Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned cool and clear, with sunny skies all along the eastern seaboard. For Air Force aviators like Lt. Col. Timothy “Duff” Duffy of the 102d Fighter Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts, the day held the promise of perfect flying weather, at a time when the U.S. civil aviation system was enjoying a period of relative peace, despite concerns about a growing terrorist threat. More than ten years had passed since the last hijacking or bombing of a U.S. air carrier. That morning, however, the country came under a shocking, coordinated aerial assault by nineteen al Qaeda1 hijackers at the direction of the network’s leader and cofounder, Islamist extremist Osama bin Laden (1957/1958–2011).2 The attack plan carried out by the suicide operatives had been years in the making. It was intended to cause mass, indiscriminate casualties and to destroy or damage the nation’s financial, military, and political centers, four high-value U.S. targets selected by bin Laden, independent operator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and al Qaeda operations chief Mohammed Atef.3 Analysts in the United States immediately recognized the historic nature of the strikes,4 launched without warning against targets in New York City and Washington, D.C., and compared them to another deadly surprise aerial attack against the United States almost sixty years earlier.5 The December 7, 1941, assault by Japanese forces on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor had been the most devastating attack against U.S. territory by a foreign adversary until the morning of September 11, 2001.6 The four al Qaeda hijacker-pilots and their teams commandeered the four fuel-laden commercial jets in which they were passengers and intentionally crashed them into 1 and 2World Trade Center, in New York City; the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia; and an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. This final hijacking, of United Airlines Flight 93, fell short of its intended target in Washington, D.C., because of heroic efforts by its passengers to take back control of the aircraft. The 9/11 attack, which began with the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11 and was followed by the hijackings of United Airlines Flight 175,AmericanAirlines Flight 77, and United Airlines Flight 93, would become, over the next two and a quarter hours, the deadliest, costliest terrorist strike in U.S. history. The 109-minute attack period itself began when American Airlines Flight 11 was attacked at or just after 8:14 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). It ended when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed at 10:03 a.m. EDT, but the loss of life did not. By the time 1 World Trade Center, North Tower, collapsed at 10:28 a.m. EDT, almost three thousand people had been killed or were dying; the financial center of the United States had been reduced to burning, toxic rubble; the iconic symbol of the military strength of the country had been severely damaged; the tranquility of a field in Pennsylvania had been shattered; U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard fighter aircraft had set up combat air patrols over Washington, D.C., and New York City; and the administration of President George W. Bush and the Department of Defense (DOD) had begun shifting major resources of the federal government and military services to a new national priority, homeland defense.7 Even while the attacks were underway, it was clear that the country faced an unprecedented challenge. On the floor of the command center at the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) in Rome, New York, SMSgt. Steve Bianchi, an assistant to mission crew commander Maj. Kevin J. Nasypany, reflected: “This is a new type of war.”8And suddenly, as Vice President Richard Cheney noted a few days after the attacks, the country’s national leadership had to consider a new mission for U.S. Air Force pilots: the possible shoot-down of commercial passenger aircraft filled with U.S. citizens.

The First 109 Minutes: 9/11 and the U.S. Air Force

Politics & Social Sciences

Air Force History Museums Program

Politics & Government

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Air War over South Vietnam 1968-1975

History

Nalty, Bernard C.

Military

MilitaryBookshop.co.uk

<p>Originally published in 2001. From the foreword: "In February 1999, only a few weeks before the U.S. Air Force spearheaded NATO's Allied Force air campaign against Serbia, Col. C. R. Anderegg, USAF (Ret.), visited the commander of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe. Colonel Anderegg had known Gen. John Jumper since they had served together as jet forward air controllers in Southeast Asia nearly thirty years earlier. From the vantage point of 1999, they looked back to the day in February 1970, when they first controlled a laser-guided bomb strike. In this book Anderegg takes us from "glimmers of hope" like that one through other major improvements in the Air Force that came between the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. Always central in Anderegg's account of those changes are the people who made them. This is a very personal book by an officer who participated in the transformation he describes so vividly. Much of his story revolves around the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base (AFB), Nevada, where he served two tours as an instructor pilot specializing in guided munitions. But he also takes a look at other "Fighter Mafia" outposts in the Pentagon and elsewhere. Readers meet young Mafiosi like John Jumper, Larry Keith, Ron Keys, Joe Bob Phillips, Earl Henderson, Moody Suter, John Corder, Jim Brown, John Vickery, Jack Lefforge, Jack Ihle, Stump Bowen, Dave Dellwardt, Tommy Dyches, John Madden, and Dick Myers. As one might expect to find in a fighter pilot story, there is a lot of fun along the way. For a distilled example, consult the appendix on "Jeremiah Weed" (replete with instructions for drinking "afterburners"). Colonel Anderegg's book is likely to please anyone with an interest in fighter pilots and how they molded today's Air Force.</p>

Sierra Hotel: Flying Air Force Fighters in the Decade After Vietnam

Anderegg, C. R.

Hallion Dr, Richard P

Military Bookshop

Training to Fly: Military Flight Testing 1907-1945

Cameron, Rebecca Hancock

Halion, Richard P.

Training to Fly: Military Flight Testing 1907-1945`

<p>First published in 2002. From the foreword: "This insightful work by David N. Spires holds many lessons in tactical air-ground operations. Despite peacetime rivalries in the drafting of service doctrine, in World War II the immense pressures of wartime drove army and air commanders to cooperate in the effective prosecution of battlefield operations. In northwest Europe during the war, the combination of the U.S. Third Army commanded by Lt. Gen. George S. Patton and the XIX Tactical Air Command led by Brig.</p>

Air Power for Patton's Army - The XIX Tactical Air Command in the Second World War

Spires, David N.

The United States in Air Force Asia: Civic Action (Research Studies Series)

Christiansen, Betty Barton

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