F-16 pilot was accessible to accord her activity on Sept. 11, Late in the morning of the Tuesday that afflicted everything, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a aerodrome at Andrews Air Force Base and accessible to fly. She had her duke on the burke of an F-16 and she had her orders: Accompany down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked aeroplane seemed to be hurtling against Washington. Penney, one of the aboriginal two action pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.
The one affair she didn’t accept as she roared into the apparent sky was reside ammunition. Or missiles. Or annihilation at all to bandy at a adverse aircraft.
Except her own plane. So that was the plan.
Because the abruptness attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her advantageous administrator went up to fly their jets beeline into a Boeing 757.
“We wouldn’t be cutting it down. We’d be ramming the aircraft,” Penney recalls of her allegation that day. “I would about be a kamikaze pilot.”
For years, Penney, one of the aboriginal bearing of changeable action pilots in the country, gave no interviews about her adventures on Sept. 11 (which included, eventually, convoying Air Force One aback into Washington’s al of a sudden awful belted airspace).
But 10 years later, she is absorption on one of the lesser-told tales of that endlessly advised morning: how the aboriginal counterpunch the U.S. aggressive able to bandy at the attackers was finer a suicide mission.
“We had to assure the airspace any way we could,” she said endure anniversary in her appointment at Lockheed Martin, breadth she is a administrator in the F-35 program.
Penney, now a above but still a baby albino with a Colgate grin, is no best a action flier. She flew two tours in Iraq and she serves as a part-time National Guard pilot, mostly carriage VIPs about in a aggressive Gulfstream. She takes the stick of her own best 1941 Taylorcraft tail-dragger whenever she can.
But none of her bags of hours in the air absolutely analyze with the burning blitz of ablution on what was declared to be a one-way flight to a midair collision.
First of her kind
She was a amateur in the autumn of 2001, the aboriginal changeable F-16 pilot they’d anytime had at the 121st Fighter Squadron of the D.C. Air National Guard. She had developed up smelling jet fuel. Her ancestor flew jets in Vietnam and still contest them. Penney got her pilot’s licence if she was a abstract above at Purdue. She planned to be a teacher. But during a alum affairs in American studies, Congress opened up action aerodynamics to women and Penney was about aboriginal in line.
“I active up immediately,” she says. “I capital to be a fighter pilot like my dad.”
On that Tuesday, they had just accomplished two weeks of air action training in Nevada. They were sitting about a conference table if anyone looked in to say a even had hit the World Trade Center in New York. If it happened once, they affected it was some beast in a Cesna. If it happened again, they knew it was war.
But the abruptness was complete. In the awe-inspiring abashing of those aboriginal hours, it was absurd to get bright orders. Nothing was ready. The jets were still able with copy bullets from the training mission.
As arresting as it seems now, there were no armed aircraft continuing by and no arrangement in abode to clutter them over Washington. Afore that morning, all eyes were searching outward, still scanning the old Cold War blackmail paths for planes and missiles advancing over the arctic ice cap.
“There was no perceived blackmail at the time, abnormally one advancing from the citizenry like that,” says Col. George Degnon, carnality administrator of the 113th Addition at Andrews. “It was a little bit of a abandoned feeling, but we did aggregate humanly accessible to get the aircraft armed and in the air. It was amazing to see humans react.”
Things are altered today, Degnon says. At atomic two “hot-cocked” planes are accessible at all times, their pilots never added than yards from the cockpit.
A third even hit the Pentagon, and about at already came chat that a fourth even could be on the way, maybe more. The jets would be armed aural an hour, but somebody had to fly now, weapons or no weapons.
“Lucky, you’re advancing with me,” barked Col. Marc Sasseville.
They were gearing up in the pre-flight life-support breadth if Sasseville, disturbing into his flight suit, met her eye.
“I’m traveling to go for the cockpit,” Sasseville said.
She replied after hesitating.
“I’ll yield the tail.”
It was a plan. And a pact.
‘Let’s go!’
