Click for Radio Podcast: Women Fighter Pilots as a Funny Idea (4:44)
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Transcript:
All the burning debris, and the burning flesh, and the ashes falling down. And nobody knew. There was no information for those individuals as they were evaluating the building. Was there another one coming in? I mean there had been two that had hit the World Trade Center.
And then we flew over, in full afterburner, coming low right over the Pentagon as we headed up north to look for Flight 93. And this individual said that the entire crowd erupted into cheers.
Because they knew at that point in time, that they were safe, because we were airborne and we wouldn’t let anyone else come and hurt them.
– Major Heather Penney, remembering the 9/11 attacks, interviewed August 8, 2011
Most of us remember where we were when we first became aware the nation was coming under attack. I hadn’t watched television that morning. A hothead at the office where I was working yelled in anger at me for arriving without knowing what was going on.
I later wept with a young family member in college near DC. Some of her friends carried a double burden. She mourned with them over loved ones they had lost at the Pentagon. She feared for them because they were Muslim, subject to attack on American streets.
Major Heather Penney was considered by many to be a bit of a novelty in 2001. The idea of woman piloting a fighter plane seemed kind of funny to some at the time. America has grown up a little in some ways since then.
She and another pilot were airborne within a few minutes after it became clear the country was under attack. Three planes had already slammed into their targets. A fourth hijacked plane was headed toward Washington. Possible targets included the White House and the Capitol building, where Congress meets.
The assignment the two pilots had been given was to find and bring down that fourth hijacked plane. The problem was that, having been on training missions, their fighter jets were not armed. In the air, they decided on a plan. They would collide their aircraft with Flight 93. Her partner would take the nose, she would take the tail.
I would essentially become a Kamikaze and ram my aircraft into the tail of the aircraft.
Steve Scully, of C-Span attempts to clarify.
Scully: So you were prepared to take your own life if necessary to bring down that plane.
Penney: Of course.
I was thinking of Heather Penney, who is now a Major and a veteran of the Iraq war, as I heard about a young fighter pilot who had helped lead an attack against the extremist group ISIS in Iraq. The fact that the pilot was from the United Arab Emirates was especially important. It accentuated that the fight is against terrorism, not against the billion and a half around the world who worship God through Islam.
Major Mariam Al Mansouri is also the first woman in the Emirati Air Force. Since joining in 2007, she has risen to command a squadron. She was in command as her group dropped bombs on ISIS.
The fact that a woman would pilot a fighter plane is still hilarious to some.
Greg Gutfeld: The problem is after she bombed it she couldn’t park it. I salute her.
Eric Bolling: Would that be considered boobs on the ground or no?
In fairness, the segment began as an attempt to salute Major Mansouri, and one of those who thought a woman fighter pilot was a funny idea, Eric Bolling, has apologized. The other, Greg Gutfeld, says some people in Washington and elsewhere misinterpreted him.
I think back to that terrible day of mass murder in New York and Washington, and those workers in Washington who cheered for the pilots who protected them, the pilots they may later have discovered were on a suicide mission.
“…they were safe, because we were airborne and we wouldn’t let anyone else come and hurt them.”
In those terrible moments of fire and rescue, if they had known a woman was piloting one of those planes, I doubt they would have thought it was a funny idea.