Forum: Off-topic

Last edited by swanee on Feb 14, 2005 - 06:03 AM; edited 2 times in total

Lots of guys have a cool one they have/can share. (unclass of course!!!!)

My dad loves to talk about his. I wish i could get him to record it, and mp3 it and post it as a link, its amazing.

basically, he was on his way up to Syracuse from Newport News to get in his monthly sortie requirements. The planes hit as he was getting off of his Airliner at Syracuse. His Wing CO called him, he said he was on the other side of the ramp. They sent a truck to pick him up and get him into life support and into the air.

The wierd thing is that when the first airplane hit, the FAA treated it as an accident, and as a result, the 2ship that was on the runway at the guard base (remember, guard bases and airports share a runway many times) had to abort, they got abck to the ramp, parked and climbed out, just as the second airplane hit, they were then ordered back into their airplanes, the pin pulled on the gun (with dummy rounds) and sent after the airplane that ended up crashing in Penn... (I don't know how close they were to shooting it down, i know that was their orders, but how close they were was classified) AFter the airplane crashedC , they Flew CAP around that area and possibly for the white house for 8 hours!!

this is where my dad comes in: As he is getting into life support his crew cheif and the missle guys say "Youre all set, See you at Fort Drum" Which is where they kept the missle coffins as they couldnt store them at the guard base since it was also an airport. Fort Drum was normally 2 hours away. They pile into a humvee and tear rubber up to drum, and are there ~40 minutes later, waiting for my dad and his #2 to park, mount the missles and go.

So my dad heads out into the sky, chasing down airplanes they think might be atttacking other places, running into farmers in crop dusters, (who get quite a scare when an f-16 pops up and give them a LAND NOW! signal)

He loves to talk about how for the first time in history the guard was called on to Defend the nation in an air attack, and how within 15 minutes of the second airplane hitting, 306 fighters were covering the skies of the 50 most important targets, and only 2 airplanes were active airforce, the rest were the Guard.

SO that is waht the 174th Fw, 138th fs did on 9-11. CAP of DC and NYC. But i would love you hear everyone else stories too!!!!

Very Happy

Life is too short for ugly sailboats, fat women and bad beer!

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Well, here's my 9/11 story.

I was staying on my best friends sailboat in a marina on the Silver Strand - the bit of land that runs from Coronado island south past the Navy Amphib and SEAL bases to Imperial Beach in San Diego. It's just across the bay from 32nd St. Naval Station, too.

So we were dead asleep after a long night cruising in her Stingray and drinking on the boat when the phone rang and woke us up. The guy on the other end said that there had been a plane crash and the borders were closed before we figured out that it was a wrong number. We went back to sleep for a while and I called my mom to say hi when we woke up. Mom gave us the bad news and we were just in shock.

Adrienne, my friend, called her dad and got a few more details before we hopped in the car to go get an antenna for her TV. We saw the footage for the first time on the TVs at Radio Shack and I think we were both sick to our stomachs. We hooked the antenna up back on the boat and watched for a while.

There was talk of possible targets on the west coast and everyone seemed to be afraid of something happening. People were staying home from work and malls and everything else. We decided that fear and stagnation were just what the a-holes who crashed those jets wanted, so we decided we'd do our part to make sure they didn't and did the best thing we could think of which was to go ahead and go to the movies just like we'd planned. I can't remember what it was now, but it was all we could think of. We hung around on her boat until late in the evening and there was something really strange about that night. Tijuana International Airport is just south of the border, not too far away, and there's also a helicopter base in Imperial Beach and North Island NAS and Lindbergh Field just to the north, but there was (understandably) no air traffic. The only aircraft we noticed were a couple of jets flying CAP at night and we didn't even see a light from them. It was just way too quiet and really eery.

