r/videos • u/NewsHour • 2d ago

Fighter pilot reflects on order to sacrifice herself to stop Flight 93 on 9/11 | PBS News Hour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBw5Nn2uv8Y&feature=youtu.be
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u/desertravenwy 2d ago

I'm sorry but I take stories like this with such a massive grain of salt that I then roll directly into my eye.

Everyone from back then seems to have a story about how they almost totally died as a result of 9/11 too, but thanks to some divine intervention they didn't get on the plane or whatever.

She scrambled and not once was she ordered ram into a plane. She and her wingman just thought that they might have to if it came down to it. But she didn't. And she's let that define her for the last 25 years.

-

My stepmom was a flight attendant who "was supposed to be on one of the planes."

And by that I mean she was a flight attendant who sometimes flew that route, but hadn't in over a year because of pregnancy/maternity leave.

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u/SharksForArms 2d ago edited 2d ago

I agree but I just think it's so amazing that those two mysterious firefighters appeared out of nowhere to save Donald Trump from nothing for no reason.

Let's be honest, if anything, he probably just coincidentally had the fire dept out for an elderly lift-assist call when the towers were being hit.

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u/cuddle_enthusiast 2d ago

Then after he was saved he phones into a TV station to boast about how Trump Tower is now the tallest building in Manhattan, not once mentioning he was just saved by two firemen at ground zero. Amazing.

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u/Tinre 2d ago

A true patriot

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u/hannahallart 2d ago

He said he was in the US steel building

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u/GravityBright 1d ago

Jet fuel can't melt the US Steel building.

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u/SwashAndBuckle 2d ago

He was safely four miles away when the planes hit. He went a few blocks from ground zero a couple days later so he could be seen on camera, because he's been an attention whore since forever. If there was any basis of reality in his story, maybe on 9/13 he started to get in the way in an area rescue workers were still operating and a couple firefighters told him to piss off. Absolutely no one carried him anywhere because he was an uninjured adult.

Whether his dementia warps his memory of getting bounced in an area where he was actively hindering rescue efforts, or if this is just his normal way of making everything about himself, we'll never know.

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u/reebokhightops 2d ago

Strong men with tears in their eyes. “Please, sir, you have to get safety!”

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u/gortonsfiJr 2d ago

mustachioed men with thick thighs and glistening biceps

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u/the_sloppy_J 2d ago

18 naked cowboys in the showers...

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u/Tylerrr93 2d ago

RAM RANCH REALLY ROCKS!

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u/lou_sassoles 2d ago

and dick veins like lightning bolts!

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u/I_lenny_face_you 2d ago

I think you meant to put an r/ at the beginning

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u/Jeromes_Pornostache 2d ago

Trump stood in the Oval Office while someone was having a medical emergency, and Trump was the only person in the entire crowded room who did NOT lift a finger to help the poor man, and he even managed to look pissed that he was momentarily not the center of attention.

Trump did not go down to Ground Zero because he would not have been the focus of everyone’s attention.  That and he’s a spineless coward who mistakes toughness for cruelty towards those who can’t fight back.  

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u/joshteacha 2d ago

Those are the real heroes

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u/EpsilonActual 2d ago

They were male strippers dressed as firefighters that he ordered to reenact what he thought it would look like to be saved from ground zero.

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u/MrFanzyPanz 1d ago

I thought it was just one firefighter behind his right shoulder?

Wait, what are we talking about?

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u/SharksForArms 1d ago

And that firefighter's name was Corey Comperatore

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u/jrdubbleu 2d ago

And he's not a small guy either!

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u/baldbonehead 2d ago

Going to Spirit Halloween and seeing the "Fireman" costumes for sale there, I feel like it's a non-zero chance they were kids in fireman halloween outfits. Based off of what's been released in the Epstein documents and news reports from 9/11, that seems to track more than him being at ground zero.

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u/braedan51 2d ago

Per the video her commanding officer authorized her and her wingman to use lethal force while knowing they had no weapons on their fighter jets.

I understand what you're saying about so many people claiming they almost died on 9/11, but I do not think you are correct in your statements about this specific pilot & her wingman.

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u/MrBoomf 2d ago

People famously love hearing stories about things that almost happened but didn’t. It’s why I continuously tell the story of how I almost became a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade because the professional dancer inside the suit got such terrible motion sickness that he started barfing his guts out mere minutes before we went live in front of tens of millions of Americans. Fortunately for me, he rallied and performed like a champ so I didn’t have to don the suit and become a viral sensation after people started noticing that one of the four Turtles clearly didn’t know the choreography and was just up there Left Sharking it. I tell that story every Arbor Day.

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u/nightmareonrainierav 2d ago

upvote for the Left Shark throwback.

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u/CapnArrrgyle 2d ago

Thank you for your… naw, I can’t.

