Like most of you, today is not just another day on the calendar for me anymore. An occasion where we all remember what we were doing or where we were that day in 2001. Many heroes performed many, many great feats that day, many told and many untold. I read about one over the weekend, and was in the on-line news today.
This time of year is also Reno Air Race time, and the Air races were affected by the events of 9/11/2001 also. But some of the event participants had a role you may not have known about.
Most air race fans know the name John Penny. Mr. Penny has piloted the air racer Rare Bear many times along with several other air racers. When Rare Bear won it's last Reno Championship a few years ago, John was at the stick and the plane and crew were featured on an episode of Dave Dispain's "Wind Tunnel" on Speed TV. It was a very nicely done piece on the plane , the race and other aspects of the sport. Then John Penny was asked about his daughter, Heather.
John went on to tell that his daughter was an F-16 pilot, and was on duty that day out of Andrew's Air Force Base that day. Her squadron was scrambled, and she was among the jets that provided the air cap over the nations capital that day, and was one of the fighters that escorted the President on Air Force One back to Washington. If that wasn't impressive enough, an article in this past weekend's newspaper added some extra details.
Lt. Penny was scrambled with her commander, Col. Marc Sassville, to intercept hijacked United Flight 93 that was reported to be heading back towards Washington. The aircraft they were piloting had just returned from a training session out of state, and had not yet been re-armed with any kind of ordinance. Their mission to intercept Flight 93 had only one possible outcome if they were to be successful, and that was to ram the airliner kamikaze style. Major Sasseville told Lt. Penny that he would be taking the cockpit section, and for her to target the tail section.
There was one other little bit of information that ran through Lt. Penny's mind, and that was the fact that her father, John Penny, was an active United pilot at that time, and was flying some of those routes out of the east coast. There was a possibility that she would be sacrificing her own life, and that of her father if he was on that flight. As things turned out, Capt. Penny was not on board that flight, but the pilot in command, John Dahl was a close friend of John Penny's. The two fighters never encountered the airliner, and reversed their course back to Washington to continue their air cap mission, just in case Flight 93 had slipped by them.
I just can't imagine what it took for them to get into the cockpit of an F-16 that day, knowing what they knew, but their mission ad duty so clear to them that they did not hesitate to do the job that was at hand before them. Even with the knowledge that her own father may be on the target aircraft. I think it is just way beyond incredible.
But Ms. Penny has a different perspective. She looks at the passengers and crew of Flight 93 as the real heroes they truly were by saying "Because of what they did, we didn't have to."
James Michener wrote in "Bridges of Toko-Ri, talking about the fighter pilots operating off of an aircraft carrier" "Where do we find such men?" and you have to add "Where do we find such women?"
Thinking about them all today,
Dan McEntee
Topic: Remember........... (Read 2719 times)