{"id":13169,"date":"2011-09-12T01:15:53","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T06:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=13169"},"modified":"2011-09-12T00:37:01","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T05:37:01","slug":"kamikaze-f-16-pilots-responded-to-terrorist-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/12\/kamikaze-f-16-pilots-responded-to-terrorist-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"“Kamikaze” F-16 Pilots Responded to Terrorist Attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

In one of the many reports on the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the Washington Post <\/em>recounts the story of two F-16 pilots<\/a> from the 121st Fighter Squadron of the Washington, DC, Air National Guard, who were some of the first to respond to the attack.\u00a0 As also reported at MSNBC.com<\/a>,<\/p>\n

the F-16 jets they were rushing to get airborne were largely unarmed, recalls one of the pilots, then-Lt. Heather Penney, leaving them one option to take out the wayward plane [Flight 93]: a kamikaze mission.<\/p>\n

Loaded with a few rounds of training ammunition in their guns, the flight lead primarily planned to use the aircraft themselves as weapons.<\/p>\n

“As we were putting on our flight gear [Col Marc Sasseville] looked at me and said, ‘I’ll ram the cockpit.’ And I had made the decision that I would take the tail off the aircraft,” Penney recalled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Post <\/em>notes Penney’s pre-takeoff prayer:<\/p>\n

She muttered a fighter pilot\u2019s prayer\u00a0— \u201cGod, don\u2019t let me [expletive] up\u201d — and followed Sasseville into the sky.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alan Shepard might take issue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also noted at the Air Force Times<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In one of the many reports on the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the Washington Post recounts the story of two F-16 pilots from the 121st Fighter Squadron of the Washington, DC, Air National Guard, who were some of the first to respond to the attack.\u00a0 As also reported at MSNBC.com, the F-16 jets they were rushing to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[134,1946,186,5285,2199,2201,2200,2,11],"class_list":["post-13169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-air-force","tag-alan-shepard","tag-f-16","tag-fighter-pilot","tag-heather-penney","tag-kamikaze","tag-marc-sasseville","tag-military","tag-prayer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}