In combat, one assurance the warrior has is that while he keeps vigil for an approaching enemy, he knows his back is covered. On 9/11, that was not the case. While our eyes scanned the air and seas for potential enemies that might be approaching, unknowingly that enemy had already infiltrated our front lines, hijacking commercial aircraft and setting his sights on U.S. targets—doing it all right behind our backs.
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For the military, once the threat was discovered, the game book on playing defense went out the window. With little time to waste, there was no calling “time out” as it was faced with activating fighter aircraft flown by pilots who, departing from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, would have no idea as they took off what would be required of them.
The Twin Towers and Pentagon had already been hit when two National Guard pilots, flight leader Colonel Marc Sasseville and First Lieutenant Heather Penney, 26, received a call to scramble their F-16 fighter jets. Their mission was to protect Washington D.C. from any additional airborne threats which, most likely, were making low-level approaches to avoid detection.
Initially the two Air Force pilots were told there were three incoming threats. However, it was later clarified there was only one hijacked passenger plane—United Flight 93—that remained airborne. While Sasseville and Penney knew the city of Washington D.C. was the general target, they had no idea what the specific target was. (It was later surmised it probably was either the Capitol Building, where Congress was in session, or the White House.)
The two pilots knew they had to locate and stop United 93 before it could reach its intended target. However, one big problem existed. Following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, ending the Cold War, it was decided there was no need to arm the F-16s. Therefore, they had no missiles with which to shoot the commercial plane down.
The reality of their only option to stop United 93 as unarmed fighter jets was not lost on Sasseville and Penney. Sasseville conveyed that reality to Penney, instructing her he would ram his F-16 into the nose of United 93 and she was “to ram her aircraft into the tail.” Penney said to herself that once “it was clear what the mission would be, I realized that if the universe put me in this place, then that was my purpose.”
The two pilots were airborne for a total of three hours, never having to confront the flight. Only after they landed did the two courageous pilots, who had been willing to sacrifice their own lives, learn they were saved from doing so because of the courage of a group of United 93 passengers who had forced their way into the cockpit, resulting in the plane crashing far away from its intended target, into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Penney’s nickname was “Lucky,” and fate that day demonstrated the appropriateness of that.
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There would be 2,996 sad stories eventually to be told about that day.
Bernard Brown Sr. was employed at the Pentagon and may well have been a victim of the passenger plane—American Airlines Flight 77—that crashed into the building that day. As fate would have it, however, Brown had taken the day off to play golf. While he departed to do so, his wife took their eleven-year old son, Bernard C. Brown Jr., to Dulles Airport in Virginia to catch a flight to go to Los Angeles for an educational event. The flight he boarded was American Airlines Flight 77.
Among those 2,996 deaths on 9/11 was the husband of Laurie Laychak. He was a civilian budget analyst working for the Department of the Army at the Pentagon which, ironically, was the same location where the two had first met. On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, she left us with a message upon which Americans need to reflect.
While she recalled the days of grief following 9/11, Laychak wanted to let those in America who were too young to remember, it was also a time of great unity. The words “united we stand” appeared everywhere, the American flag was proudly displayed with people seeming much kinder and willing to stop to talk. She noted of that time, “It was this amazing, united feeling and patriotism.”
But she sees a much different America today. While she clearly does not want America devastated by another national tragedy, she would like to see a return to that same sense of community the country enjoyed back then.
Is Laychak’s the “lone voice in the wilderness?” We can only hope it is not, and that her call is heard by others who have grown tired of the continuing anti-Americanism promoted by those among us too naive to appreciate what it is that we are blessed to have.
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