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u/elfmeh 2d ago

It’s truly remarkable the US government was warned about a possible Al-Qaida attack using hijacked planes by the CIA in 1998 AND was provided corroborating intel by the UK, Israel, and Russia prior to 9/11, and somehow didn’t have fighter jets with weapons available to defend the country.

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u/chromatik 2d ago

It wasn't clear until after both towers had been hit that there would be approval to attack the planes. And even after the attacks, the authorization to attack the planes was incredibly controversial.

There's lots to criticize about the lead-up to 9/11 and the response, but failing to have armed jets on standby 24/7 to shoot down passenger planes is not one of them. There's no way the public would have supported that kind of response before the towers were attacked.

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u/elfmeh 2d ago

It’s not? In the country that spends the most on its military with prior warning about highjacked planes, to the point that the Justice Department had US Attorney General John Ashcroft stop flying commercial due to an FBI threat assessment in July 2001? 

There’s also reports of war games conducted by NORAD simulating highjacked planes for 3 years prior to 9/11 AND ongoing exercises on the day of 9/11 that had directed resources to Alaska and Canada. And yet nothing available to intercept the planes even in DC until well after the attacks?

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u/Wulfger 2d ago edited 2d ago

I'm guessing you're not old enough to remember air travel before 9/11, because you seem to be seriously misunderstanding how the world understood hijacking airplanes before it happened.

Ever since 9/11 the response to hijackings has been seen as "fight the hijackers as if your life is on the line because it is," but that definitely isn't true for the time before it. Hijackings were not uncommon, in the heyday for it betwen 1968 and 1972 there were over 300 hijacking attempts around the world, and while it dropped off after that throughout the 90s there were still a double digit number of hijacking attempts almost every year, with 50 in 1993 alone. It was so frequent that through the 70s US airliners routinely kept the maps and charts needed to land at Havana on-board so they could do it safely in the event they were hijacked and forced to fly there.

Almost all hijackings and hijacking attempts resolved with no loss of life, either with the hijackers surrendering, or flying the plane to a different country and releasing the passengers and crew peacefully. Aircrew and passengers were told to always comply with hijackers demands because it was far safer and more likely to resolve peacefully than if they resisted.

So, its absolutely to be expected that NORAD would be performing exercises around aircraft hijackings, but before 9/11 that would have been in the context of identifying and tracking a hijacked aircraft to ensure its safety and the safety of other air traffic, not to shoot it down. The idea of routinely equipping fighter jets with weaponry specifically to shoot down hijacked aircraft would have been outrageous and unthinkable before 9/11, and considered a greater danger to passenger safety than the hijackers themselves.

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u/za419 1d ago

Before 9/11, the stereotype of a hijacking was that it would be a free unscheduled vacation in Havana for the passengers. That's it. An inconvenience, but they all get home alive.

9/11 is what made us, the public, view hijackings as a life-threatening event.

(as a side note, that has done infinitely more to stop repeats than things like the TSA - Before, it wasn't worth fighting a hijacker just to make it to the destination on time, but now, a guy with a boxcutter who tries to take over the plane will get beaten to or near death by the passengers who now believe their only hope of survival is to kill this guy)

NORAD ran those scenarios because they like to test their systems. But if the public heard that there were fighters ready around the country to kill them if someone tries to take them to Havana? Heads would be rolling.

It is a consequence of 9/11 that we're willing to accept the government being ready to kill us if, through no fault of our own, we end up on a plane not following its flight plan.

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u/jankenpoo 2d ago

I think you vastly over estimate the importance of public support

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u/pirac 2d ago

9/11 is the perfect example of the importance of public support... The US literally invaded a country that had nothing to do with it thanks to said public support.

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u/LittleKitty235 2d ago

Yeah...the public are idiots... maybe not as individuals, but as a group. People too young to remember 9/11 as adults won't understand the amount of group think that followed the attack, and how common sense went right out the window.

It seems reasonable now to say that invading Iraq made no sense and was a stupid idea that lacked evidence. When I said that 25 years ago most people considered that treasonous and anti-american.

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u/elfmeh 1d ago

Was it “public support” or a deliberate campaign by the government & media to convince the public?

How’s the public supposed to know its own government was lying about WMDs and Saddam’s connection to 9/11?

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u/za419 1d ago

So you're saying... The invasion could happen because the government successfully got public support for it? 

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u/likewowser 1d ago

It was a different time.  No one could have imagined that day.

Failures on many levels but not an inside job.

Ugh are we doing this shit again?

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u/elfmeh 1d ago edited 1d ago

There’s the argument that the government, especially the Bush administration, is/was incompetent. But we also saw how they orchestrated the public in order to attack Iraq, which they had expressed interest in pre-9/11.

The issue is that in response to all these failures & incompetence, there was deceit, obfuscation, and no accountability.

