On the morning of September 11, 2001, Air National Guard pilot Heather “Lucky” Penney was ordered to take off from Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, D.C.
Her mission was to find United Airlines Flight 93, one of the four planes hijacked by Al Qaeda terrorists. The plane was heading toward the U.S. capital and, according to investigations, probably had the Capitol or the White House as its target.
But Penney and her commander, Mark Sasseville, faced a problem: their F-16s had no loaded missiles. Preparing them would have taken too much time.
That is why both pilots understood that they would have to use their own planes as weapons. Sasseville planned to hit the front of the Boeing 757, while Penney was supposed to strike the tail to try to prevent the plane from continuing on its course.
“I would take the tail”, she recalled years later.
Penney said she did not feel afraid. She barely had time to think about what she was about to do. However, when they reached the area where they believed Flight 93 would be, they found no plane.
At 10:03 in the morning, the passengers and crew of Flight 93 had attempted to regain control of the aircraft. The plane ended up crashing in a field in Pennsylvania, before reaching Washington. All 40 people on board died, but their actions prevented the plane from reaching its possible target.
Penney never had to carry out that mission. Even so, for years she avoided talking about her experience because she considered the true heroes to be the passengers of Flight 93.
“What we did that day was not special. We were not the heroes”, she said. “The passengers of Flight 93 were the heroes”.