Posted on 09/10/2016 7:44:20 PM PDT by Leaning Right
When Heather Penney entered the cockpit of her F-16 fighter jet on Sept. 11, 2001, she knew it was unlikely she would ever survive. Her task? Take down the United Airlines Flight 93 that was unaccounted for after two planes struck the Twin Towers.
She would have to do so in an unarmed fighter jet because equipping the plane with missiles would require too much time. Her plane would be the weapon; it was essentially a suicide mission. Penney never completed the job, though, because Flight 93 crashed as brave passengers wrestled control from the hijackers while it flew over Pennsylvania.
(Excerpt) Read more at popsugar.com ...
Oh, great — now she’s working for Lockheed on the F-35 project. I’m sensing a common thread in this whole story. She apparently makes a career out of working with Air Force hardware that doesn’t function the way it’s intended to.
If the last fifteen years haven’t taught us to question everything that comes out of our own government, then what did we learn?
You’re welcome.
I’d read the story about Ms Penney years before, but some of the posters on this thread caused me pause, so I decided to find another source other than myself to substantiate her story.
It was 15 years ago, not 15 since.
I don’t simply balk at government just to balk at it. There has to be a reason. One cannot simply have everything armed to the teeth at all times - although I do wonder why so few fighters were authorized. (However, I do not think this includes NG units. They may also have been ready or available.)
I don't balk at government just to balk at it, but I also don't give it any more credence than the comic pages of my local newspaper.
Well she is one person who can say her life was saved on 9 11 by passengers on flt 93. Everyone else would have been a hypothetical save.
A government that passed the Patriot Act and created the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after a terrorist attack that the U.S. Department of Defense couldn’t even respond to with an armed fighter jet over our nation’s capital should never be trusted.
Thanks.....kind of destroys those who claim that flight 93 was shot down by our fighters doesn’t it?
:-P
Maybe that's why they're floating this story now.
This does not pass the “smell” test.
Say it had no missiles, jet engines are very delicate. A few rounds from the cannons will take out the engines. The jet will go down without engines. No missiles required.
The added plus to this approach is that despite repeated warnings, watching your jet engines explode 1 by one is a remarkably convincing argument.
Exactly. What a load of crap. Heroic were the firemen who ran back into the World Trade Center. Heroic were the passengers on Flight 93. Heroic isn’t someone who flew a plane and that is it. She is heroic because she had to think about crashing her plane in a suicide mission but never did it?
I think the thousands of Marines who had to go door to door in Fallujah, pausing outside doors, and smashing them in and running into the unknown displayed far more heroism and courage, but we don’t hear about them, because they are men and are lower level enlisted.
I don’t know if the pilot herself is trumpeting her horn, so I don’t necessarily have an issue with her. She probably went up thinking she would have to do what needs doing. I have an issue with the people trumpeting her as some kind of hero. I felt bad for Jessica Lynch. These same people were making her into a female version of Sgt. York, when it was nothing like that at all. She didn’t want them to make a big deal out of it, but there were a lot of people who wanted to use her as a prop for the “female warrior” crap.
The same people trumpeting this pilot as a hero for flying her plane.
I did too, recently. It brought back a lot of emotion and anger in me. It felt as fresh as the time it all happened.
Weird question
I just sent this link to various family members and urged them to look carefully at who these brave Americans were.
PING!
Remember the “threat” environment on the morning of 11 September 2011. Al Qaeda was on the march, and it had been allowed to fester under Bill Clinton’s watch. We knew the group had a long-standing interest in some sort of “aviation spectacular,” but the possibility was down-played. And of course, the FBI famously rejected that memo from a field agent in Minneapolis, alerting her superiors about Arab men in local flight schools who had no interest in learning to land the planes they were piloting.
From an air defense standpoint, the traditional threat (from long-range Russian bombers) had essentially evaporated. TU-95 flights against Alaska, the west coast, Pacific Islands and the U.S. east coast occurred rarely, and there was often a gap of years between those missions, since the Russian military was essentially bankrupt.
Against that backdrop, the number of fighters on air defense alert was decreased and many were placed on a lower alert posture—including the removal of air-to-air missiles. Air defense of the CONUS became a lower-priority mission, with less training and fewer personnel.
And, making matters worse, there was little joint practice with the FAA; simply stated, no one believed the scenario that unfolded on 9-11 was possible, so everyone was completely unprepared for it. Watch the various documentaries that include radio traffic from the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), which was assigned to defend the airspace in which the attacks occurred. They were quickly overwhelmed, not just due to a lack of resources, but because they were in uncharted waters. No one had ever conceived—let alone practiced—for the events that unfolded on that September morning 15 years ago.
well, i do. She was ready to do her job.
The thinking prior to 911 was there was no reason to have armed fighter on standby in NEADS (Northeastern Air Defense Sector, now called EADS as SEADS was disbanded). Threats were expected to be recognized in time to arm the planes.
That means the munitions (missile and gun) were under lock and key and there was no immediate plan to support arming under a 911 scenario.
Scrambling armed aircraft was a cold war action, not something regularly practiced in 2001 in the NEADS.
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