I know I am a day late on this and it has been written about, but it needs to be writen about again (and again, and again). Via the Washington Post, the first time "Lucky" has ever talked about this to a reporter:
Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.
The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.
Except her own plane. So that was the plan.
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.”
More below the fold of course.
More from the Post story which you should read:
On that Tuesday, they had just finished two weeks of air combat training in Nevada. They were sitting around a briefing table when someone looked in to say a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York.
[....]
As remarkable as it seems now, there were no armed aircraft standing by and no system in place to scramble them over Washington.
[....]
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.
They were gearing up in the pre-flight life-support area when Sasseville, struggling into his flight suit, met her eye.
“I’m going to go for the cockpit,” Sasseville said.
She replied without hesitating.
“I’ll take the tail.”
It was a plan. And a pact.
As a military brat, Air Force actually I am torn when I read these types of stories. As I hippie, peace loving liberal I almost feel guilty I get so pumped up. Think it is so fucking bad ass, cause I wish we didn't even need an Air Force much less an Army.
But I eventually come back to they were ordered to do something and they were going to do it no matter what. Better men and women then I am .....
11:05 AM PT: Update: Just a note. For those wondering why they'd do this .... well it is the same reason you hear of somebody jumping on a mine to save his friends by giving his/her own life. Or you see an interview with somebody, that is begging to go back to Iraq, and they pan back and he has one arm and no legs. I have not served so I don't understand. But been around those that have my entire life .... and it is just the way it is.