September 11, 2001. At a time when nearly every plane in the sky was landing at the nearest airport, two others were about to take off.
They were a pair of F-16 fighter jets. Their mission? Find the last plane to be hijacked — and bring it down.
The call had come directly from the White House: United Flight 93 had made a dramatic U-turn and was headed towards Washington. The pilots weren’t responding. The nation needed someone in the air to stop it, and it needed to be now.
As soon as Lieutenant Colonel Marc “Sass” Sasseville got the message, he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t ask what he was supposed to do about it. And he didn’t assign the mission to anyone else. Instead, he immediately pulled on his flight suit and told the nearest pilot — Lieutenant Heather “Lucky” Penney — to follow him. In just a few minutes, they were airborne, streaking across the sky to where they thought the hijacked plane would be. As they ascended, they could see the Pentagon burning outside their cockpit windows…and smell the fumes of burning jet fuel.
Normally, it takes F-16 pilots about thirty minutes to complete the pre-flight checklist. On September 11, Sass and Lucky had to scramble their jets so fast, there was no time to load any missiles. Their guns were stocked with dummy bullets for training missions. It was impossible to shoot down the plane. That left only one option: They had to ram it instead.
Theirs was a suicide mission.
Both had good reasons for saying, “No, I can’t do this, ask someone else.” Sass had a wife and two young children waiting for him at home. And Lucky’s father was also a pilot — for United Airlines. For all she knew, her own father was on the very plane she was preparing to hit.
Nevertheless, there was no argument. No hesitation. As Lucky later said, “We don’t send our service members on suicide missions. But it was clear what needed to be done that morning.”1
Said Sasseville, “We didn’t have any other choice. And we weren’t going to be caught on the ground watching America get hit again.” 1
It was an operation neither pilot had ever been trained for, with a target neither had ever imagined. But this was what both had signed up for: To save lives, even at the cost of their own.
So, when Sasseville quietly said, “I’m going to go for the cockpit,” Penney’s response was instantaneous: “I’ll take the tail.”2
As fate would have it, these two Air Force pilots did not have to sacrifice their lives that day. The passengers of Flight 93 had done that for them, by storming the cockpit and crashing the plane before it ever reached Washington. Naturally, both Sasseville and Penney refer to these courageous men and women as the real heroes of 9/11, which they were. Neither are inclined to give themselves any credit. But that does not make what these two pilots did — and what they were prepared to do — any less heroic. They were willing to give their lives for our country without orders or a moment’s hesitation. Because that was what they had signed up to do.
“People have asked me, who ordered you to ram your aircraft? The answer is no one. We knew what needed to be done. Once we had authorization to get airborne, our duty was simple, clear, and unspoken: To protect. And since we had no weapons capable of taking down an airliner, we’d do it by the only means we had.” 3 — Major Heather Penney
I think about people like Sass and Lucky every Veterans Day. I think about how incredible it is that every day, there are over a million members of our Armed Services — and millions of veterans — willing to lay down their lives for us. How blessed we are to have their loyalty, their courage, and their example.
“I’ve been called a hero for what I was willing to do. But I’m not special. I just happened to be standing at the Ops Counter when we finally got the call. The truth is, any one of us would have made the same decision, would have been willing to do exactly what I was prepared to do — and what the passengers on Flight 93 did do.
Why? Because…we belong to something greater than ourselves. As complex, diverse, and discordant as it is, this thing, this idea called America binds us together in citizenship and community and brotherhood.” 3 — Major Heather Penney
Everyone knows that Veterans Day is for paying tribute to those who serve. But it’s more than that. It’s an opportunity to remember one outstanding pilot’s words: That we all belong to something greater than ourselves. That America is both a country and an idea.
The veterans of our country have done their job, protecting and fighting for that idea. It’s our job as citizens to always make it a country worth fighting for.
May we never lose sight of that mission.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to all our veterans and to you, I wish a happy Veterans Day.
Antoine