2011-048 Larson Release Document 17

8/11/2019 2011-048 Larson Release Document 17

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Historian s Report for Sept. 11 2001, By TSgt Bruce Vittner

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 , started as al most every day at the 1 02Fighter Wing at Ot is Air National Guard Base , Massachu setts. Wing commander ,Col. Donald Quennevi lle was holding his morn ing sta ff meet ing at 8:00 a .m.

Meanwh ile at the Operat ions Building, a phone call camein from thetow er to TSgt. Margie Woody at 8:38 saying that the FAA in Boston had calledfor the telephone number for N t A r 5 S(North East A ir Defense Sector located inRome , New York) because there was a poss ible h ijackin g tak ing place . One of thealert pilots on duty tha t morning heard the words possible hi jacking and said to

H his fellow alert pilot, Maj. Dan Nash that they s hould su it up immediately . This

took them three minutes and then they headed for the aircra ft at the alert barn, s tillnot knowing if anything was real ly happen ing.

Sergean t Woody patched the cal l from the tower through to Tech . SgtMichael Kel ly, the fu ll-time technic ian in the Command -Post , whose j ob tha tmorning was to handle all emergency calls . I gave th e NEADS number to the

FAA in Boston and also called NEADS with this information about a possiblehijacking , said Ke lly. ' ~f; At 8:4 1 Kelly h it the horn to alert ever yone to go to his or her Battle

, Stat ions a fter conferring with L t Col Jon Treacy who was the Supervisor of~ , Flying that day . '/ (J The horn wen t off as Maj . Nash and the other ale rt pilot, Lt. Col. Timothy

Duffy, w ere in the truck heading for the alert ai rcraft. Maj . Nash was scheduled tobe the lead p ilot on any scramble that day bu t Colonel Duffy , who is a raditionalGuardsman and a pilot for a major airline, said that he had b een involved with ascramble to intercept a hijacking about seven years before. Maj . Nash told him totake the l ead position as they boarded their aircraft . '

At 8:46 NEADS informe d the Command Post at Oti s to scramble the alertaircraft for an in tercept of a hijacked aircr aft. The t wo alert pilots were fastenedinto their F-15 ' aircraft and took off at 8:5 2 on Runway number 5 that is closest ' tothe alert barn . At this time they were under th e control ofNEADS and given aheading and altitude to fly to New York Ci ty. The l ead a ircraft took off and thesecond took off 15 seconds la ter, both on full a fter-burn ers, then the y flew abreas tat supersoni c speed towards New York City.

Whi le flying towards New York they wer e told b y NEADS that a secondplane had just hit the World Trade Towers . We were abou t60 miles away andcould see the burning because the visibility was unlim ited tha t day , said the leadpilot .

The normal train ing area for the pilots at O tis is Whiskey 1OS, an area

over the Atlantic Ocean that is south of M artha 's Vineyard and extends almos t allthe way to New Yo rk City . NEADS told the pilo ts to fly a hold ing pattern overthe southwes tern end of this training area as the y tried to determine the nex ttactic . '..'At 9: 10 NEADS told the two pilots that they had tak en over the entire airspacenear New York City and to set up a combat air patrol around Manhattan . Their j obwas to ident ify and divert all aircraft from the area . Maj. Nash and I identi fied

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and diverted over 100 aircraft du ring the next four hours that we were there, saidthe pilo t. We wou ld pu ll up nex t to them and tip our wings or fly across in frontof them to get them to leave the area, he said. Most of the aircraft were local andstate police a nd rescue he licopters .

We were informed by NEADS at 9 :30 that we migh t be told to shoot

down a commercial aircraft ifit was determ ined that it was h ijacked, and wereasked if we had a problem with that order, remembered the p ilot. I said 'no ,'because I had seen the destruction, he said . The pilot was flying over the NorthTower at about 6,000 feet when it imploded. I could not bel ieve it, it just mademe sick knowing the extent of the damage and lives lost, he said . The plume ofdebris after the collapse looked l ike a volcanic ash as it blew towardsNewJersey .

