Fighter pilot reflects on would-be 9/11 suicide mission [View all]

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https://abcnews.go.com/US/fighter-pilot-reflects-911-suicide-mission/story?id=79898230

As the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were unfolding, then-Air Force Lt. Heather Penney was given a mission to intercept hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 before it reached Washington, D.C. The rookie F-16 pilot said she believed she would not come back from that mission.

"[I remember] how crystal blue the skies were that day," she told ABC News Live anchor Linsey Davis. "There are so many moments that I remember with such clarity that I can touch, taste, feel hear, smell every detail from that day. But what strikes me the most, because of how omnipresent it was throughout the entire day was the deep, clear blue skies."

At first, Penney said it wasn't immediately clear that an airplane had been deliberately flown into the World Trade Center. When the second plane hit, "that's when we knew that our nation was under attack."

She went to arm her aircraft, but there wasn't enough time. She and another pilot, Marc Sasseville, had to get in the air.

"We did not have missiles. We were on a suicide mission. And in order to be able to take any airliner down, Sass would ram his aircraft into the cockpit where the terrorists were, to destroy the flight controls," she explained. "I would take the tail by ramming my jet into the tail of the aircraft, I would aerodynamically unbalance the airplane and tip it over so it would crash straight into the ground by targeting both ends of the aircraft. It was our plan to prevent any additional casualties."

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