I went home that night and couldn't sleep too well, but Adrienne couldn't sleep at all. She decided to go ahead and go to work at 0300 at the Red Cross blood bank. Traffic was terrible all the way up the Strand due to all the Navy personnel trying to get to the Amphib base, SEAL base, and North Island. She said the entire west bound side of the Coronado Bay Bridge was jam packed. When she looked over the south side at 32nd Street, every ship the Navy had down there had been turned around with the bows pointed out of their slips and they were all taking on supplies and munitions.

I went back down to the sailboat the next day to visit and it was really strange to see three AEGIS cruisers just off the coast providing missile cover for San Diego. I also went back to work at the Chevy dealership soon after that day and the lack of air operations was even more noticable there as the dealership is directly under the departure route for a busy civilian airport that's just about a mile to the east.

I talked to some of the pilots and ground crews from Miramar about that day and they all had a very similar story. They were eating breakfast that morning when the call came to get the jets armed and in the air. I don't know how long it took, but it was as fast as they could do it.

I'll never forget that day, the way we felt, or the tears we shed when we heard the news. As far as I'm concerned, Osama Been Hidin' had better watch his six because even if I'm not on it, some Spec Ops guys who are still plenty ticked off are! I just hope we take that *&^@ alive!!!

As a very old flag says, DON'T TREAD ON ME Twisted Evil

!!!

Wow! Both great stories. It clarifes, for me anyway, what my parents and aunts and uncles felt like on December 7, 1941. I thought "Now we'll find out who our true international friends really are".

On 9/11 I had been out of the government contractor business for a few years and was firmly established in the private sector, but I kept in regular email contact with some old Guard buds in Tucson. When I shot 'em an email asking how's things they couldn't really say much on open channels. Just that the Tucson Air Guard were flying CAPs for both Tucson and Phoenix UFN. Nothing more in depth than that. My ex Tucson boss has a son that flies for United and was good friends with one of the UA pilots killed in NYC, so he was a mess, naturally. Crying or Very sad

Now....I may have been reading way too much into it at the time but when the second tower fell and the video of rejoicing Arabs and Palestinians was "accidentally" released, I was thinking "Man, there's gonna be some sorry bastards over there when this is over and done with". I really, REEEEALLY believed there would soon 1 or 2 large lakes of molten glass in the Mid East. GW, the NCA, and (most of) Congress was royally pi**ed (as was a vast majority of like-minded Amercans) and I was just waiting for the ultimatum:

you

The fact that the SSBN trigger wasn't pulled is testament to the cool-heads that prevailed that day. If it had been me as the POTUS, I can't say I would have done the same thing, to be quite honest. Embarassed

Quote:

The fact that the SSBN trigger wasn't pulled is testament to the cool-heads that prevailed that day. If it had been me as the POTUS, I can't say I would have done the same thing, to be quite honest.

2! I thought our response would have been quicker than it was, but I can see why we did it the way we did. Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't gone after some of the other state sponsors of terrorism in more active ways.

Last edited by trailmix on Nov 03, 2006 - 04:56 PM; edited 2 times in total

It was a long day, one I'll never forget.
God bless the USA, never forget.

http://www.josephgoss.com/standdown.wmv

9/11

I was on the box that day. Ate breakfast, took a nap, got toned out on a run, breathing difficulty....an old lady wearing pink houseshoes.

After doing my initial assessment and giving her some Os, I happened to glance at the TV, and saw all this smoke coming from the WTC on CNN. I asked "man, what happened"? and the lady's daughter said "Oh, a plane hit the tower". I was immediately thinking commuter, and also thought what a PITA FDNY had on their hands, 'cause it looked like a big fire. Alluvasudden the 2nd plane hit, and I said to my P "Holy sh*t....that was no accident!"

We loaded gramma up hastily, and lit out for the ED, and watched the aftermath, 30 or so people crowded into the nurse's lounge. We went back to the station, and sat there with the guys that had just come in on their own, in abject stunned silence. Somewhre in there, we began discussing that structural stability of the towers, and how we hoped FDNY had their CP away from the towers....sure that they had. When the first one came down, the sickening feeling cannot be described. I KNEW there were hundreds of firefighters in the building.

