Air Force pilot: I was prepared to ram Flight 93 on 9/11 to bring it down
posted at 4:05 pm on September 9, 2011 by Allahpundit
Your must-read of the day. We already knew, of course, that Bush had given the order to shoot down the plane if necessary, before it could crash into another building. I remember vividly walking home to Queens from Manhattan on 9/11 and hearing a fighter jet overhead, the only time I’ve ever heard that sound in 30 years of living in NYC. It was obvious even in the chaos of that moment what they were up there looking for and what they were prepared to do if circumstances warranted. What wasn’t obvious — what we didn’t know until today, I believe — was that the jets at Andrews AFB had to scramble so quickly that the pilots didn’t have time to arm themselves before taking off. They couldn’t have shot down Flight 93 or any other hijacked plane even if they had wanted to.
So there was only one option.
“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.”…
They screamed over the smoldering Pentagon, heading northwest at more than 400 mph, flying low and scanning the clear horizon. Her commander had time to think about the best place to hit the enemy.
“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.
“If you eject and your jet soars through without impact . . .” she trails off, the thought of failing more dreadful than the thought of dying.
Flight 93 went down before they ever encountered it, so there’s two more lives saved by the heroics onboard. Coincidentally, I stumbled across the WaPo piece this morning shortly after reading this excellent Danger Room analysis of how Stan McChrystal and U.S. special operations learned to thwart Al Qaeda by adopting some of the group’s most effective organizational features — secrecy, adaptability, and extremely efficient networking, all in dramatic contrast to the military’s normal bureaucratic ways. Read that too if you can spare 10 minutes. McChrystal’s fire-with-fire approach was obviously by design whereas the Air Force’s similar approach to Flight 93 was by horrible necessity, but both are shining examples of American bravery and ingenuity in shifting tactics to confront an irregular threat. Keep it in mind this weekend.
Blowback
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Refuse to fly where compasses don’t work.
hawkdriver on September 10, 2011 at 8:13 AM
Your damn right it is.
It’s complacent for not readily checking for cancer so that you can initiate the fight early in case of an attack of cancer, and it’s complacent to not expended resources to have insurance so that you have the tools to initiate the fight early in case of an attack of cancer.
And it’s complacent to not expend resources to have weapons ready for your fighter aircraft in case of an attack.
blink on September 10, 2011 at 10:33 AM
Wait, don’t confuse my charges of complacency with profitsbeard’s. I’m merely claiming that weapons should have been more readily available so that our pilots weren’t forced to limit their kills to 1 civilian aircraft per fighter that day. This is in-line with the point of the post. My earlier comments can confirm this.
You don’t need to have divined every conceivable manner of possible attack to overcome my charge. You merely needed to have weapons more readily available.
For example, I don’t fault a base commander for not divining every conceivable manner of possible attack on his base, but I sure as hell fault him for not allowing his sentries to have bullets in their weapons and to keep the armory inaccessible in case of an attack. See the difference?
That being said, we’ve all noticed Prohibited Areas printed on charts. Why did we bother having Prohibited Areas prior to 9/11 if we didn’t contemplate a means to enforce them? This wouldn’t have saved NYC, but it might have saved the Pentagon. I understand the costs involved with doing this, but let’s be honest about budget battles too often about high ranking officers trying to expand their empires. Nobody was going to fight a budget battle for enforcing Prohibited Areas. This is seen at the unit level. It’s not sexy to be the officer fighting for MOPP gear preparation during peace time. But again, this isn’t my criticism.
blink on September 10, 2011 at 10:44 AM
And I wasn’t trying to equate your comment to PBs either. Your response is not very far from my thinking either.
hawkdriver on September 10, 2011 at 10:49 AM
What do you mean? Magnetic compasses work just fine (as long as you avoid the actual Magnetic Poles). You just need to apply some healthy mag var.
Btw, have you ever heard this story about the crew flying to Iceland from Europe? They lost power (lightning strike IRCC) which dumped their inertial. They then applied mag var backwards so they were flying off course by 44°. Obviously, the island didn’t appear at the appropriate time but they were able to get a lone ADF signal pointing 90° to the starboard. In other words, they almost missed Iceland. You have to trust that they would have started an expanding square search if they hadn’t been close enough for that ADF signal, but if they were stupid enough to apply mag var incorrectly….
blink on September 10, 2011 at 11:04 AM
I’d love to tell you some stories about commanders with weapons aversions, but it’s too much detail in this forum. We really should plan a Hot Air convention for registered users. We could wear name tags with our user name. And we could have a boxing ring on standby for those that don’t get along!
blink on September 10, 2011 at 11:09 AM
I didn’t hear that story. Heard of many like that. Experienced TDH mistakes myself because of a precessing RMI I could not correct.
But again, having to adjust for large MVs (and adjusting for velocity to if you’re flying a mag compass), just, too, much, trouble.
I get the impression you have operated in those latitudes?
hawkdriver on September 10, 2011 at 11:15 AM
I have met with Hot Air commenters before. Some very special people in Cindy Munford and her husband, and then Jelly Toast who lives in my family’s hometown. (He is also one heck of an accomplished artist)
To get everyone together for an evening though, lol, I don’t know.
hawkdriver on September 10, 2011 at 11:19 AM
Heh, sometimes there’s no choice.
Yes, fun stuff.
blink on September 11, 2011 at 9:14 AM
I have a feeling people would be much more civil to each other in person.
blink on September 11, 2011 at 9:15 AM
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