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.”
I remember two strong sonic booms over Crystal City that morning. They were from the Alert squadron from Langley, but we were already watching the Towers burning on TV. So much for quick response. So, I believe her story as well as alert aircraft from New England. I am sure all of our military heroes were scrambling to do whatever they could that morning.
Afterwards, it was eerie and maddening listening to CAS over DC from the next month. Let us never forget!
It is fitting that the woman pilot, and not the man, would be talking out of school.
Really? I’m not saying she is lying, but I know plenty of people who would love to tell such a story.
On 9/11 were only 14 armed aircraft on alert at 7 bases
around country
Aircraft are normally not kept fueled and armed for safety
I recall hearing two jets fly over my house that morning (I used to live outside Annapolis) and I was wondering what that noise was about. BWI airport was just a few miles away and I was used to hearing distant aircraft but these guys sounded really close. I did not know that the attacks had happened until later.
We’re by a training base By 9am local it was so quiet here it was as eerie as scrambling fighters. And for a week
The only thing quieter was the phone lines from her to my family in NJ, NY, Conn. Just dead quiet
When they ran out of ammo they would fly up close to a German bomber an use their prop to slice off the tail fin....
so de-stabilizing the bomber which went into a tail spin...
The Russian pilot then bailed out to fight another day.
So Pilot Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney just needs to make a high speed close pass ant take out the vertical fin then hit the eject button.
I don’t believe it simply because the damn government lies so much!!!!
Well, I’m a girl...and that is what comes to mind
Yap yap
Back when men were men and sheep were afraid we had Air Defense.... I remember back in 74 we had two F106 Delta Darts that had such a scramble mission and were very very fast to get airborne. The hanger doors flew up front and back as pilots dove into the cockpits and crew chiefs etc were claiming the remove before flight pins and chocks etc ....
As power was applied, rolling, clear of the hanger canopy came down and within 5 minutes from the klaxon they were airborne from Davis Monthan AFB in Tucson AZ chasing suspect threat.
http://www.f-106deltadart.com/adc.htm
Supposedly after Air Defense Command was deactivated the mission was “shared” ..... 9-11 caught shared resources sparse IMO.
Stay Safe D1 ....
I would have collided the fighter into the vertical stabilizer. Stabilizer would break off relatively easily I would think.
Example may be German fighters, the sonder-komandos (SP) I believe they were called; were not totally successful against U.S. bombers over Germany.
Several USAF crews abandoned the bombers successfully... One I believe actually was a case were the fighter cut most of the tail and rear gunner/turret off the bomber, and continued to fly under the bomber then flew up and through the cockpit (IIRC) and many of the USAF crew still bailed out.
Saw both the USAF crew member and the German pilot on TV. Still alive. Does anyone think the physics and speed of a jet-fighter/airliner would allow any survivor/s to bail out?
Really?
The modern plans are only to give the pilots some hope, but even the pilots did/do not think it would work....
What the hell classified information are you talking about? There is absolutely no classified information in this report.
Do you always just make up s*** as you go?
Always? No. I don’t always make up stuff.
If you don’t think that what ANG fighter pilots do to defend us is secret information, that’s fine
But it’s silly
There (today) are only 20 fighters armed and ready to fly in CONUS. On 9-11-2001 there were 10 and two were in Alaska. The rest were in Canada.
NORAD confirmed it had only eight fighters on the East Coast for emergency scrambles on Sept. 11. Throughout Canada and the United States, including Alaska, NORAD had 20 fighters on alert - armed, fueled up, and ready to fly in minutes. Four years earlier, NORAD could count on having 175 jets ready to scramble, including two on the tarmac at Atlantic City’s airport.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/051203atlanticcityfighters.html
The engines are small, the target of the IR missiles. Once you do some damage, aerodynamics forces do the rest for you.
How do you figure that?
I figure it is wrong to do evil that good may result. The end does not justify the means is a basic principle of civilized societies.
This story was told by both her and her commander some years ago on one of the many 9/11 shows. The cmdr was also on another show.
I watch all these shows every year. Basically, there were 6 planes directly involved, a pair each from RI, Langley, and this DC NG. Only the NG wasn’t armed, and i guess they were called out because the Langley went the wrong way to the ocean when 77 was thought to come in, then the concern about 93. They had no idea what to do or who was a threat exactly until too late.
Watch the shows, you’ll be pretty much in the know. It is also what angers me to no end about those Truthers. All they need do is watch the real-time videos.
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