Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 911 by Lynn Spencer

Author:Lynn Spencer [Spencer, Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, 21st Century, Military, Aviation, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781416579465
Google: HlFXrXcq9X4C
Amazon: B0015DYJT4
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2008-06-02T23:00:00+00:00

102nd Fighter Wing, Otis Air National Guard Base, Cape Cod, 9:35 a.m.

While NEADS command struggles to get fighters to Washington, the Otis alert jets sent to New York are keeping a tight clamp on the airspace over the city. When Otis pilots Duff and Nasty arrived over New York City at 9:25, Duff established a “point defense” that he thought would best protect the city. He decided that one F-15 would remain over the city at all times while the other flew intercepts, flying up close to any planes that entered the airspace and steering them away. They wouldn’t commit “out”—leave the immediate area to investigate targets of interest farther away—because that would leave the city unprotected. They had decided to let the enemy come to them.

The process is keeping them extremely busy; dozens of airliners are still in the airspace, in addition to all kinds of helicopters and smaller aircraft that are not on filed flight plans. The interception process is standard: Duff or Nasty pulls up uncomfortably close alongside the unsuspecting aircraft that has flown into New York airspace and rocks his wings. Military pilots are accustomed to flying nice and close, but for a civilian or commercial pilot, such proximity is absolutely unnerving. On a rare occasion, Duff and Nasty are able to communicate by radio, on the “Guard” frequency, which is for emergencies but which many pilots monitor while en route. On most intercepts, though, to turn an aircraft away they fly right across its nose, an unmistakable way of saying “You need to go this way!” When instead they want a plane to follow, they fly up close and then turn off in the direction they want the aircraft to fly, as a way of saying “Follow me this way.”

If the intercepted pilot is slow to understand, Duff or Nasty repeats the process, but approaches even closer, utilizing the more intimidating method of “nudging” the pilot in the direction he needs to turn. In such cases, the pilots get the point immediately.

By now their fuel gauges are sinking lower, and they need to find a tanker right away that can air refuel them. They’ve been waiting for word from NEADS, but now Nasty figures out a solution. Because he was acting as the scheduling officer before he was put on alert duty, he knows that the training exercise that the Otis jets had been scheduled to fly today called for refueling, and for that reason there’s a KC-135 tanker from Bangor, Maine, that should be available. By now, Nasty knows, it should be en route to military area Whiskey 105, where it had been scheduled to rendezvous with the Otis fighters on their training mission about 20 minutes from now.

“Duff, we have a tanker scheduled for the training missions this morning off the coast in 105,” he calls.

That’s my tanker now, Duff thinks. He calls NEADS to request that the tanker orbit at 20,000 feet right over JFK Airport. Within minutes, NEADS has coordinated with Bangor to borrow their tanker and Duff and Nasty are taking turns refueling.

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