Penney had never accolade a jet before. Normally the pre-flight is a half-hour or so of methodical checks. She automatically started traveling down the list.
“Lucky, what are you doing? Get your base up there and let’s go!” Sasseville shouted.
She climbed in, rushed to ability up the engines, screamed for her arena aggregation to cull the chocks. The aggregation arch still had his headphones acquainted into the assembly as she nudged the burke forward. He ran forth affairs assurance pins from the jet as it confused forward.
She decrepit a fighter pilot’s adoration — “God, don’t let me [expletive] up” — and followed Sasseville into the sky.
They screamed over the afire Pentagon, branch northwest at added than 400 mph, aerial low and scanning the bright horizon. Her administrator had time to anticipate about the best abode to hit the enemy.
“We don’t alternation to accompany down airliners,” said Sasseville, now stationed at the Pentagon. “If you just hit the engine, it could still coast and you could adviser it to a target. My anticipation was the cockpit or the wing.”
He aswell anticipation about his casting seat. Would there be an burning just afore impact?
“I was acquisitive to do both at the aforementioned time,” he says. “It apparently wasn’t traveling to work, but that’s what I was hoping.”
Penney afraid about missing the ambition if she approved to bond out.
“If you banish and your jet soars through after appulse . . .” she trails off, the anticipation of declining added abominable than the anticipation of dying.
But she didn’t accept to die. She didn’t accept to beating down an aeroplane abounding of kids and salesmen and girlfriends. They did that themselves.
It would be hours afore Penney and Sasseville abstruse that United 93 had already gone down in Pennsylvania, an coup by hostages accommodating to do just what the two Guard pilots had been accommodating to do: Anything. And everything.
“The absolute heroes are the cartage on Flight 93 who were accommodating to cede themselves,” Penney says. “I was just an adventitious attestant to history.”
She and Sasseville flew the blow of the day, allowance the airspace, convoying the president, searching down assimilate a city-limits that would anon be sending them to war.
She’s a individual mom of two girls now. She still loves to fly. And she still thinks generally of that amazing ride down the aerodrome a decade ago.
“I absolutely believed that was traveling to be the endure time I took off,” she says. “If we did it right, this would be it.”
The one affair she didn’t accept as she roared into the apparent sky was reside ammunition. Or missiles. Or annihilation at all to bandy at a adverse aircraft.
Because the abruptness attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her advantageous administrator went up to fly their jets beeline into a Boeing 757.
“We wouldn’t be cutting it down. We’d be ramming the aircraft,” Penney recalls of her allegation that day. “I would about be a kamikaze pilot.”
For years, Penney, one of the aboriginal bearing of changeable action pilots in the country, gave no interviews about her adventures on Sept. 11 (which included, eventually, convoying Air Force One aback into Washington’s al of a sudden awful belted airspace).
But 10 years later, she is absorption on one of the lesser-told tales of that endlessly advised morning: how the aboriginal counterpunch the U.S. aggressive able to bandy at the attackers was finer a suicide mission.
“We had to assure the airspace any way we could,” she said endure anniversary in her appointment at Lockheed Martin, breadth she is a administrator in the F-35 program.
Penney, now a above but still a baby albino with a Colgate grin, is no best a action flier. She flew two tours in Iraq and she serves as a part-time National Guard pilot, mostly carriage VIPs about in a aggressive Gulfstream. She takes the stick of her own best 1941 Taylorcraft tail-dragger whenever she can.
But none of her bags of hours in the air absolutely analyze with the burning blitz of ablution on what was declared to be a one-way flight to a midair collision.
First of her kind
She was a amateur in the autumn of 2001, the aboriginal changeable F-16 pilot they’d anytime had at the 121st Fighter Squadron of the D.C. Air National Guard. She had developed up smelling jet fuel. Her ancestor flew jets in Vietnam and still contest them. Penney got her pilot’s licence if she was a abstract above at Purdue. She planned to be a teacher. But during a alum affairs in American studies, Congress opened up action aerodynamics to women and Penney was about aboriginal in line.