Let me back up a bit. I don't mean to sound callous about the civillian deaths, because everybody in public service does it for the public, but when its your brothers there dying, it hurts especially bad, and thats where your focus is. Thats what your first thoughts are "Oh god, NY just lost a couple hundred guys" Before 9/11, most of us in the fire service had the experience of only 1 multi-causualty incident, and that was the 6 guys from Worcester, MA a couple of years before. To the rest of the fire service, losing 6 guys was just beyond comprehension. We couldn't imagine the pain of 6 fellow firefighters being gone in one incident. It had a profound effect of the entire brotherhood of firefighters. 343 is just staggering. Even today, it is just really beyond belief, and still doesn't feel real. Its just numbing. I can't imagine what its like for the FDNY people.

I'm on the Texas DMAT/SAR team, so I loaded up and headed for our staging area, and we sat there for 2 days, until it was apparent that there was really nobody there to rescue, so we stood down.

The one overriding thing from my memory, was the video after the collapse of all the dust, and in the background, you can hear all this high pitched screeching, like a smoke alarm. Its the PASS devices on hundreds of airpaks going off. A PASS device in a signaling device that is on a firefighters breathing rig. Its motion sensitive, so if you are motionless for a given period of time, it will go off, and is used to help your crew locate you if you go down in a fire. It is a sound that all firefighters are atuned to, and hearing it, even in training always raises your awareness, and sends chills down your back. Hearing it....hundreds of them, and understanding what it meant, on 9/11 is just haunting still to this day. I will never forget that feeling.

I took 3 friends of mine from our department to Iraq with me to work a contract there as firefighters. It was our way to pay tribute to our brothers who died that day.

Last edited by trailmix on Jun 06, 2005 - 01:07 AM; edited 1 time in total

I know what you meant magnetass... Usually when you hear those PASS start going its becasue someone brought doughnuts and half the mutual aid guys from the next town are sitting on their asses digging into the rehab supplies. Not that day.
~mix

For a little background of my own, I can ralate to Mix about the "being there" thing. I was at Khobar Towers that fateful night of 25June1996 when 19 lost their lives. It SHOULD have been a wake up call, but it happened to a military target overseas so the general population really didn't give a sh*t! There was even a person who was in the Air Force at that time who was in my ALS class that did not know about the attack!!! There have been times that take me back to that night, it is difficult to talk about sometimes, and most people wonder why I haven't "gotten over it"---but they'll never understand.

I got out of active duty in 1997 and moved back to North Dakota and joined the air guard (still avionics of course!). I got a job at our alert detechment stationed at Langley AFB, Va. in 2000. My primary responsibilities were as a crew chief working shift.

I was working shift on 9/11. I was over on our admin side taking care of some of my additiona duties when I got a call from a friend of mine who was an engine troop with the 1st FW. He told me that an airplane had struck the WTC and we both thought Cessna. He was watching the news when the second plane hit---that's when the horn went off! I ran over to the barns where my pilot was getting his gear on. I launched him out and got into our break room in time to see the plane hit the Pentagon.

Talk about an emotional/confusing/busy day! Our jets were up for a number of hours doing CAPs/intercepts and the pilots were way out of crew rest when they got back. Richmond ANG came down with their jets to get their munitions (same situation as Syracuse) and to sit alert with us. Talk about a crowded ramp when all the jets were on the ground! That was a night full of speculation, rumor, and scrambles.

Life at alert definetly changed forever that day.

I remember seeing the ramp over at langley that day. Between the richmond guys, the ND guys and the 3 squadrons of the 1fw is was a bit loaded...

I just came from school, only to see on CNN the live ransmission of the second 767 going towards the second tower, I didn't know how to react for second!
Was the fourth that went down in Pensyllvinia going to the White House?