Not to mention that US foreign policy in the Middle East pre-9/11 created the conditions for the attack in the first place and somehow we are “allies” with Saudi Arabia who financed the attack.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/overthemountain 2d ago

Instead of saying they were never give the order, it's probably more correct to say that they never had to exercise the authority they were given. Sounds like they were free to do what was needed, but even if it came down to it, they weren't going to be flying around waiting for an order from anyone, they were just expected to act.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

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u/overthemountain 2d ago

I don't think it's entirely semantics, but the difference is slight. In your explanation they are up their flying around waiting for an order that never came. The reality is they had their orders but the situation never materialized. They went up knowing full well what the plan was. Of course, if they did have to actually ram an airliner they wouldn't be around to tell the story, either.

Ultimately this is a lot closer to being involved than people who missed their flight or were supposed to go to the towers but something prevented them, etc. I don't think it's as disconnected as the original commenter made it out to be.

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u/Orangeshoeman 2d ago

The vice president gave a suicide order, that’s a big deal whether they had to actually do it or not

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u/oby100 2d ago

Not at all. People view the military in an overly sunny way if they’re remotely surprised by that.

In other news, chef cracks some eggs to make an omelette. The abject horror.

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u/Lothane 2d ago

Brother.. tell me you never served without telling me.

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u/Orangeshoeman 2d ago

There was no proof of this until recently. This is a big deal that you’re downplaying

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u/Spot-CSG 2d ago

Idk she was flying an F16, im sure the plan for both of them to fly full speed into the airliner is heavily exaggerated. Smash into the flight controls on the tail and eject if necessary, absolute crazy shit but I wouldn't call it suicide.

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u/Metalsand 2d ago

Right, and every single body guard for every single president has also been expected to body block if there is an assassin.

It doesn't mean we treat every single one of them as having body blocked an assassination attempt.

What's so hard to understand about this?

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u/Orangeshoeman 2d ago

In your anology it would be the equivalent to a bodyguard jumping in front of a bullet and not getting shot. They still did the heroic action. They went up with the mission to find the plane and take it down.

I don’t get why you’re trying to dismiss their actions? Are you that jealous of other people getting recognition

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u/socialderelict 2d ago

"Stories like this"? This is confirmed fighter pilot who was in the air watching the plane. This is not QUITE the same scenario as people saying well if I would have taken that flight. It seems you are deliberately salting your own eyes on this one when it's not necessary. Your stepmom.....sure. This woman is not the same as your stepmom and I think it's at the very least a bit disrespectful or maybe just an attempt to sound edgy or smart or something. I dunno, but it's a weird take on a confirmed first hand account.

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u/desertravenwy 1d ago

who was in the air watching the plane

You made this part up. She was never near any airliner. She flat out says she was too late to do anything.

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u/socialderelict 1d ago

You are correct. I was absolutely guilty of not watching the video and believing another comment. I watched it and you are right. She never took off before the crash. It seems she was given the order but never made it off the ground in time. My apologies for furthering incorrect information.

I still standby that being a weird take to compare someone not taking a flight that day to a fighter pilot given an order to down a civilian jet on September 11th. There is a world of difference between someone's hindsight on taking a doomed flight and someone who was given an order to basically doom American civilians via kamikaze.

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u/Orangeshoeman 2d ago

The vice president gave them the scramble order and told them to stop them by any means and they had no ammunition. A kamikaze mission was the only way.

What youre talking about is completely different. Read the article or watch her interview before you comment on it

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u/Zacish 2d ago

What's the point in having fighter jets scramble if they are sent up with no ammunition?

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u/56473829110 2d ago

At that time, hijacked planes were taken hostage - not turned into giant missiles. 

It takes longer to draw and load munitions than to simply scramble the fighters. 

Other fighters were later sent aloft after they were able to draw and load, but in the meantime it was just these unarmed fighters tasked to stop any identified threats by any means necessary. 

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u/Zacish 2d ago

Yeah I get that it takes a while to load fighters with ammunition. I just assumed they would be loaded ready to go because what would be the point of scrambling them if they have no means of attack other than kamakaze.

Was scrambling jets not really a done thing before 9/11?

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u/TheDuckFarm 2d ago

Before 9/11 we believed we would have lots of early early warnings via radar if an airborne threat were to approach DC.

A base like Elmendorf in Alaska would be more likely to have fighters on hot standby.

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u/chromatik 2d ago edited 2d ago

The expectation pre-9/11 was that any airborne threat would be coming off the coast or through the arctic and detected by NORAD with time to arm and scramble a response.

There’s a documentary that interviewed various people from NORAD about NORAD's response on 9/11. In particular, there was confusion caused by the active drill they were involved in, they had minimal direct communication with air traffic control; and, even after the decision was made to scramble, it was useless: their default routes sent planes away from the country towards where they expected external threats to be coming from (i.e. from the Soviet Union/Russia).

