Female Fighter pilot recalls mission to stop 9/11 plane

[mfcorey1]

RENO, Nev. -- Fighter pilot Heather "Lucky" Penney didn't have time to be scared. There was a hijacked commercial airliner headed to Washington, D.C., and she was ordered to stop it.

"I was prepared to die for my country," she said. "It's something everyone else would have done if they were in my shoes. I didn't have time to feel fear. We had a mission, and there was a sense of urgency."

On Sept. 11, 2001, Penney and her commanding officer were ordered to stop United Airlines Flight 93 from hitting a target in the nation's capital. But they didn't have any missiles or even ammunition. So Col. Marc Sasseville decided they would use their own planes to bring it down.

He planned to strike the plane's cockpit. She opted to go for its tail, Penney said.

She didn't know it at the time, but the plane had already crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Her mission soon changed to helping defend Washington's airspace and escorting Air Force One, with then-President George W. Bush aboard, to Andrews Air Force Base.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/10/2400371/fighter-pilot-recalls-mission.html#ixzz1XdLGt2dV

[dd2003]

1. more propaganda

:(

[mfcorey1]

2. Go to bed. LOL Conversations here are too heavy for you.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. How?

No, I mean that seriously. Are you suggesting it's not true? Or it's not newsworthy?

What?

[dd2003]

4. Not true

[Violet_Crumble]

6. How is it not true? n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

7. That's a pretty major accusation.

I'm wondering what you're basing it on.

[WinkyDink]

18. Jessica Lynch. Pat Tillman.

[Warren DeMontague]

26. So nothing specific pertaining to this story.

Because yes, those other two were egregious examples of bullshit.

'Course, there are still people- even here at DU- who don't want to talk about Pat Tillman being an Atheist, because any time anyone mentions the A word they break out in help-I'm-a-Persecuted-Christian hives.

[Violet_Crumble]

5. I was wondering the same thing n/t

[sammytko]

16. Not true!

[Violet_Crumble]

19. Okay, what about it isn't true? n/t

[sammytko]

20. They make it sound as she and the other guy were the only two jets out there

I said she was more like a back up constable to the SWAT team.

It probably was not their turn to be on alert but they were sent up anyway, so that is why their aircraft was not ready.

[Violet_Crumble]

23. I thought there were two others already up there...

I saw a documentary the other night that covered this as part of looking at the slowness and confusion in getting any military jets into the air once they knew something was very wrong. There probably wouldn't have been any up there at that stage if an air-traffic controller in New York hadn't been freaked out enough before the first plane hit the WTC to ignore the chain of command for suspected hijackings and picked up the phone and gone straight through to a military base and told them more than one plane was in the air with their transponder turned off or switched to a different signal or something. Anyway, the ones in the OP weren't on alert, but when they talked in the documentary, she said they were sent up to try to see what was going on and to see if they could find any hijacked planes. I'm pretty sure they weren't sent up with an order to take down the plane because at that point there was still confusion about where the first plane was when it had already hit the WTC because someone thought they'd spotted it in the air still...

[ixion]

15. yep

that's all we'll be seeing/hearing today, is a bunch of BS propaganda. :(

[MrSlayer]

8. How is it that a frigging fighter jet doesn't have any weapons on it?

How insane is this? They were going to ram into the plane. This is incompetence on an extreme level.

[cwydro]

9. Very weird story.

I mean why would one have to hit the cockpit and the other hit the tail? Either one would bring the plane down...why would they both have to hit it?

[NYC_SKP]

24. Simple. In case one missed.

eom.

[Warren DeMontague]

10. I think the idea is, it takes time to load the weapons on the plane, time they didn't have

but, yeah, it kind of makes the concept of "air defense" moot if NONE of the planes you've got on hand are armed.

[cwydro]

11. And it still makes no sense

that BOTH of them would have to ram an airliner.

No sense at all.

[sammytko]

13. There are always planes loaded with weapons and ready to go. She was probably

Not assigned to one at that time, but they went ahead and sent everyone up. Her story sounds exciting cuz she is female and attractive. They left out lots in the story. For one thing she is not active duty. The active duty pilots were probably already in flight.

[quaker bill]

12. The world's most powerful military

with all its guns pointed in the wrong direction, is almost like not having a military at all.

[tinymontgomery]

14. The Maginot Line

The Maginot Line comes to mind when you wrote that to me.

[quaker bill]

21. Indeed

as an industrial effort of a society, our defense is probably even more dominant, and all the guns were apparently pointed in the wrong direction.

[WinkyDink]

17. I like all these "Not told until 10 years later" stories. Makes'em kinda special, ya know? Maybe

this one is to soften us up (by making the would-be "female suicide pilot" a heroic figure minus any actual heroics) for the 20th Anniversary revelation that Flight 93 WAS shot down.

In 2031, Cheney will finally be named as the command-giver. BUT WE WILL OF COURSE ALL UNDERSTAND AND BE GRATEFUL. The so-called "9/11 Generation" will not doubt.

[MadHound]

22. Again, this is a bullshit propaganda story

I've known a person who has flown defense for this country. The planes that are used are at a constant state of readiness, "kick the tires and light the fires." That includes being fully loaded with ammunition.

This is simply another bullshit propaganda story designed to cover up the fact that we had no, absolutely no NORAD or other defensive planes in the sky that morning. I will leave the reason why we were left so vulnerable up to you.

[SoCalDem]

25. but but but but.. the Bushies denied that a shoot-down order was ever issued

and of course no military folks stepped up to say "YOU LIE!!!"

Curious, how TEN YEARS later, all these "memories" come pouring out.