9 11 20th Anniversary

[Lee Stewart]

As the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were unfolding, then-Air Force Lt. Heather Penney was given a mission to intercept hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 before it reached Washington, D.C. The rookie F-16 pilot said she believed she would not come back from that mission.

At first, Penney said it wasn't immediately clear that an airplane had been deliberately flown into the World Trade Center. When the second plane hit, "that's when we knew that our nation was under attack."

She went to arm her aircraft, but there wasn't enough time. She and another pilot, Marc Sasseville, had to get in the air.

"We did not have missiles. We were on a suicide mission. And in order to be able to take any airliner down, Sass would ram his aircraft into the cockpit where the terrorists were, to destroy the flight controls," she explained. "I would take the tail by ramming my jet into the tail of the aircraft, I would aerodynamically unbalance the airplane and tip it over so it would crash straight into the ground by targeting both ends of the aircraft. It was our plan to prevent any additional casualties."

After witnessing the horror of the attacks in New York, she said she understood what needed to be done.

"I had raised my hand and swore an oath to protect and defend our nation," she said. "If this was where the universe had placed me at this moment in time... that this was my purpose. Anyone who had been in our position would have been willing to do the same thing. And the proof is in the pudding, because the passengers on Flight 93 did."