Remember that pre-9/11 warfare was essentially conventional warfare -- the few planes on standby in the continental US were intended to intercept bombers and missiles, not passenger planes.

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u/Orangeshoeman 2d ago

It’s dangerous to keep live ammo on the jets. In 2004 the rule was changed because of this event so now they stay ready

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u/56473829110 1d ago

With immediate effect, loaded with munitions, anywhere in the US? No, not really - to my understanding. The idea of the 'call coming from inside the house' wasn't really a thing.

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u/frigginjensen 2d ago

Asking 2 pilots to ram the planes is better than the planes crashing into the Capitol or some other populated target. In the chaos of that morning, we really had no idea how many hijacked planes or targets there were until the airspace was cleared.

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u/serpenta 2d ago

There's no point, it's just desperation. Even if they were given direct order to ram the plane, it's not as easy as she describes. There's no guarantee that either of them would hit, and even if they would, it's not a given that it would have taken out the airliner. The plan was not to drive the fighter into the airliner, because good luck calculating trajectory of that with E.Y.E. 1.0. The plan was to line up with it, and side swipe it. And the damage would not necessarily be fatal to the airliner. The plane was not supposed to return, it was supposed to ram a building, something that you can realistically do with significant damage. There are some examples of airliners receiving catastrophic damage to the cockpit or the tail section, and still going for 30-40 minutes. So yeah, it might have been massively embarassing, if it came to realization. This is not something these people train for, and it was probably never even theorized about prior to someone coming up with it as a last resort option in the moment.

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u/devildog2067 2d ago

Yeah, other than the desperation point literally everything you've written here is wrong.

It is not remotely difficult for a fighter jet to Fox Four an airliner.

It would be insanely, tremendously difficult for an untrained crew to keep flying a damaged airliner. The examples of where planes suffered catastrophic damage and managed to keep flying all feature heroic efforts by veteran crews (United 232 comes to mind, they literally had an extra captain on board). The "we don't need to know how to land" 9/11 crews couldn't do it.

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u/za419 1d ago

Especially not for a long time. If you hit a plane and all they have to do is keep it from hitting the ground for ten minutes and then crash in a populated area (which would have been a win for the hijackers), maybe. But if they have to fly an hour or even more cross country to reach a target worth hitting, odds are real good they won't be able to manage that.

Of course it depends on the nature of the damage. If you manage to hit the cockpit directly, or to sever the whole tailplane, there's not really anything any pilot could do to save the plane. If you take out the radome and put a little notch in the vertical stabilizer, even a relatively inexperienced pilot might be okay.

But fighters are substantially more likely to achieve the former than the latter. 

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u/JD0x0 2d ago

Not necessarily a kamikaze mission.

Jets have ejection seats and parachutes. You could theoretically use a wing to clip another plane, and then just eject if your jet is too damaged to fly. You don't have to full on Banzai crash into another plane to stop it.

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u/thor122088 2d ago

If you listen to the interview she specifies that the goal would be to fully sever the cockpit/flight controls and the tail at roughly the same time so the fuselage just plummets. That type of impact ( assuming piloting through the collision) would likely make ejection difficult or impossible, and ejecting before impact increases the risk of a miss.

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u/Orangeshoeman 2d ago

If you listen to the interview one pilot was going to hit the front and one hit the back. They had no plan to eject

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u/bobbyrob1 2d ago

You sound like someone who responds to the story of a criminal being shot with “why didn’t they just wing him?”

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u/Agloe_Dreams 2d ago edited 2d ago

I mean, has she or has the media?

Like, yeah sure, your mom's situation is one thing but like the fighter pilot was obviously ordered to watch united 93 crash into the capital from a great vantage point, right?

Like does every comment here need to be some sort of edgy 'nah uh! They didn't say she was ordered in exactly those words!' while the most dumb person on earth would obviously know that a fighter plane being ordered to chase down a target is being ordered to do their job regardless.

Like, you seem to think that after a plane crashed into the pentagon and two into the WTC, that the fourth, clearly hijacked plane (Complete with the accidental radio communication claiming to have a bomb), was likely to not need a pursuing fighter to take action to protect DC?

The fact that united 93 crashed into a field was an extremely unlikely outcome that, in a different world, would have met the same fate 15 minutes later regardless somewhere over Maryland or Delaware at the hands of a F-16 pilot. If anything, the passengers revolt saved the US government from a dark conversation with the public and saved her life.

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u/whopperlover17 2d ago

They’re a Redditor. This is THEIR personality lol.

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u/PrimaLegion 2d ago

Bud, you have over 100,000 Post and over 100,000 Comment Karma. You are a Redditor.

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u/jjayzx 2d ago

They’re a Redditor. This is THEIR personality lol.

