Posted on 09/12/2014 5:52:45 PM PDT by Kaslin
On September 11, 2001, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney had one harrowing mission: bring down United 93. She took off from Andrews Air Force Base, but without weapons. No missiles, machine guns, etc.; she would have to ram into the commercial airliner to save American lives.
“I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot,” she said. The 13th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has come and gone; we will always remember those who have died. But this story of a fighter pilot who was willing to sacrifice herself to save others is surely worth the read. For years, she never gave her account of what happened; she later escorted Air Force One back to D.C. Now, she’s a mother of two daughters and the head of the F-35 program at Lockheed Martin (via Washington Post):
Because the surprise attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her commanding officer went up to fly their jets straight into a Boeing 757.
“We wouldn’t be shooting it down. We’d be ramming the aircraft,” Penney recalls of her charge that day. “I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot.”
…
But 10 years later, she is reflecting on one of the lesser-told tales of that endlessly examined morning: how the first counterpunch the U.S. military prepared to throw at the attackers was effectively a suicide mission.
“We had to protect the airspace any way we could,” she said last week in her office at Lockheed Martin, where she is a director in the F-35 program.
…
She was a rookie in the autumn of 2001, the first female F-16 pilot they’d ever had at the 121st Fighter Squadron of the D.C. Air National Guard. She had grown up smelling jet fuel. Her father flew jets in Vietnam and still races them. Penney got her pilot’s licence when she was a literature major at Purdue. She planned to be a teacher. But during a graduate program in American studies, Congress opened up combat aviation to women and Penney was nearly first in line.
…
A third plane hit the Pentagon, and almost at once came word that a fourth plane could be on the way, maybe more. The jets would be armed within an hour, but somebody had to fly now, weapons or no weapons.
“Lucky, you’re coming with me,” barked Col. Marc Sasseville.
…
“We don’t train to bring down airliners,” said Sasseville, now stationed at the Pentagon. “If you just hit the engine, it could still glide and you could guide it to a target. My thought was the cockpit or the wing.”
He also thought about his ejection seat. Would there be an instant just before impact?
“I was hoping to do both at the same time,” he says. “It probably wasn’t going to work, but that’s what I was hoping.”
Penney worried about missing the target if she tried to bail out.
…
It would be hours before Penney and Sasseville learned that United 93 had already gone down in Pennsylvania, an insurrection by hostages willing to do just what the two Guard pilots had been willing to do: Anything. And everything.
“The real heroes are the passengers on Flight 93 who were willing to sacrifice themselves,” Penney says. “I was just an accidental witness to history.”
It may have been ARROGANCE before, it’s DELIBERATE NEGLIGENCE now.
None of those presidents before wanted to see the USA destroyed.
This current one does.
i read this many years ago. scary to be put in such a position. i have no doubt both pilots would have done it.
That’s terrible. My son was one of the few surviving crew members of those two Navy planes that collided over the Pacific in 1991. He had given up his slot to somebody who needed the flying hours.
“It may have been ARROGANCE before, it’s DELIBERATE NEGLIGENCE now.”
Hard to argue that. But there is still a lot of ARROGANCE on the right...the people, some who post on this site, seem to be stuck in the early 90s, when the US had a strong, large, and modern military, and the Russians couldn’t even pay their soldiers or sail their ships.
Now, 20 years later, it has COMPLETELY FLIPPED over, yet some IDIOTS on our side still can’t seem to comprehend that.
What is this, a naivete' test?
Good Lord.
I’m a bit foggy, but I think the Mass ANG scrambled 2 alert F-15’s from cape cod. They were vectored onto flt 93. They were armed and cleared to shoot. The airliner crashed prior to their arrival.
I am a former alert/interceptor pilot that sat a lot of alert prior to 9/11 with fully armed planes.
There are a lot of thoughts that come to mind and you touch on some of the ones I had thought about. I agree with you.
I believe the two F-15As that scrambled from Cape Cod were armed. Still damned shameful.
It was not sop then to keep hot armed jets on the flight line ready to go. The story I read right here on FR back then is exactly the same account I read in 2001, other than they named the pilots in this story. They were ready to ram that flight if it had gotten close to Washington. The hero's on Flight 93 saved them from that horrible duty.
The tin-foil hat people should all be ashamed, but the reality is they are too damed stupid to feel shame.
I wasn’t too thrilled with our preparedness. It was shocking how unprepared we were.
Seriously, who didn’t know they could do this sort of thing? You may not be ready to protect Siloam Springs, Arkansas, but New York City? Washington, D.C.? The freakin’ Pentagon?
Come on folks.
Just researched it a bit. Yes, 2 F-16’s from Langley were initially sent toward flt 93. But two armed F-15 from Otis ANG were also airborne and would have been able to shoot down the airliner.
Bottom line, no ramming required. Also, no way flt 93 was going to make it’s planned target. White house or capital bldg.
Thanks for the comments. That would have been interesting to be that close to the base and watch what you could.
I think you misunderstand my intent here.
I don’t know her or the full story. If I’m going to get worked up over some of the claims, and respond angrily, I want to allow for a disclaimer, if this is revealed to be bogus later on.
I’m not accusing her of anything, but I also don’t want to charge others incorrectly either.
I have no reason to doubt her story. I have nothing against her. If true, I am very angry she was put in that position.
I would disagree with that.
Years ago the AF had a maneuver to do exactly this. It was called a “slide-by” and was part of Air Defense Command’s (ADC) plan to defend America against a Soviet Bison and Bear attack. After all weapons had been expended by the interceptor pilot he was to be vectored to a position parallel to the flight path of the bomber. The interceptor pilot would then pull back and into the wing root of the bomber to bring it down. I know because I was one of the controllers.
“The tin-foil hat people should all be ashamed, but the reality is they are too damed stupid to feel shame. “
—
I agree. There is a cadre of people, even here, who see conspiracy and deviousness in just about everything.
What a way to live.
.
Except if the Clinton administration ordered Norad to downgrade our defenses. I’m not convinced they didn’t.
That administration was clueless on Military matters. Heck, a lot of others too.
If true, it would be morally reprhensible to kill the innocents on that plane directly even to save other lives on the ground. Like Americans do not do intentional, direct evil that good may come of it
” The interceptor pilot would then pull back and into the wing root of the bomber to bring it down. I know because I was one of the controllers.’
Oh,lord. I had to look up “wing root”,but the bravery of people prepared to do something like this astonishes me.
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I am sure the first amendment provides me the right to voice my opinion
It doesn’t grant me protection from the hostility of those who take a differing opinion as their right to attack me.
If it were important, it would be in there. I can take it
The fact is that whoever knows the classified info on this has enough sense of his security clearance to not discuss it here on FR
So the fact is that all the talk on this here is opinion.
We do not know
What we do know is that whether or not this is true, this woman is a
Blabber mouth
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