Former Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was a rookie F-16 fighter jet pilot and a member of the District of Columbia Air National Guard when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks occurred.
Sure in her resolve to protect and defend, Penney understood at that time that she and her commander might not return from their mission to ram their jets into the fourth plane—United Airlines Flight 93—that had been hijacked by terrorists that day.
Although the two pilots were ready to die that day, what lives with Penney is not her unit’s willingness to sacrifice for their country, but the courage and patriotism of the passengers and crew onboard Flight 93. Those everyday heroes proved that there’s something deeper that connects us all as Americans, she said.
“There’s something deeper that connects all of us. And that is what animated them that day. ... They knew that their nation needed them.”
That morning at about 10 a.m., a group of people aboard Flight 93 struggled with the terrorists who had hijacked the airliner. The flight crashed into a Pennsylvania field, killing everyone on board but saving many other potential victims.
Instead of dwelling on the pain and trauma from that day, Penney chooses to focus on the American spirit of courage and selflessness shown by the passengers and crew of Flight 93.
“How can I make my world a better place? How can I take that spirit of service, of courage into my community, to make our nation a better place? And I think that’s the real legacy of 9/11,” Penney said.
Family History
For Penney, that sense of service was ingrained in her from an early age, coming as she does from a line of fighter pilots; her father flew in the Vietnam War, and her grandfather was a flight instructor during World War II.In March 2001, she qualified to fly the F-16, with all its weapons systems. Just prior to 9/11, Penney became a lieutenant, completed pilot training, and earned her “wings.”
Because her squadron had just finished “heavy” training in Nevada, many in her unit went home, leaving only a skeleton crew of D.C. National Guard fighter pilots on the morning of 9/11, Penney said.
That morning, during a meeting, an enlisted crew member interrupted their unit and told them about the first World Trade Center tower being hit by a passenger plane, she said.
“And we just made the assumption that it was a light, general aviation aircraft flying down the Hudson, maybe wasn’t paying attention and bounced off a building,” Penney said.
It wasn’t until they got up and turned on the news that they saw the second plane hit the other tower, “and it was clear that our nation was under attack,” she said.
Not Fast Enough
At that time, there was no alert system or armed fighter jets in place to defend the capital because the United States had been focused on the Russian threat, but when the Cold War with the Soviet Union ended, there were no “fighters armed with real weapons, real missiles, ready to go at a moment’s notice,” Penney said.At the time, the United States had only a small number of fighter jet units protecting the borders.
“And they were all looking out; they weren’t looking in, and we were not a part of that,” Penney said.
The group Penney was with was trained but had no weapons on their aircraft or a “chain of command” for that type of emergency scenario.
“Getting the authorization to launch and then getting the weapons onboard the aircraft were our two biggest problems,” she said.
The leadership there that morning included Wing Commander Gen. David Worley (now operations officer), Maj. Marc Sasseville (now a general), and Weapons Officer Maj. Dan Kane (now a general), Penney said.
Initially, the three decided to try to get weapons, which would need to be obtained from Andrews Air Force Base. However, even after being armed, the team would still require authorization to use their weapons, which would need to come from the White House, Penney said.
Left With No Other Choice
“We knew what the target was—innocent Americans in airliners, with terrorists. And that was something that we could not take down of our own accord without the explicit authorization and intent from our national leadership. So, we simply had to wait,” she said.After terrorists used a third hijacked plane to strike the Pentagon, Vice President Dick Cheney gave the order to Penney’s unit to go after the fourth plane, Flight 93, which was determined to be on a similar suicide mission.
“[Sasseville] looks at me and says, ‘Lucky, you’re with me.’ And he looks at Dan Kane and says, ‘Raisin, you and Igor, Brandon, [and] Rasmussen, you guys wait until you get missiles. Alright, Lucky, let’s go,’” Penney recounted of the order that Sasseville gave the morning of 9/11.
As they rushed to gear up for the mission, she thought, “Don’t screw this up.”
“Because if there was anything I had done in my life that mattered, that was it,” Penney said.
“We knew that if we took off and we were mission successful, that we would be ramming our jets into the airliner that we would not be coming home, that’s if we were successful—it was a one-way mission.
“Given the stakes, and we had seen the aircraft on the television flying into the World Trade Center, we knew what had to be done. There was no question in my mind.”
Ordinary Heroes
But Penney’s and Sasseville’s heroism and sense of duty were matched by the passengers on Flight 93, who would go on to sacrifice their lives to save countless others by forcing the terrorists to bring down the plane before they could succeed in reaching Washington.Penney hopes that the younger generation can understand the sacrifice that those on Flight 93 made and realize “that there is nothing truly safe in this world, [that] nothing truly great ever happens in total safety,” she said.
“[Young people] can make choices every day to be ordinary heroes, to live up to their greatness and to contribute to who we are as a nation,” she said.
