Heather Penney is speaking out on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks about the suicide mission she and her wingman were prepared to carry out.
Penney, who was 26 at the time, served as an F-16 pilot with the Washington DC Air National Guard when terrorists hijacked four commercial planes on September 11, 2001. Nearly 3,000 people died that day after American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 struck the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. The fourth hijacked aircraft, United Airlines Flight 93, never reached its believed target of Washington DC.
The morning began unremarkably for Penney. In an interview News, she recalled the clear conditions that Tuesday. “The sky was so blue,” she said. “It was crystal blue, and it was a perfect flying day. Tech Sergeant Dave Callahan knocks on the door and he says: ‘An aircraft just hit the World Trade Center.'”
The initial report drew little alarm from the pilots. Penney explained their first assumption was that a small aircraft had accidentally struck the building. “We assumed it had to be a Cessna, like a little airplane, bounced off the building, right? We didn’t take it seriously,” she said.
The gravity of the situation became clear only when Callahan returned with devastating confirmation. “And it wasn’t until he came back a second time, he said: ‘A second aircraft hit the other World Trade Center, and it was on purpose.’ And that’s when we knew our nation was under attack,” Penney continued.
By the time Penney and her wingman, then-Lieutenant Colonel Marc ‘Sass’ Sasseville, received orders to scramble, both towers had collapsed and the Pentagon was burning. Intelligence indicated at least one additional hijacked plane remained airborne and headed toward the capital. The two pilots faced an extraordinary problem: their jets carried no weapons.
“We had the authorization to use lethal force. The problem was Sass and I didn’t have weapons,” Penney revealed in the PBS News interview. “Missiles had not gotten to the flight line yet. We would have had to ram our jets into what we then knew was the target, an airliner.”
The pair devised a split attack plan designed to bring down United Airlines Flight 93 through direct collision. Penney detailed their intended approach: “So what Sass would do is, he would ram his jet into the cockpit, take out the terrorists, take out the flight controls, ensure that the engine controls the throttles, that that was absolutely gone.”
She then described her own role in the planned interception. “And then I would – I would hit the tail. I would aerodynamically destabilize the aircraft and it would go straight into the ground.”
Both pilots understood they would not survive the impact. Penney acknowledged the mission’s fatal nature, noting that this would have been a ‘suicide mission’ for both her and her wingman. Yet she maintained that neither of them hesitated to accept the assignment.
“Everyone on the base, any individual who had ever raised their right-hand would have wanted to be in that two-ship to protect our nation. It was my job,” she said.
Penney and Sasseville ultimately were not launched in time to intercept Flight 93. Instead, passengers and crew members aboard the hijacked Boeing 757 fought back against the terrorists, leading to the aircraft crashing into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The revolt by those on board prevented the plane from reaching Washington DC, saving an untold number of lives at the presumed target.
The 25th anniversary of the attacks falls on September 11, with memorial ceremonies scheduled at the World Trade Center site, the Pentagon, and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania.