Response to US MARINE AIRCRAFT AT SHANNON PETITION, ANTI-WAR PETITION.
On theme of US Aircraft and recent policy. Posted by Colm campbell on behalf of Lisa Kiernan:
US Air Force commanders considered crashing fighter jets into hijacked
> planes on 11 September because of a lack of armed planes, a BBC
> investigation reveals.
> In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks US fighter planes took to
> the skies to defend America from any further attacks.
> Their mission was to protect President George W Bush and to intercept any
> hijacked aircraft heading to other targets in the US.
> But, as a new BBC programme Clear The Skies reveals, the threat of an
attack
> from within America had been considered so small that the entire US
mainland
> was being defended by only 14 planes.
> As a result unarmed planes were diverted from training missions in a
> desperate bid to increase the number of fighter planes patrolling American
> airspace.
> Colonel Robert Marr was Commander of the North East Defence Sector and
> remembers the words that came over the secure phone "we will take lives in
> the air to preserve lives on the ground".
> US military unprepared
> However, at the time of the attacks the US had just four fighter pilots on
> alert covering the north eastern United States.
> US pilots were forced to take to the skies without any weapons and might
> have had to deliberately crash into a hijacked plane to prevent casualties
> on the ground.
> "I had determined, of course, that with only four aircraft we cannot
defend
> the whole north eastern United States," he said.
> "Some of them would have just gotten in the air possibly without any
> armament onboard.
> "If you had to stop an aircraft sometimes the only way to stop an aircraft
> is with your own aircraft if you don't have any weapons.
> "It was very possible that they [the pilots] would have been asked to give
> their lives themselves to try to prevent further attacks if need be."
> Colonel Marr said: "That was the sense of frustration, of I don't have the
> forces available to do anything about this, we've got everything up that
we
> can get up and still can't do anything."
> Two of the pilots patrolling north east America told the programme how
they
> struggled to get to New York as fast as possible after the first plane had
> hit the World Trade Center.
> Pilots "Duff" and "Nasty" recalled they were only minutes away when the
> second plane hit the towers.
> Pilot Duff said: "For a long time I wondered what would have happened if
we
> had been scrambled in time.
> "We've been over the flight a thousand times in our minds and I don't know
> what we could have done to get there any quicker."
Created By: Colm Campbell