Maj. Nashis a full-time pilot at the 102ndFighter Wing. He has been apilot since 1990 and joined the 102nd in May 2000. He was the scheduling officerthat day and knew that theTOznd was going to have a KC-135 aircraft fromBangor, Maine available to them during their normal training day for the 6 F-15s

that would be flying in Whiskey 105 He d iverted that tanker to fly over the areaaround Kennedy Airport, and that is where the two scrambled aircraft refueled inthe air during their four and one-half hours of combat patrols . I had never beenon a hijack scramble before and deferred the lead to my fellow alert pilot, saidNash. I couldn 't believe it when we got to Manhattan. I thought it was the s tartofa war . We couldn't fly through all the debris, we had to go around it as weintercepted all the aircraft still in the area, he commented.

There were six F - 15s from Otis that were going to train at Whiskey 105that morning . They were sitting on a nearby runway waiting to take off when thiswhole process of a scramb le began . They idled their engines and waited while thetwo alert pilots were scrambled and took off. They took off after the scrambledaircraft took off and were over Martha's Vineyard when they received the callfrom LTC . Treacy to return immediately to Otis .

I wasn't too concerned when I saw the scrambled aircraft take off, saidMaj. Martin Richard, a traditional Guardsman and pilot with the 102nd who fliescommercially for United Airlines . We see many scrambles during the year, andmost all are just aircraft or vessels that can't be identified but are friendly. Butwhen it came over the radio that it was a possible hijacking , it sure got ourattention . When the FAA announced that the Wor ld Trade Tower had been struckby an aircraft, I asked if this was why the alert pilots had been scrambled, but gotno rep ly; said Richard . The tra ining aircraft had no ordinance on them, and thuswere not of much use as a deterrent in that configuration. When these six aircraftlanded back at Otis the pilo ts were told to stay near the aircraft. The planes were

then loaded with 940 rounds of20 mm. bullets and refueled .Two ofthe s ix aircraft had mechanical problems and were not able to fly.The four rema ining aircraft were refueled and arined. Normally it takes abou t 45minutes to 'turn around ' an aircraft, but the guys did it in 20 minutes, saidRichard. He used a few minutes of that time to run into the operat ions bu ildingand call his wife to tell her he was all righ t, but didn't know when he wo uld be


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home. My feelings were of trepida tion. I didn't know what was going on anddidn't know what the two scrambled aircraft were doing, Richard said.When the maintenance squadron heard the call to scramble, they immediatelycalled for munitions flow and started to repair and generate the non-missioncapable aircraft. Operations along with Maintenance did a survey of which

aircraft had bullets loaded and prioritized those aircraf t to be first on status. Theyimmediately began to pre-position wing tanks to increase range for future flights.Munitions started flowing at 9 :30 and the aircraft were loaded with a mix ofdifferent types of weapons. As soon as the crisis was identified, mechanics thatwere on-station at the time seamlessly changed direction to do their wartimetasking of generating jets without any confusion, said Maj . Virginia Doonan,maintenance officer. Operations and Maintenance worked extremely well togetherso that communication was strong in both directions to maximize the effort. Ourtraining during OREs etc. certainly helped us do the best job possible, she said.

The four aircraft were ordered to scramble and fly combat air patrolsaround Boston. Two of us intercepted a C-130 about 150 miles over the Atlantic

that was heading for Westover Air Base . The other two intercepted four A-1Osand a KC-l 0 tanker coming back from the Azores. NEADS told the tanker tospend the rest of the day with us for refueling and two of us were told to go toNew York City to work with, and then relieve the first two scrambled pilots,Richard said.

Everything that moved had to be identified . Many of the aircraft over NewYork City were now there to provide relief and aid and were allowed to fly, butthey still needed to be identified. It seemed like we were up in the air for about 45minutes when it was in actuality over six hours , recalled Richard afterwards . When we were flying to New York NEADS told us that our mission was tointercept, divert , or if unsuccessful in those to call them for authorization to shootdown . That certainly got our attention, he said. After returning to Otis at 6:00p.m ., Richard and his partner, Maj . Robert Martyn, were debriefed by intelligenceand sent home. Driving to Otis the next morning felt like it was that war -timefeeling like we had in Saudi Arabia,' recalled Richard who described the fallentowers as looking like a giant pile of Lincoln Logs from the air.

