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 wonder if a fighter pilot would obey an order to crash his plane into an airliner. I just don't think suicide missions are in our culture.
Who supposedly said this?
The military changed this policy immediately. In the days after 9-11 when air-traffic finally resumed, I personally witnessed a couple of Navy F-18/As tailing a jumbo jet into SFO from the rear balcony of the building I work in that is literally on the shoreline of the bay off Foster City, CA.
Those Hornets were bristling with missiles. Every hardpoint was filled. Fully-loaded for bear.
The racetrack flight patterns they were running over the 'Bay lasted for at least a week.
Certainly a Medal of Honor would have been in order had a fighter pilot been able to make it to one of those planes in time.
Rather, 14 armed planes over the whole mainland, 4 over the northeastern part. (Peraps not including Air National Guard).
the entire US mainland was being defended by only 14 planes.at the time of the attacks the US had just four fighter pilots on alert covering the north eastern United States.
If you mean PLANNED missions where superiors actually tell subordinates that they are going to kill themselves to acheive an objective, no. But if you mean an individual purposely giving his life for the life of another (falling on a grenade, or the snipers in Somalia), it is a common thread woven into the fabric of the American fighting man.
I wonder if a fighter pilot would obey an order to crash his plane into an airliner. I just don't think suicide missions are in our culture.
Towards the end of WWII, Hitler turned down proposals for suicide weapons, and he had people willing to volunteer for suicide missions. That even Hitler would not consider suicide weapons says something about Western attitudes; I highly doubt that anyone on 9/11 seriously considered ordering American pilots on suicide missions. This sounds like either made up rubbish, or idle talk which has been exaggerate to sound like a serious proposal.
Thank you. But this wouldn't be a scoop for the BBC if they counted the National Guard.
It's also Bullshit!
There were at least 4 F-16s on alert at VTANG before and after 9/11
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