on the West Coast.
Logically one would think that the First Fighter Wing with F 15s at Langley AFB, Va. Would have some rolr for security of the DC area.
Exactly, escorts don't fly formation with the HVT.
Why, for the love of Mike, did we not put F-16’s into the air with missiles and ammunition?
In for a penny, in for a pound.
IIRC the East Coast armed alert on 9-11 consisted of 2 F-15Cs at Otis AFB Cape Cod and two F-16s at Langley (det from the Happy Hooligans) There was probably two armed birds in FL as well. About 20 minutes after my Dulles Corridor employer told us to go home (right after the first tower fell) I witnessed (heard) the booms of two aircraft passing overhead supersonically in the vicinity of Burke Lake Road on Fairfax County Parkway in VA, believed they were birds out of Langley going North.
The issue is that NORAD was looking outward while Flight 93 approached from the interior. The East Coast was defended appropriately for the anticipated threat. Unfortunately the threat that showed up wasn’t anticipated.
And in the 6 day war Israeli aircrafr returning from strike missions were rearmed and refuelled in under 8 minutes.
Something we do as well during war, this was peace.
Active duty/Retiree ping.
Good post.
I know that the F15s over NYC were from Otis. Don’t know anything about Langley that day. The birds from Holloman and I think DM were from Houston. I believe all alert flights in CONUS were Air Guard.
Hopefully things have been improved some.
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