The two aircraft that had maintenance problems that morning were fixed,and the pilots flew to New York City to relieve Richard and his partner, Maj .Robert Martyn, and continue the combat air patrols over the area .

When the horn went off to have everyone report to Battle Stations , Col.Quenneville rushed to the Command Post and summoned the Battle Staff. All ofthe group commanders were there along with the Survival Recovery Command(SRC) led by Maj. David Bascom and Capt. Bill Dyer. The SRC also included

Public Affairs, Security Police, Civil Engineering, and the Fire Department.Television played a major role in providing information . CNN wasshowing the first tower of the World Trade Cen ter on fire , and many people in theOperations Building and in the Command Post were watching as the secondaircraft flew into the second tower. Maj. Scott Hoyt, a pilot for the l02nd and whohad previously flown as commercial pilot, told everyone that the crash wasdeliberate and couldn't have been done by the airline 's pilot.


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Chief Master Sgt. John Silva, Security Forces Squadron superintendent,who had been atthe staff meeting, immediately implemented the recal l plan andwithin five hours over 40 security police officers were at Otis providing perimetersecurity for the military installation on a 24 -hour basis. One police officer drovefrom Florida and another left from Rochester, N .Y. and was here in four hours,

said Chief Silva.Lt. Col. Magg ie Quennevi lle, comm unity relations officer, and Cl iff

MacDonald, public affairs s pecialist, were also very busy that morning and for thenext three weeks . I saw the towers on fire and went to the Command Post . Wewere told by NORAD (North American Defense Command in Colorad o Springs,Col .) that we c ouldn't give out any information, includi ng the fact that we werethe unit that was scram bled. 'S orry we can't give out any operational information'was the li ne that we ha d to use ove r and over to netw orks an d television stationsand newspapers all over the world, said Lt . Col . Quenneville. This was theofficial line although television stati ons and newspapers were reporting that it wasthe F-15s from Otis that were scrambled even later the same day as the event

happened. It was about ten days after September 11 that NORAD allowed thefacts to be made public. They set up interviews and filming for CNN at Otis thatwas shot over a period of three days to show how the unit was flying combatpatrols and that the skies were safe for the public to fly. Soon after a ll three majornetworks came to Otis for interviews, and Diane Sawyer of Good MorningAmerica on ABC was given a flight in an F-15. Maggie and I were taking ca llsfrom a ll over the wor ld: We had the Cape Cod Times, New York Times , LosAngeles Times ; a London newspaper, and a Russian newspaper all calling at thesame time , said Cliff MacDonald who worked rotating 12-hOurshifts with Lt .Col . Quenneville for almost a month.

Wing commander, Col . Donald Quenneville spoke to all members of the102 nd at a commander's call on September 15 and addressed the unit in his

commander's column in the Oct INov issue ofthe Seagull. His comments, I haveterrible memories of that tragic day, but I also have special ofles as commander ofthis wing. We switched from our unit's peacetime p osture into the nation's firstline of Homeland Defense. That morning while ou r aircraft were flying aroundManhattan, the senior leaders were developing a comprehensive plan to ready ourunit for war against an unknown assailant . Logistics personnel began thesystematic tr ansformation of our aircraft from training configuration to one fittingfor combat . They provided a ramp ful l of mission capable , combat-configuredaircraft . This effort approached the realm ofthe superhuman. Continuous combatair patrols were flown for the next se veral days in response to NORAD tasking.Security , with 90 percent of the tradition al guardsmen reporting within 24 hours ,quick ly established the Force GenerationArea and a robust force protectionposture . Services personnel provided four meals a day and even brought meals tothose unable to get to the dining hall. Most all personnel went on 12-ho ur days ,and wherever it was needed, a volunteer would appear to handle the situation.Nigh ts, weekends, scheduled days off did not matter as the dedicated members ofthis wing all pitched in. I will alwa ys remember the stellar manner in which themen and women of the l02d answered the call to duty. You did us proud .

2011-048 Larson Release Document 17

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