I'm one of the Navy fighter pilots that rocked the great state of New York on 9/11.
At 6:59 a.m. my crew was scrambled to fly our six Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornets, along with ten other squads, to perform some aerial escorting for eleven hijacked commercial aircraft.
Good thing the coffee was hot. In six minutes flat we were in Outrigger formation around our target. At the controls of the hijacked plane was a young Asian kid — must've been about ten-years-old. No matter. My squad was flying his plane now.
Those boats are slow as molasses. Nothing I love better than pulling tight formation on a target. We had him in our net. I was on the left of the American Airlines plane — 36 inches from the tip of my wing to his windshield. Kip was flying right-side. Tom and Jon had the wings with Berl on top, and Ringo stuck at the bottom — as usual.
By the time we escorted that hog down safely at Langly, the other ten squads were waiting for us. America was safe again.
"Damn it," I thought; my guys would have to buy beer for sixty other guys that night. At least the coffee was still hot.