“I active up immediately,” she says. “I capital to be a fighter pilot like my dad.”
On that Tuesday, they had just accomplished two weeks of air action training in Nevada. They were sitting about a conference table if anyone looked in to say a even had hit the World Trade Center in New York. If it happened once, they affected it was some beast in a Cesna. If it happened again, they knew it was war.
But the abruptness was complete. In the awe-inspiring abashing of those aboriginal hours, it was absurd to get bright orders. Nothing was ready. The jets were still able with copy bullets from the training mission.
As arresting as it seems now, there were no armed aircraft continuing by and no arrangement in abode to clutter them over Washington. Afore that morning, all eyes were searching outward, still scanning the old Cold War blackmail paths for planes and missiles advancing over the arctic ice cap.
“There was no perceived blackmail at the time, abnormally one advancing from the citizenry like that,” says Col. George Degnon, carnality administrator of the 113th Addition at Andrews. “It was a little bit of a abandoned feeling, but we did aggregate humanly accessible to get the aircraft armed and in the air. It was amazing to see humans react.”
Things are altered today, Degnon says. At atomic two “hot-cocked” planes are accessible at all times, their pilots never added than yards from the cockpit.
A third even hit the Pentagon, and about at already came chat that a fourth even could be on the way, maybe more. The jets would be armed aural an hour, but somebody had to fly now, weapons or no weapons.
“Lucky, you’re advancing with me,” barked Col. Marc Sasseville.
They were gearing up in the pre-flight life-support breadth if Sasseville, disturbing into his flight suit, met her eye.
“I’m traveling to go for the cockpit,” Sasseville said.
She replied after hesitating.
“I’ll yield the tail.”
It was a plan. And a pact.
‘Let’s go!’
Penney had never accolade a jet before. Normally the pre-flight is a half-hour or so of methodical checks. She automatically started traveling down the list.
“Lucky, what are you doing? Get your base up there and let’s go!” Sasseville shouted.
She climbed in, rushed to ability up the engines, screamed for her arena aggregation to cull the chocks. The aggregation arch still had his headphones acquainted into the assembly as she nudged the burke forward. He ran forth affairs assurance pins from the jet as it confused forward.
She decrepit a fighter pilot’s adoration — “God, don’t let me [expletive] up” — and followed Sasseville into the sky.
They screamed over the afire Pentagon, branch northwest at added than 400 mph, aerial low and scanning the bright horizon. Her administrator had time to anticipate about the best abode to hit the enemy.
“We don’t alternation to accompany down airliners,” said Sasseville, now stationed at the Pentagon. “If you just hit the engine, it could still coast and you could adviser it to a target. My anticipation was the cockpit or the wing.”
He aswell anticipation about his casting seat. Would there be an burning just afore impact?
“I was acquisitive to do both at the aforementioned time,” he says. “It apparently wasn’t traveling to work, but that’s what I was hoping.”
Penney afraid about missing the ambition if she approved to bond out.
“If you banish and your jet soars through after appulse . . .” she trails off, the anticipation of declining added abominable than the anticipation of dying.
But she didn’t accept to die. She didn’t accept to beating down an aeroplane abounding of kids and salesmen and girlfriends. They did that themselves.
It would be hours afore Penney and Sasseville abstruse that United 93 had already gone down in Pennsylvania, an coup by hostages accommodating to do just what the two Guard pilots had been accommodating to do: Anything. And everything.
“The absolute heroes are the cartage on Flight 93 who were accommodating to cede themselves,” Penney says. “I was just an adventitious attestant to history.”
She and Sasseville flew the blow of the day, allowance the airspace, convoying the president, searching down assimilate a city-limits that would anon be sending them to war.
She’s a individual mom of two girls now. She still loves to fly. And she still thinks generally of that amazing ride down the aerodrome a decade ago.
“I absolutely believed that was traveling to be the endure time I took off,” she says. “If we did it right, this would be it.”
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