[Shalmaneser]

"It was clear that... as you said... we would take the aircraft down."

"We wouldn't be shooting it down. We would be ramming the aircraft.... because we didn't have weapons on board to be able to shoot the airplane down."

"Sass looked at me and said 'I'll ram the cockpit.'"

"I had made the decision that I would take the tail off the aircraft."

Harrowing minute-by-minute first-person recount of the planned intercept of UAL 93 on 11 September 2001.

[Shalmaneser]

“The people on Flight 93 were heroes... but they were going to die no matter what.”

[hamboy]

On Sept. 11, 2001, it was repeatedly said at KFI 640 Khz AM news talk radio in Los Angeles that USAF F-16 shot down flight 93.

[prisoner6]

In the recently released "new" video there still remains something I don't quite understand. Here's a grab from the video.

First of all I and many others recall seeing the video before. If it wasn't the video it was a still from it.

Secondly something seems wrong with the smoke trail. I can't put my finger on it but it seems quite a bit different from another crash I had seen live - flight 427 in Hopewell Township, near Pittsburgh.

Flight 427 crashed literally in the backyard of a very good friend. While I lived a good distance away I was able to see the smoke after climbing on my roof.

It didn't look anything like the flight 93 smoke. It was thinner and no "mushroom" from the impact.

Maybe it's the distances involved that create the discrepancy or maybe the weather conditions, I don't know.

I'm NOT claiming 93 was forced down. Instead I'm wondering if the air frame was stressed and the plane started breaking apart. Or maybe there was a bomb of some sort.

And one other thing that REALLY has me wondering about the entire incident. I work in news at a radio station and had just returned home from the overnight shift. The phone rang and because I live very close to the station - 3 actually - I was put on standby.

The next phone call came from a retired WWII air force Col friend who told me to turn on the TV, the US was under attack - from muslims. At that time I don't believe the media had said it was muslims. He never told me how he knew. He also warned me - and I later heard in the initial, ongoing coverage that a plane was spotted circling Pittsburgh and there were concerns it might be targeting the USX tower.

Hearing a plane I ran out onto my deck and saw a plane flying erratically, wings dipping and in a slip situation. PIA was not very far from our house and I used to sit on the deck and watch planes in the pattern. This plane was going in the exact OPPOSITE direction of the pattern at about 2 thousand feet and heading toward Pittsburgh, about 5 miles away.

After it passed it made a very sudden, "jerky" turn away from downtown and toward the southeast. Again not something I had EVER seen a plane in the pattern do. That direction is toward Somerset and the 93 crash site as well as DC.

Other people have mentioned seeing something similar in the same place and hearing the reports of a plane circling Pittsburgh BUT in the official flight recording at the time Flight 93 was over Pittsburgh it was supposed to have been at 35 thousand feet.

The only thing I can think of is that because all planes were under orders to immediately land, and because PIA was most likely very busy, a passenger jet was making for Allegheny County airport which is also in the same SE direction. I think it would be a stretch to land a plane that size at the county but not impossible.

In any case the reports of a plane circling Pittsburgh disappeared and except for this post I have pretty much dismissed it.

[EternalVigilance]

Worth every minute.

Wonderful lady. Great patriot. May God richly bless her and her family.

[21twelve]

Thanks!!!

I sat in rapt attention to every, perfect, intelligent, and courageous word she spoke.

Unbelievable. I'm not sure I can get my kids to sit through this - but Maj. Heather “Lucky” Penney is one fine American.

Seriously - it is almost unbelievable how she comes across. She has it all.

[dayglored]

Sorry to sound stupid here but.... I followed the link to the CSPAN page, but I can't figure out how to view the video of the interview. There doesn't seem to be a link to either a local embedded video, or a YouTube video, or anything.

I don't have a TV. Am I just S.O.L.?

[WSGilcrest]

Fascinating woman, Major Penney.

[depenzz]

In the summer of 2010, my grandson ran heavy equipment with the construction company that did the preliminary work for the memorial park and they stayed near Shanksville. He told me that most of the people they (construction workers) talked to in restaurants and around where they stayed told them the plane was shot down.
Again, just locals opinion and nothing to confirm it but their eyesight.

[Portcall24]

Years ago there was an established tactic for this. It was called a “Slide By” and the way it was done was the fighter after expending all ordanance on Soviet bombers was instructed to pull up next to the fuselage just forward of a wing and then pull backwards along the fuselage until the wing was pulled off the target.