Posted on 08/29/2002 5:33:11 PM PDT by The Energizer
Thursday, 29 August, 2002, 21:09 GMT 22:09 UK US considered 'suicide jet missions'
US Air Force commanders considered crashing fighter jets into hijacked planes on 11 September because of a lack of armed planes, a BBC investigation reveals. In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks US fighter planes took to the skies to defend America from any further attacks.
Their mission was to protect President George W Bush and to intercept any hijacked aircraft heading to other targets in the US.
But, as a new BBC programme Clear The Skies reveals, the threat of an attack from within America had been considered so small that the entire US mainland was being defended by only 14 planes.
As a result unarmed planes were diverted from training missions in a desperate bid to increase the number of fighter planes patrolling American airspace.
Colonel Robert Marr was Commander of the North East Defence Sector and remembers the words that came over the secure phone "we will take lives in the air to preserve lives on the ground".
US military unprepared
However, at the time of the attacks the US had just four fighter pilots on alert covering the north eastern United States.
Colonel Marr: Too few planes to defend the US
US pilots were forced to take to the skies without any weapons and might have had to deliberately crash into a hijacked plane to prevent casualties on the ground.
"I had determined, of course, that with only four aircraft we cannot defend the whole north eastern United States," he said.
"Some of them would have just gotten in the air possibly without any armament onboard.
"If you had to stop an aircraft sometimes the only way to stop an aircraft is with your own aircraft if you don't have any weapons.
"It was very possible that they [the pilots] would have been asked to give their lives themselves to try to prevent further attacks if need be."
Colonel Marr said: "That was the sense of frustration, of I don't have the forces available to do anything about this, we've got everything up that we can get up and still can't do anything."
Two of the pilots patrolling north east America told the programme how they struggled to get to New York as fast as possible after the first plane had hit the World Trade Center.
Pilots "Duff" and "Nasty" recalled they were only minutes away when the second plane hit the towers.
Pilot Duff said: "For a long time I wondered what would have happened if we had been scrambled in time.
"We've been over the flight a thousand times in our minds and I don't know what we could have done to get there any quicker."
I hate it when that happens
Know what? There are a lot of suckers on here tonight.
This flaming, left-wing, Euro-trash slander bullsh*t. Duh.
You see, if the fighters had cannon shells, they could disable an engine, force a landing...ANYTHING but flat killing it. At least they'd have tried. Having them unarmed guarantees that they must destroy the entire aircraft.
Someone once said, "No one is ever paid enough to make descisions like that..."
Missile pods? Or individual missiles on the rails? If they were pods, they were unguided rockets. If they were missiles, then more than likely, they were inert, with active seekers, but no warheads or rocket motors. We don't have armed jets sitting round on the flight line unless they're getting ready to go out on a sortie. Red Flag missions fly with inert missiles on the rails, but with active seekers. Even when we were flying air defense exercises, we had practice missiles and dummy rounds in the cannons. About the only live munitions you saw on the flightline were bombs and cannon rounds.
As for the "suicide missions," forget it. No CO would order any subordinate to do any such thing in the U.S. armed forces - remember, those airliners were filled with civilians just as innocent as the ones in the WTC. I wouldn't doubt for a minute that a pilot who knew what was going on might choose to sacrifice himself to save people on the ground - I know these people and they absolutely would do that sort of thing. But they did not know, nor did the people aboard the hijacked airliners know, what was in the terrorists' minds until impact. That's why the whole article is a little silly - you don't defend well against a threat you've never seen and have not anticipated.
I'm just guessing here, but it doesn't seem likely to me that the authors of this have much military time under their collective belt...
This was the SAGE, (Semi Automatic Ground Environment), era and radar controllers vectored pilots to targets, since the aircraft of that era had a radar intercept range of under two miles for a lock on to be made! Weapons, Aims and evenutally the nuclear AIM would be deployed. The final vector would be for a collision with an attacking bomber which had run the gauntlet. The pilot would have one hand on the ejection handle amd would try to eject at impact!.
I spoke with pilots at the O Club and they were all willing to perfrom this final maneuver, if necessary. Reason: Protect the wife and kiddos!
Jets take off from Andrews AFB constantly. I assume they do likewise from bases in Virginia, Massachussets, etc. Surely, most of them search to the East, as we would expect, but I find it hard to believe than NONE would have been available.
Well. . . .
Maybe it would have been suicidal, maybe not. A jet fighter could knock the tail or wing off of a jetliner without killing the fighter's pilot. Closing rates could be 50 to 100 mph, maybe less. A pilot could then eject safely.
During WWII Russian pilots occasionally resorted to ramming to destroy German planes, then bailed out. They would ram the tail of the German plane, or chew up the tail with the prop. There was a novel by Hank Searls written in the 1950s or 1960s called The Crowded Sky. It dealt with a head-on midair collision between a USAF jet trainer and an airliner. At an early point in the novel the pilot is telling an airman getting a lift in the second seat how another pilot crashed head-on into an airliner and lived (he pulled up, and let the top of the airliner crash into the belly of the fighter). Of course the crisis of the novel dealt with whether the jet pilot would dive under the commercial airliner, guaranteeing his own death, but increasing the chances that the passengers would survive, or pull up over the airliner so he would survive while killing the crew of the airliner, and guaranteeing everyone aboard would die. Similarly, any USAF fighter could collide with the crew cabin of a jetliner (possibly with a wing) then punch out.
Normally that is lousy tactics because you are trading one airplane for another, even if you save the crew, however in this case, it would have been worth it.
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