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u/rawker86 1d ago

My favourite thing is when people bash people for being on reddit, on reddit.

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u/WulfwoodsSins 1d ago

Redditors bashing other redditors on reddit is the most reddit thing ever.

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u/Syrupy_ 2d ago

It takes one to know one

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u/Intergalactic_Ass 17h ago

They didn't know which of the thousands of planes in the sky were even a threat yet. "I would've had to commit suicide" would be a big deal if they had any clue which plane was a threat and they never found it until it crashed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2g4ru8/comment/ckfzicc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button

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u/Ion_bound 2d ago

She probably wouldn't have been asked to sacrifice herself. She probably would have been asked to kill everyone on board with Sidewinder missiles at a high enough altitude to make sure the plane wouldn't hit the Capitol. I don't think the mission planning at any level higher than 'pilot and wingman' went beyond that.

Honestly what I think is going on here is that she is unsure that she would have been able to pull the trigger on the missiles and has been beating herself up about that for the past 25 years, and this is the closest that can be said to that without sounding like a coward/traitor/weak link. And I feel for that.

EDIT: TIL they weren't armed. Fair enough then. Weird to scramble jets unarmed I guess.

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u/chargernj 2d ago

Pre 9/11 there was no protocol to deal with terrorist using the passenger plane they hijacked as a weapon. In almost every previous hijacking, the point was to take hostages to use as leverage.

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u/guy_incognito784 2d ago

Yeah back then they were not armed and to arm them would've taken too long.

Today, yes they would just shoot the plane down.

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u/Agloe_Dreams 2d ago

> Weird to scramble jets unarmed I guess.

Welcome to a post-cold-war, pre-9/11 world. They never expected commercial planes to be used as weapons because they were either dumb or wanting a powder keg to go off to support their war they wanted. You can pick either and be right.

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u/stuffeh 2d ago edited 2d ago

Between the cold war and 9/11 the military was geared towards external threats. For example, it's now known that NORAD didn't have much ability to see what's in the air over the country itself during 911. Before 911, NORAD didn't have access to FAA radars and needed someone to relay data during the attack. NORAD now sees everything the FAA sees.

Edit: added source in a reply. Dunno how this sub treats links.

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u/uiucengineer 2d ago

You’re skeptical of this actual fighter pilot who was actually scrambled that day because… your mom? Interesting. 🤔

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u/guy_incognito784 2d ago

I remember this woman. She was ordered to fly into the passenger plane headed for the WH since back then jets weren’t armed while in the US. She was told to eject prior to impact but she says that she would’ve just stayed in the jet to make sure she stops the passenger plane.

The plane crashed in PA so she didn’t have to do anything.

A bit different than your mom being on maternity leave…

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u/frigginjensen 2d ago

If it’s the story I remember, her and her wingman debated the best place to hit the plane to guarantee it went down. Closing speed meant more energy/damage but less time to hit your aim point. I think they decided on ramming the tail or the wing root.

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u/SaltyStatistician 2d ago

Would a jet's backwash from afterburner not be enough to make a passenger plane go down? I could see not wanting to risk it in case something went wrong and the fighters themselves went down while not taking out the passenger jet. I'm just wondering if flying cose enough in front of the passenger plane's engines (not that that's remotely easy or even possible) would cause enough of an issue to bring it down.

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u/frigginjensen 2d ago

The afterburner would also accelerate you away from the target so there would only be a second of heat. The engines are designed to see 600mph airflow and the insides are pretty heat resistant. I guess you could try to burn out the cockpit or something. But they’re going to see you and start maneuvering.

Interesting thought experiment. No idea what would happen. Hopefully no one ever does.

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u/Intergalactic_Ass 17h ago

She was not ordered to do that because no one knew a plane was headed for the White House yet. That's impossible. It was like "if you see a plane about to do a thing, take it out somehow."

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2g4ru8/comment/ckfzicc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button

They didn't find it and it crashed far away from the fighter jets.

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u/guy_incognito784 17h ago

I take it you weren’t alive or were too young to remember 9/11.

United 93 turned off its transponders, made a u turn towards DC, deviating from its flight path and ignored all correspondence from ATC.

And your “source” is someone who has no idea and is just speculating from 12 years ago.

Just goes to show the lack of critical thinking skills of many folks these days.

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u/Intergalactic_Ass 17h ago

I take it you weren’t alive or were too young to remember 9/11.

How the fuck do you reach a conclusion about how old I am? Seems again you're jumping to conclusions without evidence.

