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Fighter pilot reveals how she responded to being sent on ‘suicide mission’ to ram her jet into Flight 93 on 9/11
A US fighter pilot who was prepared to sacrifice her own life by deliberately crashing her jet into a hijacked passenger plane on 9/11 has revealed the haunting way she responded to the order.
Heather "Lucky" Penney was a young pilot in the Washington, D.C. Air National Guard when the United States came under attack on September 11, 2001.
US fighter pilot reveals haunting way she responded to 9/11 mission
As the horrifying events unfolded in the most devastating terrorist attack seen in the US, she and her wingman, then-Lieutenant Colonel Marc Sasseville, were scrambled into the sky to protect the nation's capital.
However, when embarking on the last-ditch attempt to intercept the hijacked plane, they realized their aircraft didn’t have any ammunition. As such, the pair understood that they might have to use their own fighter jets as weapons should they encounter another hijacked plane heading towards Washington.
Heather, who eventually became the first female Washington, D.C. Air National Guard pilot, was acting on instructions from her superiors due to fears that more hijacked aircraft were still in the air and potentially heading towards Washington, D.C.
Their commander, Brigadier General David Wherley, gave them what was effectively permission to use lethal force, with the instruction that they had "weapons-free flight lead control".
With the weapons not arriving in time, Penney explained that she and Sasseville were therefore faced with the possibility of having to physically ram a hijacked aircraft.
"We had the authorization to use lethal force. The problem was Sass and I didn't have weapons. Missiles had not gotten to the flight line yet."
Instead, they could have been forced to use their fighter jets themselves.
"We would have had to ram our jets into what we then knew was the target, an airliner. A civilian airliner with innocent Americans on board."
Despite knowing what that could mean for them, Penney said there was no hesitation.
"We knew that if any other terrorist was headed towards D.C., the heart of our nation, the capital of the free world was in danger. And we needed to do whatever we could to protect that."
She also believed the passengers aboard any hijacked plane were already facing almost certain death.
"We also knew that the fate of those innocents was already sealed. There was nothing we could do about that."
Fighter pilot reveals how they planned to bring down the plane
Penney and Sasseville had even worked out how they would attempt to bring down an aircraft.
Sasseville would target the cockpit, while Penney would strike the tail.
"So what Sass would do is, he would ram his jet into the cockpit, take out the terrorists, take out the flight controls, ensure that the engine controls the throttles, that that was absolutely gone."
She continued: "And then I would -- I would hit the tail. I would aerodynamically destabilize the aircraft and it would go straight into the ground."
"It would have been a suicide mission. And neither one of us hesitated," Penney revealed.
Penney and Sasseville never reached the plane, describing their mission as a failure because they were unable to launch quickly enough or intercept Flight 93 before it crashed.
"Sass and I were a mission failure because we didn't get launched in time, because we didn't reach 93 in time, because the Pentagon was hit."