USAF response, 9/11 - Minute by Minute

[2RHPZ]

Sept. 11, Minute by Minute

By Adam J. Hebert, Senior Editor

The 9/11 Commission Report clears up some misperceptions about that awful day.

On Sept. 11, 2001, US government personnel first learned that something was wrong at about 8:25 a.m. A terrorist aboard hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 (soon to slam into the North Tower of the World Trade Center) inadvertently broadcast news of the aircraft seizure over an air traffic control frequency, heard by personnel in the Northeast.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/oct2004/1004sept1.jpg
At 8:46 a.m., two air defense fighters were ordered to get airborne. Only seconds later, at 8:47 a.m., American Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center North Tower. Here, a Vermont ANG F-16 soars above Ground Zero in New York City. (USAF photo by Lt. Col. Terry Moultrup)

At 8:52 a.m., a flight attendant aboard United Airlines Flight 175 called United’s offices. He reported that the flight had been hijacked, “both pilots had been killed, a flight attendant had been stabbed, and the hijackers were probably flying the plane.”

At 8:53 a.m., the F-15s from Otis got airborne. However, no one knew where to send them, and they were put into a holding pattern off Long Island.

By 9:00 a.m., the FAA and the airlines faced “the staggering realization” that the nation was in the grip of multiple aircraft hijackings. At the time, the military had no such realization, according to the report.

United Flight 175 struck the WTC South Tower at 9:03 a.m. At almost exactly the same moment, NORAD officials were notified that the flight had been hijacked.



Link (http://www.afa.org/magazine/oct2004/1004sept.asp)

[TuNeRsHaRk]

sad....

[HaRdLy]

I question whether or not the pilots would of been ordered to shoot down the airliners had they known they were going to be flown into the WTC.

[Belrick]

In a democracy who is able to put there neck on the line and make such a hurried decision?
No one IMHO, not possible.

[Aerosoul]

It's called an Executive Decision.... :roll:


I'm not sure if the 4th plane was shot down but I don't doubt it.

[Shiftyfive]

Thanks for the link cag

a very sad day for my people

[EvanL]

I remember after the towers fell, walking around my neighbourhood seeing the planes fly over the city with full armament. rather scary.

[Easy C.]

I dont understand, how did no one know where to send them?

[LazerLordz]

Sounds fishy..they could have pulled up a flight plan of the flight who was inadvertantly broadcast on the ATC.

[Bombtrack]

Sounds fishy..they could have pulled up a flight plan of the flight who was inadvertantly broadcast on the ATC.

It says it crashed seconds after the planes got airborne

[joe mama]

After we got sent home from work, I went to a place in the woods near home that gives a great view of the Boston skyline. Only took a couple of minutes to spot the F-15 patrolling over the area...his buddy hiding in the clouds was harder to find, as soon as he'd pop out of a cloud he'd turn back into it or head for another one and disappear for a while.

It still amazes me that people are surprised that the system wasn't ready for that kind of attack. People think real life is like the movies, and the instant he hijackers said "Allah!", SEALs and Delta guys and top gun pilots jumped out of their beds and were ready to fight. It also kills me when I hear people say we should have done this or we should have done that before 9/11. If Bush (or anyone else) had come on TV and said we must implement all these things to tighten security because Al-Queda hates us (by the way, they've hated us for a long time, and we didn't react before, but don't worry about that, we MUST react now), he (or however was President) would have been attacked and criticized to no end. People bitch about airport security now, AFTER 9/11, because the lines can be long and it's a pain. If it had gotten tighter back then, before ANYTHING had happened, wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more people would have been ranting about it.

[2RHPZ]

Not exactly related to this article but still good:

Cheyenne Mountain operations evolve following Sept. 11 hijacking

by Staff Sgt. Jason Tudor
photos by Tech. Sgt. John E. Lasky

Link (http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0302/norad.html)

[GrimReaper]

Sad day, I still remember it vividly.
I still can't believe the US didn't see it as possible. We had these kind of threats since the seventies, the IAF actually shot down two passenger planes which entered Israeli airspace due to this kind of threat.
joe mama, the critisism is in place, the US armed forces had thirty years to learn about airborn terrorism, they could have studied Israeli onboard and terminal security measures and airforce techniques, but they (like other countries) thought It won't happen to them. The armed forces job is to be ready for the worst possible scenario, they messed up...
I still don't buy it for a second that the last plane crashed, it was shot down.

[Coop]

Sad day, I still remember it vividly.
I still can't believe the US didn't see it as possible. We had these kind of threats since the seventies, the IAF actually shot down two passenger planes which entered Israeli airspace due to this kind of threat.Well, that was really no kind of a warning, wasn't it?

The Libyan Boeing 727 was shot down by IDF/AF F-4Es in 1970 over Sinai (occupied by Israel at time, but never even near being "officially" Israeli airspace), and after turning away from Israel - with some 150 passengers and crew killed in cold blood.

That was no terrorist attack, but the crew of the plane did a navigational mistake.

A lot more of a "warning" should've been the arrest of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the WTC in NY.

Ramzi Ahmed Yousef was a Pakistani, trained in one of local para-military training camps near Miram Shah, in Pakistan, set up by Harmatul Ansar ("Movement of Friends"), most of which are run in close cooperation with the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). The Taliban, BTW, emerged from similar camps too (Harmatul Ansar alone trained over 4.000 militants in the early 1990s).

He arrived at Mindanao in the early 1990s, and formed Abu Sayyaf - a violent Muslim separatist group and a major terrorist body, planning to establish this island into a separate state ruled by Islamic law. The name Abu Sayyaf should actually mean something to almost everybody here, or?

Anyway, Yousef established close ties with Libya and different Islamic groups in the Middle East, Pakistan and Malaysia, obtaining weapons and money. By 1994, he masterminded a three-phase operation. The Phase I was an assassination against the Pope John Paul II, during his visit on the Philippines, on 12 January 1995. A terrorist, dressed as a priest and with a bomb strapped to his body, would embrace the Pope and detonate the device. In Phase 2, two United planes were to be blown up over Hong Kong - with Yousef calculating these would kill hundreds of people. In Phase 3, a young Pakistani with a newly-obtained commercial pilot's licence was to crash a small plane filled with exposives into the CIA HQs, at Langley. The Phase 3 was eventually enlargened in scope until it included hijacking of 12 passenger aircraft, and flying these into different places in the USA - almost as on 9/11.

Yousef's plans were foiled when a guard smelled chemical smoke coming from his flat at the Josefa Apartments, in Manila. Police raided the flat but Yousef escaped - only to be captured in Pakistan and later extradited to the USA. Full details of his plans were revealed in April 1995, by Edwin Angeles, second-in-command of Abu Sayyaf.

In total, I strongly doubt the USA could've learned anything from Israel in order to - say - prevent 9/11.

A much better idea would've been to more closely monitor activities of such like Ramzi Yousaf and their friends in all the possible US-allied countries...

[Bob the Drunk]

two words reaper, posse comitatus.