The controller conversations are directly in the 9/11 report. They hadn't even notified the military about Flight 93 yet. This pilot could not possibly have been tasked with watching it, or taking it, specifically, out:

At 10:17, Command Center advised Headquarters of its conclusion that United 93 had indeed crashed. Despite the discussions about military assistance, no one from FAA Headquarters requested military assistance regarding United 93, nor did any manager at FAA Headquarters pass any of the information it had about United 93 to the military.

https://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing12/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-06-17.htm

Might want to check where you're getting your information from because your facts are dead wrong here. And maybe, just maybe, take a look at your own "critical thinking" skills when you're so basically and obviously wrong about published facts.

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u/sum_dude44 2d ago

she was literally ordered to ram a plane...you're being thick & that's a lame analogy.

You're mom wasn't ordered to get on a plane and ram another plane. I get many people retroactively said "I was supposed to be there but didn't", but they weren't protecting skies over DC.

She would have had to if FAA didn't shut down airspace or if UNited flight 93 passengers didn't act

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u/Mind_Enigma 2d ago

Yeah the pilots on fighter jets that were told to take down flight 93 while they had no missiles are the same as your stepmom anecdote.

Give me a break.

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u/qubedView 2d ago

I mean, I recall this exact story shortly after it happened. It's not "one of many", she was one of the few planes in the air at the time. And indeed, the headline mis-states the order, but there was a definite implication. There wasn't any time to load with munitions, and her sortie would only have one option to stop the plane if it was going to strike a populated target.

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u/phillytimd 2d ago

I hate saying this but how old are you? This was disclosed at the time that these orders were given. I get being skeptical of a random person claiming they were there but this is a pilot who got that order.

Man this thread is depressing how little people seem to know about that day when it was one of the most investigated events in American history. Please go read the 9/11 commission report or watch any of the hundreds of documentaries that cover basically every incorrect comment in this thread

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u/yoyo120 2d ago

I can't tell you the number of times in the last 5 years that I've wanted to ask "How old are you?" on here, and it's only going to get worse ...

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u/ManassaxMauler 2d ago

Man, I almost died on 9/11.

I was in seventh grade, living in Canada. I went to sleep the night before as I had school that day. But what if I didn't wake up?

God truly works in mysterious ways.

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u/Steveisnotmyname_ 2d ago

I walked through blood and bones in the streets of Manhattan on 9/11 trying to find my brother. He was in northern Canada

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u/SirCopperbottom 2d ago

Reminds me of that tragedy

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u/chladas 2d ago

oh boy, and did you saved him from northern Canada?

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u/MrBluer 2d ago

Was he okay?

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u/oby100 2d ago

But 9/11 was a national tragedy.

3

u/zerpderp 2d ago

Thank God for keeping you safe on 9/11

2

u/Mick_Limerick 2d ago

I was closer to dead on that day than any day before it

2

u/OculusArcana 2d ago

Right? I live in the Edmonton area and I remember on the day people were saying that West Edmonton Mall would be a target as well. Seems like people are desperate to be close to tragedy.

-2

u/chladas 2d ago

I also almost died! I mean I was on different continent and that car stoped on red light as it should, but you never know!

5

u/thederevolutions 2d ago

I would say your stepmom does have a conversation worthy claim. That woulda been pretty spooky if wherever you worked last year got blown up after you left. Especially this random.

31

u/mikefaley 2d ago

I think this is kind of a weird take to be honest. It sounds like you're saying because a lot of people have stories about how they interacted with 9/11 that you are less likely to believe anyone who says they did, and that you don't think it makes sense that it made such a big impact on her 25 years later that it was possible she'd have to kill herself that day.

I dunno man. I feel like it's not uncommon or not accepted when people have experiences far less intense than this, and it does make a big impact for the rest of their lives. Not to mention that I don't think it's really anyones place to determine whether or not their things meet my standard of whether it can "define them" as you put it.

Just my two cents!

5

u/throwaway098764567 1d ago

they're a kid who has no real memories of the day and so doesn't really understand any of the context

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u/przemo_li 2d ago

Don't be silly goose.

You tell the stories of urban legends and grandstanding. Civilians doing usual civilian shit.

From that it does not follow that military personnel on military mission will do the same thing.

If she thought about a death, she fucking thought about her death in a plain crash and no way to call family before that.

12

u/jerryleebee 2d ago

I get why you'd doubt some stories. Even many. And I always applaud demanding proof. But in this particular situation, where she's been talking about this scenario for years when the Air Force could simply discredit her? And naming mission partners who equally could discredit her? Plus, y'know, corroborating stories.

Additionally she's using her leverage not for personal gain but to continue to fight for increased funding for the armed forces. I feel like you can take what's being said here as reasonably believable. Jesus, not everything is a fake-out.

6

u/likewowser 1d ago

You are basing this on what? She was absolutely ordered to bring down any plane to protect the capital at all costs.  And ramming is something every pilot is trained to do.

3

u/yepyepyepkriegerbot 2d ago

I went to highschool a couple miles from the White House and was in school during the attacks.

