Penney was a rookie pilot with the 121st Fighter Squadron of the District of Columbia Air National Guard at Andrews Air Force Base. As the attacks unfolded, another hijacked airliner—United Airlines Flight 93—was believed to be heading toward Washington, D.C.
Penney and her flight lead, Lt. Col. Marc Sasseville, were ordered to get airborne and protect the capital. There was one enormous problem: their F-16s were not armed. The aircraft had been scrambled so quickly that there had been no time to load missiles.
So they came up with a desperate plan.
If they found Flight 93 and could not stop it any other way, Sasseville would ram his F-16 into the airliner’s cockpit while Penney would strike its tail. The objective was to destroy the aircraft before it could reach Washington.
There would be no guarantee either fighter pilot would survive.
Penney later recalled that she understood the mission was essentially a suicide mission. She expected that the takeoff might be the last time she ever flew.
But while Penney and Sasseville searched the skies, something extraordinary was already happening aboard Flight 93.
The passengers, having learned through telephone calls that hijacked aircraft had been deliberately used as weapons, fought back against the terrorists. Their revolt prevented Flight 93 from reaching Washington.
At 10:03 a.m., the Boeing 757 crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all 40 passengers and crew members and the four hijackers. It never reached its intended target.
Penney and Sasseville never found the airliner. They continued flying over Washington, helping establish the protective air patrol around the capital. They eventually returned to Andrews and flew another mission later that day—this time in armed F-16s.
There is another haunting detail to Penney’s story: her father, John Penney, was a United Airlines pilot at the time. Because of his normal flight schedule, she had no way of knowing whether he might have been the pilot of the aircraft she had been sent to stop.
He wasn’t.
Years later, Penney has repeatedly emphasized that the passengers of Flight 93 were the real heroes. She described herself as an “accidental witness to history.”
But on that morning, a 26-year-old fighter pilot climbed into an unarmed F-16 knowing she might have to sacrifice her own life to protect thousands of people on the ground.
She was prepared to do it.
