Forum: General F-16 forum

Do you realize what a single 20mm slug would do to a PW2037 at full power when fired into it from behind?

Just firing a few rounds into each engine, which should be fairly easy since they're 78.5 inches (1,994 mm) in diameter, would completely destroy them, or render them useless.

The big issue was some of the F-16 (and F-15) sent up that day had no ammo loaded in the guns, nor missiles on the wings. Gives a pilot only one option when lives would have depended on his/her decisions.

"It was decided that Sass and I would take off first, even though we knew we would end up having to take off before our aircraft were armed," Penney, among the first generation of American female fighter pilots, said to C-SPAN.

Penney said each jet had 105 lead-nosed bullets on board, but little more.

Rookie Fighter Pilot Remembers Her 9/11 Mission With No Ammo
By: Joe Coscarelli

Basically, Lieutenant Heather "Lucky" Penney is the bravest. She was the first female F-16 pilot in the D.C. Air National Guard's 121st Fighter Squadron after getting her flying license while a literature major at Purdue. On September 11, 2001, she volunteered to go after United Airlines Flight 93, which was headed toward Washington. The planes weren't prepared, but the pilots were:
The one thing she didn't have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.
...
Because the surprise attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her commanding officer went up to fly their jets straight into a Boeing 757.

"We wouldn't be shooting it down. We'd be ramming the aircraft," Penney recalls of her charge that day. "I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot."

Due to separate heroic acts on the highjacked plane, Penney's Armageddon-style sacrifice wasn't necessary, and like a true bad a$$, she downplays her role, despite spending the rest of that day guarding the airspace and escorting the president. "I was just an accidental witness to history," she says.

Source: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/09/ro ... mbers.html

Two F-16 fighter jets take off from a military unit in Toledo, Ohio, in response to the morning’s attacks, but accounts will conflict over what their mission is and who the pilots are. (Sallah and Mahr 12/9/2001; Filson 2003, pp. 71; WTOL 9/11/2006) The 180th Fighter Wing of the Ohio Air National Guard is based at Toledo Express Airport. Although the unit is not one of NORAD’s seven alert facilities around the US, it has recently received a call from NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), requesting that it launch two of its fighters (see 10:01 a.m. September 11, 2001). (McKenna 12/1999; Sallah and Mahr 12/9/2001; WTOL 9/11/2006; Spencer 2008, pp. 178-179) The 180th Maintenance Squadron, which is responsible for maintaining the unit’s aircraft and equipment, was also contacted, and has loaded the F-16s’ guns with 500 rounds of 20-caliber ammunition. (180th Fighter Wing 9/19/2001; WTOL 9/11/2006)...

...Larry Arnold, the commander of the Continental United States NORAD Region, will say the 180th FW was contacted “because we thought [Flight] 93 or Delta Flight 1989 might be headed toward Chicago.” (Filson 2003, pp. 71) NEADS battle commander Colonel Robert Marr will say the two F-16s “never had a track close enough that they were directed to engage. [But] if a valid direction had come from the appropriate level to engage a target, or shoot down a target at some time, they could have done that.”
Response Is 'Very Quick' - Marr will describe the 180th FW’s response to NEADS’s request for assistance as “very, very, very quick.” (Sallah and Mahr 12/9/2001) However, the fourth hijacked aircraft, Flight 93, has already crashed by the time the two jets take off (see (10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001). (9/11 Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 30)

Source: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.js ... endly=true