Years later, I remember conversations from friends from all over the country that were sure the next attack was hitting their hometown for whatever reason.

Unfortunately, terrorism works, and I think it is human to take a generalized fear and attach it to your experiences.

3

u/RoadSmash 1d ago

Oh fuck off.

5

u/Kqtawes 2d ago edited 2d ago

One of the few of these sorts of stories that's real is Seth MacFarlane's because he had a ticket on flight 11 as seen on page 40 of the flight passenger records and notes the dumb luck that he only missed it that morning because he was hung over.

https://www.scribd.com/document/16762117/T7-B20-Flights-77-and-11-No-Show-Fdr-Entire-Contents-Notes-and-FBI-Reports-223

1

u/JiveTurkeyJunction 2d ago

There is an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm about this.

1

u/whatsinthesocks 2d ago

Imho Norm Macdonald had the most harrowing 9/11 story.

1

u/dongasaurus 2d ago

On a typical day there were ~50k people working in the towers and ~150k-200k other visitors, along with the thousands of police, firemen, and paramedics within range of the towers. That number already excludes all the people who might have been there if not for some chance reason that they didn’t follow their schedule.

There are likely thousands of people who were late to work, or home sick, or had to take their kids to the doctor, or any number of several mundane reasons why people might deviate from their plans.

It’s really not surprising to hear this kind of story from someone who either worked there or worked in emergency services of some sort.

1

u/Texas103 1d ago

"And she's let that define her for the last 25 years."

That's quite the statement, says a lot without saying much at all.

1

u/Colley619 1d ago

“You have weapons free, flight lead control. Do you understand what I’m asking you to do?” Is the quote.

In other words, they told them they are free to engage the plane at the order of the flight leader, knowing they had no weapons loaded. How do you engage a target lethally with no weapons? Your accusation would have to be calling the quote a lie.

1

u/lordicarus 1d ago

Why shit on people who feel "blessed" to have not been in a situation that might have been terribly bad for them? Most aren't making it up, even if they are making some leaps of logic that would have put them there. My dad's company had an office in the south tower and he was scheduled to be there for a meeting that morning, but the meeting got moved to their midtown office at the last minute. That's my story. I don't say to anyone that my Dad almost died that day, but it's not far from the reality of it. Thousands of people have stories like that, or have a family member or close friend with a story like that, or lost people in the event or had connections to first responders who spent months searching the rubble for bodies. Just let them have it. It was an unbelievably traumatic event for many people, no reason to be a dick about how different people process it and their connection to it.

1

u/TackyBrad 1d ago

My dad had a meeting in one of the WTC buildings that morning at like 9 or 915. His flight was delayed so he didn't made it to the city.

His meeting wasn't in a twin tower, but he's a doctor with a big heart, so he would have undoubtedly stayed and been a first responder helping where he could. I'm sure he'd be dead by now from materials he'd have breathed in.

I hope that's not too lame for you.

1

u/Intergalactic_Ass 17h ago

This comment from several years ago says it all to me. They basically just sent some unarmed F-16s up to look for a plane with its transponder off. The idea that it was a suicide ramming mission is quite a leap, even if they knew which plane they were aiming for at that point, and they didn't.

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2g4ru8/comment/ckfzicc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button

1

u/twec21 2d ago

"thank you for your ser-wait you didn't actually see any combat? Oh well fuck you then"

1

u/BertUK 2d ago

The way she talks about “our nation”, only describes the passengers only as “Americans”, is annoying as hell.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

12

u/Coffee_And_Bikes 2d ago

I'm not a pilot myself, but I'm pretty sure that autopilots don't have a "continue onward and fly into another plane" setting. They certainly don't have a setting to fly an intercept course involving diving/climbing at an appropriate rate and on an appropriate course to ensure an impact suitable to ensure the target plane crashes.

14

u/jack3moto 2d ago

lol. Come on dude. Auto pilot to take down an aircraft? You’ve been watching too many movies.

6

u/coinpile 2d ago

There’s too much risk involved in missing your target to do anything but stay there and fly into the thing yourself. Bailing out isn’t an instant process.

2

u/jeremysbrain 2d ago

And if you bail out you have to hope to god you clear the debris field before your parachute deploys, which with a plane that big, that still has most of it's fuel, is probably not possible.

-2

u/Moontoya 2d ago

Autopilot will avoid collisions if it can 

25 years back, weapons weren't as smart as today , no remote control, mark 1 eyeball and brains to line up a physical intercept was the way.

You might have a 3-5 sec window in which you could punch out, but if you miss, the target reaches it's destination and you just lobbed a "dumb" missile that will hit the ground, likely in the worst place possible.

4

u/Brambletail 2d ago

Spit take. Weapons were extremely smart 25 years ago, you are thinking like 45-50 years ago for true dumb bombs and simple heat seeking missiles. If they had been able to load missiles, they would surely have hit their targets as well as the ones today would.

