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.”
Can we just back up a minute here and comment on this.
I’ll take her story at face value. It may not be true, but if it is, who made the decision for us to be defenseless in our own nation?
Boy I’d like to see the chain of command on that one, and prosecute anyone who allowed us to be that vulnerable.
That’s just criminal negligence. Makes me furious if true.
Wow! I read rumors of this at the time. I still remember when it was determined that there was one plane still on the loose. The others had already landed or were heading to ground. It was a truly horrifying moment.
And now the terrorists know that it takes an hour to arm our planes....and why are there no planes locked and loaded to be ready at a minute’s notice.
I don’t know if I believe all of this story; I think their mission was to blow the plane out of the sky but it sounds so much better to say, they would ram it and go down with the passengers...
I don’t buy it. And I know she should not be talking about it.
No.
I had a whole list, that I posted here between 9-12 and mid-October, 2001, of what should have been done right away on 9-12.
Item #1 was to confer a posthumous commission in the Unorganized Militia of the United States on Todd Morgan Beamer, so he would be eligible for the Medal of Honor.
Item #2 was to take Zacharias Moussaoui to the corner of Broadway and Liberty streets, put him up against a wall, and shoot him.
It was a long list.
I was under the impression we always had a few Air Force fighter jets at select bases ready and armed at a moments notice to defend our homeland...
That’s kind of odd that this would get posted. You see one of my strongest memories of 9/11 involves fighter jets. My place of work is 5 miles away from an ANG base. I work nights. All I could hear all night was F-16’s just like the one in the photo taking off and going full afterburner after “wheels up” on combat air patrol. By that time they were probably armed to the teeth. That, and the KC-135’s going up to refuel the fighters. All night long. Watching the running lights drawing huge circles in the sky.
CC
She has no reason to lie.
I was under the impression we always had a few Air Force fighter jets at select bases ready and armed at a moments notice to defend our homeland...
Do you recall the "Peace dividend?" This is how we were saving up the money to squander on free stuff for free-loaders.
“I don’t buy it.”
I do. Even today there are people that think we can go to Ukraine and kick some Russian butt, even though it was Russia that has been MODERNIZING their military and developing NEW WEAPONS (often better than anything we have, including a sub-launched nuke with 10 large MIRVs, making our Tridents look like cap guns) for the past 20 years, while all we did was SHUT DOWN program after program during that time.
It makes perfect sense that our ARROGANCE prevented us from having the ability to launch an armed aircraft then...since we have that same level of ARROGANCE, or worse, now.
Unfortunately we will probably have to get another Pearl Harbor type black eye to wake up again.
I believe the story is apocryphal. It’s hard to imagine that on the whole eastern seaboard not one Jet was scramble ready and armed.
I first thought the Jet may have been shot down, but they played it as the passengers were hero’s.
I don’t think that type of order can be given, more in the moral sense then legal and quite frankly if it was, they would have to hold a gun to their head — which would be pointless if you think about it.
Yes, heads should have rolled at Norad.
the Soviets had a better maneuver for this situation
I was under the impression we always had a few Air Force fighter jets at select bases ready and armed at a moments notice to defend our homeland...
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Nah not a nincompoop - living in the past maybe. I think it was true way back when Reagan was President. In fact, there was a time when planes were always in the air, patrolling the skies in case of Russian Aggression to name one.
Interesting, but not really news. The Washington Post interviewed her and the other pilot three years ago. I don’t know why the media is treating this like the first time she has spoken about the matter.
This is true. A friend who was military pilot at the time told us this a few weeks after 9/11. His version was the first pilot would try to eject right before impact. If that failed the second pilot agreed to just ram United 93.
My friend tragically died in a training accident not long after 9/11. Their planes collided over the pacific. No mayday or “oh $h** comment. Neither pilot saw it coming.
It is hard to believe. Maybe they did have air-to-air missiles, but these were judged not capable of bringing down a passenger plane that big? I have no idea what I'm talking about here, so go easy...
Thanks for posting.
I don’t believe the story.
The reasons for the US to tell it to itself are many and compelling.
The reasons it might be true are ... unreasonable.
If it is true, then this country is completely doomed, whereas, if the story is false, then we are only almost certainly doomed :-)
That said, this notion of flying our own plane into our own plane ... we did that in 2008 and maxed the throttle in 2012.
I live about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh and about an hour northwest of Shanksville, where Flight 93 crashed. I was glued to the TV that morning. Flight 93 flew towards Cleveland and U-turned towards Pittsburgh. Everybody thought it was going to hit downtown Pittsburgh. Many tall buildings around town were evacuated. When it seemed that the plane passed Pittsburgh, I saw several fighter jets fly overhead. That was when everybody figured that Flight 93 was heading towards DC.
Very inspiring.
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