Karim, as far as I know, it was heading for Capitol Hill and Congress. I'm not entirely sure about that, but that's what I remember hearing somewhere.

I was siting at work going over a F-16 landing gear report I was editing when a friend called and told me to turn on my television at work (had one in the office).

The first aircraft had already struck the first tower, as I turned it on and was talking about "what could have possibly happened to cause it"...the second aircraft aircraft appeared and hit the other tower.

Then we both knew what had happened, it was an outright attack, we just felt it in our guts. I instantly thought of my brother who worked just blocks away from that site, I wondered if he was alright. Then my heart sank and anger set in, I still have that anger in me today. It was my home town that was hit besides the fact it was my country.

Never as long as I will live will I forget or give up my hate for these fanatics.

I was at work here in Norway and it was afternoon local time when the news of the first crash was broadcasted on the news. I even remember that they thought it might me a small Cessna, but that was ofcourse soon corrected.

Spent the rest of the day watching TV, and then in the evening, the call came through from the Norwegian Home Guard to be on 1 hour standby, and never leave without a cellphone within arms length.

That`s when you know the world is not a big place after all, and a day with very special feelings - even on the other side of the Atlantic ocean!

I was in the Pentagon in a training class for newly arrived action officers. (FYI…The plane hit between the 4th and 5th corridor…my classroom was just off corridor 2 (20% around the building))

We already had our first lecture and went on break. As the lights came up, the TV was put on CNN so we could see what was going on. By then both towers had been hit so it was obvious that they were not accidents. At this point the TV had been on less than 15 seconds when suddenly the building shook. My immediate impression was that it was a sonic boom (having heard thousands while at Edwards), it made sense that planes would be racing towards NY. That hope was immediately dismissed when the fire alarm went off. We all looked at each other and realized in unison that class was over...so we grabbed our bags and headed down the stairs. It was amazingly calm and orderly (military training I guess).

As we exited out the 2nd corridor, we were assaulted with the smell of burning JP (having been downwind of a mishap previously the smell was unmistakable). Like many, we immediately gravitated to the impact site to see if we could be off assistance, but by the time we got there, there were more volunteers than necessary. So most of us just hovered around wondering “what next”. I was lucky enough to find someone at there car so we could listen to the radio. I tried to call my wife via cell phone to let her know I was OK but needless to say the cell phone networks were swamped and I could only get a signal 1 dial out of a hundred. I was able to reach my parents in Kansas where I was able to get more details (to this day they think it’s funny that they knew more than I did). I was also able to reach my office (in Rosslyn); they reached my wife via land line and let her know I was OK. I was then told to go home.

First, I thought Metro…was one of the first actually, but the first train that arrived was so full that it overheated the brakes trying to stop. So they exited everyone off in case of fire. By then they had closed the Metro because it passed too close to Reagan Airport…

About that time the first F-16 passed overhead. It may have been booming but I can’t remember. It then came back real low and real fast. You can’t imagine the morale boost that was to see that. Never will forget that…

Now home. Hmmm. That wasn’t so easy. I had just arrived to the area, was a “slugger” (meaning I carpooled in every day in a random car) so I had no knowledge of the local area or alternate commuting paths. Suddenly felt as though I had just ejected over hostile lands with no clue where I was and no radio. Two of us got on the first bus going away…headed toward Annandale. Heck I didn’t even know where that was, but once there we caught a bus to Springfield Metro and from there to Potomac Mills mall where I was parked.

6 hours after impact I was walking in my door.

A side story…a reservist in my office was a 757/767 pilot for United. He walked down to the crash site, identified himself, and spent the next week helping them identify parts. So anyone who buys the “it was a bomb and no jet” conspiracy, forget it.

Roscoe...I was wondering, how many hours have you accumulated so far in the F-16, how long have you been in the USAF...what assignments have you had and last but not least...how old are you Smile

Thanks for playing.......

Forum: Off-topic

What's your 9-11 story?