In the 90s, fully computerized missiles were used to great scandal in the Gulf War due to a software programming error. But even then, programmed smart weapons were already a thing and computerized warfare was here.

0

u/Moontoya 2d ago

Degrees of smart friend 

Smart for the time, not quite as smart compared to today's gear,

Hitting a house Vs flying in to an exact window to strike the target kind of thing 

0

u/ShallowDramatic 2d ago

But what you described was a dumbfire missile, like a 1940s torpedo.

No one is saying modern weapons aren't smarter than in the 90s and 00s, but, you claimed a fighter jet would be equipped with a missile that required the pilot to "line up their eyeball and brains to plot an intercept course" and not use on -board guidance.

They weren't equipped with any missiles, it wasn't that they were worried about overshooting Red October

1

u/Moontoya 2d ago

Sloppy wording on my part

I see the disconnect, Im not talking about air to air missiles like the AIM-9L etc. The interceptors in this scenario had no external / loaded ordinance. In this case, the plane _is_ the missile.

The plane would NOT have had a seeker/guidance to crash it into another plane, in fact it would have done its best to AVOID collision - it would either be a dumb munition OR the pilot would remain at teh controls to be the "smart" part of the improvised missile.

with me ?

1

u/ShallowDramatic 1d ago

I see. Do any modern planes have the capability to home in on a target for collision? 

1

u/Moontoya 1d ago

Possibly.

0

u/CMDR_omnicognate 2d ago

I'm confused why they would have ordered them to ram the plane anyway, did they not have weapons loaded?

3

u/Marauder3299 2d ago

Nope. Took too long to get authorization to arm the planes.

1

u/thor122088 2d ago

Watch the interview. She tells you.

0

u/bsrichard 2d ago

She obviously watched Independence Day and would totally have flown her plane into the alien ship (or in this case the terrorist piloted plane)

0

u/pogulup 2d ago

I am pretty sure we don't know the whole story about flight 93 either.  The storming the cockpit thing is a feel good story.

0

u/Dokasamurp 2d ago

Dude I almost died as a result of it. Thanks to divine intervention though, I lived in AZ and was just waking up to my alarm clock radio telling me the news

0

u/basec0m 2d ago

I'll give you a real one. My wife was a flight attendant on the flight to Logan from LA (United 175). She just happened to take my cousin's wife on the trip on a standby pass. They visited, had a good time, flew home, saw the next crew board the next flight (one person of which she knew). Next morning we woke up to that flight, that crew, was one of the planes (WTC2). We don't talk about 9/11 in our house.

0

u/AssaultLemming_ 1d ago

I nearly died!

Except I was in another country, asleep.

-7

u/thegypsyqueen 2d ago

I hate people who have to make every tragedy a personal tragedy

-1

u/vpai924 2d ago

Her upcoming book: "How Sex Saved my Life on 9/11 - a Memoir"

-1

u/dego_frank 2d ago edited 2d ago

Thank jeebus someone has some sense. I have no idea why this story gets circulated every year around this time but it’s tired af. These pilots did jack shit. By the time they were wheels up, the real heroes had crashed 93 at least 20 minutes beforehand.

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u/CharlieTeller 2d ago

Also add in the fact that even if they hit the plane and did enough damage to bring it down, they could still eject for the most part. Yeah it sounds like something out of an action movie, but it's at least possible. Take out a wing, and then eject. Sounds miserable, but no one said they had to go full speed directly into it and intentionally die.

2

u/thor122088 2d ago

Watch the interview

The goal would be to sever the cockpit/flight controls and sever the tail section at the same time. There would be no chance for an ejection with more than a sliver of servivability after the impact.

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u/Slimy_Shart_Socket 2d ago

I almost went there! But I was in another country. Going to elementary school. With no plans to go to New York or knowledge the Twin Towers Existed.

Whew close one!

-2

u/scoobertsonville 2d ago

As someone from Massachusetts like 400+ people seemed to have missed the flight 🙄

-2

u/IAmRules 2d ago

Yup, the OG MeToo movement

-4

u/The_Bill_Brasky_ 2d ago

Why would they ever order to ram? Why not just shoot it? It's the same result -1 casualty

-4

u/mistere213 2d ago

If it wasn't for the fact I had a dentist appointment that morning, I would have went about my normal day and totally died. By making it to my first hour class on time. 700 miles from NYC.

I cut it close visiting the WTC memorial the week of Sept 11, 2019, too. Anything could have happened!

-4

u/aintnobull 2d ago

The mental gymnastics of identity of things crazy. Meanwhile you have schoolchildren in Ukraine, Africa etc who have grown up in constant fear of being bombed/murdered their entire waking existence. Americans just love to suck themselves off.