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US considered 'suicide jet missions'
BBC ^
| August 29, 2002
| BBC
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."
TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: military; preparedness; terrorism; unitedstates
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Comment #61 Removed by Moderator
To: The Energizer
It's not shocking at all. Ramming the enemy has always been a common military technique, usually of last resort and dangerous. The question is whether ramming a jetliner would save lives on the ground. If it's over NYC to begin with a lot of people will be hurt anyway. If it's headed for a major building the decision is easy, but if it's not apparent where it might be going, it's not easy.
A jetliner headed for the White House or the Congress would be taken down any way possible as soon as this was apparent, no matter where else it might come to rest after being rammed.
To: Prince Caspian
A pilot could probably set up a collision trajectory and eject just before impact.
Nope, try again. The forces associated with ejection (impulse from the ejection charge/rocket motor and the change in the balance of the aircraft due to weight shift not to mention aerodynamic airflow redirection over the now open cockpit area) would certainly alter the flight path. The pilot would not be guaranteed a survivable ejection depending on speed and attitude.
To collide intentionally would take tremendous courage because you gotta know that you're going to ride it down.
63
posted on
08/29/2002 9:27:22 PM PDT
by
pfflier
To: pfflier
Whichever.
64
posted on
08/29/2002 9:27:41 PM PDT
by
Arkinsaw
To: The Energizer
I don't know if this was already covered but in WWII, Japanese pilots used such techniques against loaded B-29's with some success. Certain contact angles provide for a good chance of downing the bomber and for the attacking pilot to safely bail out. I think it was either ramming the wing or sitting the plane on the bombers cockpit.
Recall the hot-dogging A-6 crew in Italy whose vertical stabilizer cut a 1 inch steel cable. A fighter pilot could use a similar tactic to approach head on and clip either the wing or vertical stabilizer of the jetliner, then bail out. Another possibility would be to approach from the rear and use his wingtips to bang up the rudder, elevator or ailerons of the jetliner.
Kind of makes one wish for the days of propeller aircraft. I remember reading about a Marine F4 Corsair pilot in WWII who intercepted a Japanese reconnisance plane at high altitude. Both planes guns were frozen so, the F-4 approached the Japanese plane from the rear and used his propeller to destroy the Japanese planes rudder. The Japanese plane crashed and the F-4 pilot was credited with a kill.
65
posted on
08/29/2002 11:56:00 PM PDT
by
fso301
To: The Energizer
I'm no military guy, but even I can see the enormous flaw in the logic of this article. We may have had only four planes in the air, but that was because the "hostile" planes we were "defending" against all started their flight as tracked, transponding commercial jetsm with flights originating as scheduled from commercial airports within the continental US. The article then slyly implies that the only air defense assets we had were those four (or fourteen) planes. I can guarandamntee you that we could detect an airborne threat originating from a hostile nation long before it got within 1000 miles of US airspace.
To: SamAdams76
The operative word in the Colonel's quote is "asked." I don't think they would have given a direct order, but it might be one of those cases where it's understood what has to be done and the guy just does it without being told.
Given enough time, I'm guessing there would be ways for a fighter to bring down a plane without ramming it...maybe knocking it out of control with jet turbulence, or frosting the cockpit windows with the afterburner, as I think happened in one of the Clancey books. Of course it it's 30 seconds to impact, ramming might be only one sure fire way of bringing the plane down in time.
67
posted on
08/30/2002 12:43:05 AM PDT
by
kms61
To: No Truce With Kings
The only jets up in the air would have been those training, and a handful of jets used for drug intradiction. This is all true. But the statement from the article I took exception to was about pilots on alert...which is different than having jets on standby or in the air.
The quote was: "However, at the time of the attacks the US had just four fighter pilots on alert covering the north eastern United States."
That has to be absolutely false. If the bloody Brits can't get their facts straight they ought not be publishing these articles. If they meant "jets on standby or in flight" they should have printed that.
To: XBob
NORAD is alive and well and evolving. But the threat has evolved from hordes of Soviet Bombers to single ICBM's launched from rogue nations. Until Sept 11 that is. Now NORAD has been retasked to construct and control a defense to counter the hijacked airline threat. In my opinion, that is an impossible job.
69
posted on
08/30/2002 6:24:20 AM PDT
by
Rokke
To: The Energizer
This is nothing more than speculation by the BBC. Further, in the unlikely event a fighter pilot had to crash his aircraft into a commercial aircraft commandeered by terrorists, there are ways for a skilled pilot to do this without getting killed in the process. Knocking off the tail assembly of the target aircraft by ramming it is one way that comes to mind.
70
posted on
08/30/2002 6:35:54 AM PDT
by
BluH2o
To: The Energizer
bump
71
posted on
08/30/2002 10:32:35 PM PDT
by
VOA
To: The Energizer
Apparently ABC News has corroborated this story, at least the part about the suicide takedowns. I still don't trust it, but at least there's a smidgen more credibility.
72
posted on
08/31/2002 5:59:49 AM PDT
by
IronJack
To: The Energizer
This would be a great job for Chinese pilots.
73
posted on
09/01/2002 4:05:25 PM PDT
by
piasa
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