While the nation still reeled from the psychic aftershocks of the modern-day kamikaze missions that seared Sept. 11, 2001, onto the pages of history, U.S. military units scrambled to ensure no further harm was done.
Within an hour, fighter jets were patrolled over the capital to intercept hostile aircraft. Hours after that, Navy battle groups were steaming off both coasts, bases were on full alert worldwide and troops were mobilized to serve and protect.
Military and political leaders, planners and policy-makers will come under fire as the nation demands to know how rogue terrorists could have found an Achilles’ heel in the world’s only superpower.
But America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guard members so quickly answered the call to arms, they were hailed for their service. They did what they were trained to do, and they did it well.
Even military members whose units were not on the front lines rushed to serve.
Navy Chief Journalist Cleve Hardman, a spokesman for the Naval Reserve Force in New Orleans, told of one reservist who drove from St. Louis to Washington, D.C., to offer his services.
“He said he felt like he could do something,” Hardman said. “So he just took off and went.”
That action captured the spirit of the military response to a national emergency.
Leading from the front
As the nation was coming to grips with the attack, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was at work inside the devastated Pentagon, helping to formulate the military response.
Though his office is on the opposite side of the Pentagon from the jetliner’s impact site, he felt “the shock of the airplane hitting the building.”
Rumsfeld left the building, but only briefly, returning to work in the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon’s basement almost immediately. Later that day in a nationally televised press conference, he declared that “the Pentagon is functioning in the face of this terrible act against our country.” And, he assured the nation, the Pentagon “will be in business tomorrow.”
And so it was.
Defending the capital
Soon after the 9:40 a.m. attack on the Pentagon, Air National Guard pilots were suited up and flying F-16 Fighting Falcons over Washington, D.C.
With Washington’s normally busy skies eerily empty of commercial aircraft, the F-16s’ mission was to protect the Pentagon, White House and Capitol, which suddenly all seemed so vulnerable.
Shortly after the 113th Wingbegan its patrols, military officials scrambled more F-16s, as well as F-15 Eagles, to fly over as many as 30 major U.S. cities — among them Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York.
Army Maj. Barry Venable, spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, declined to detail where combat aircraft were deployed.
“During normal air sovereignty operations, we maintain about 20 aircraft on alert throughout North America. That includes the United States and Canada,” Venable said.
He did say that NORAD usually taps Air National Guard planes from 1st Air Force for the air sovereignty mission, though there are now active-duty fighters also performing the mission.
Around the country, fighter units were getting the call.
In South Carolina, F-16s from Shaw Air Force Base began patrolling the southern Atlantic coast on the night of the attack.
In North Dakota, members of the Air National Guard’s 119th Fighter Wing, the “Happy Hooligans,” were called to duty Sept. 13 — the unit’s largest activation since the Korean War, a wing spokesman said.
The wing, based in Fargo, flies 20 F-16 fighter planes.
In Vermont, Air National Guard pilots began flying air patrols shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
About 520 Vermont Air Guard members have been assigned to support the federally ordered missions, said Vermont Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Martha Rainville. Other Air Guard members were told to prepare should they be needed.
All available Air Guard pilots, many of whom are commercial pilots, have been called in, said Lt. Col. Greg Fick, commander of the Vermont Air National Guard’s 158th Fighter Wing.
On the ground in D.C.
Before he even got the call, Army 2nd Lt. Tim Morris launched from his Richmond, Va., home Sept. 11 and headed for the capital, two hours north.
“Being in a leadership position, you know your presence is needed whether you are called out or not,” said Morris, a military policeman. “It’s not my first experience with this type of thing.”
The call did come from the D.C. Army National Guard for Morris and other military policemen to support the city’s law enforcement.
Morris is more than a little experienced. He served with the 10th Mountain Division in the 1993 humanitarian aid mission to Somalia and in 1995 he helped in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. He was assigned to the Army Recruiting Command at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building but wasn’t at the office when the bomb went off.
“I’m a soldier. That is my job … to protect this country,” Morris said while directing traffic in downtown D.C.
He said the response from area residents has been gratifying.
“The surge of patriotism and the camaraderie that the average citizen displays to our soldiers has increased dramatically … It’s just tremendous,” he said.
Defending the president
President Bush’s flight aboard Air Force One across the South and Midwest was protected by F-16 Fighting Falcons from the Texas Air National Guard’s 147th Fighter Wing, based at Ellington Field near Houston.
Bush flew with the 147th as a guardsman in the late 1960s and early ’70s, piloting F-102 Delta Daggers.
Along with escorting Air Force One, the guard wing also flew air patrols to enforce the nationwide ban on civilian flights.
Air Force fighter jets carried out that mission north of the president’s hometown of Crawford, Texas, forcing down Sept. 12 a civilian instructor pilot and student flying despite the ban.
Instructor Thomas A. Tweeddale said he thought the flight ban had expired. Instead, the FAA said the ban had been continued indefinitely.
Tweeddale, 61, said he never communicated with the fighter pilots.
“They just kept circling and I came down,” Tweeddale said. “I guess I was never on whatever frequency they were on.”
Neither Tweeddale nor his student, Christopher J. Richeson, 26, was injured.
Navy in New York
At 2:51 p.m. Sept. 11, just six hours after the suicide mission on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Navy dispatched almost 30 ships to shield the east and west coasts, providing air defense, humanitarian aid and anything else that was needed.
In the Atlantic Fleet, the carriers George Washington and John F. Kennedy steamed toward New York City. The carriers were joined by five guided-missile cruisers, two destroyers and other support ships. The hospital ship Comfort set sail for New York the next day to provide medical support.
The Coast Guard moved 12 cutters, four helicopters and two port security units to New York Harbor to further bolster the safety and security of the port and waterways.
The medium endurance cutter Tahoma, based in New Bedford, Mass., arrived in New York Harbor in the predawn hours and assumed command of all Coast Guard operations in the area. The Coast Guard is working closely with the New York Port Authority and other law enforcement agencies to monitor vessel traffic and activity in the port, which remained closed to commercial and recreational traffic.
The carrier George Washington also pulled into New York Harbor the day after the attacks, an ominous presence along what now seemed a war-torn skyline.
The Kennedy, with an air wing embarked, patrolled offshore with other ships. The cruisers and destroyer crews worked Aegis radar systems to provide a protective umbrella against air attacks.
Ships in the Pacific Fleet provided the same cloak for the West Coast, with the carrier John C. Stennis joined by two cruisers, five destroyers, five frigates and assorted support craft.
“This conflict puts every one of us on the front lines at all times, at home and overseas,” Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, messaged his top admirals the day after the attacks. “Stay sharp. Be ready.”
Ready down under
Clark’s message was heard by Navy forces around the world.
Marines and sailors of the three-ship amphibious ready group headed by the amphibious-assault ship Peleliu were on liberty in Darwin, Australia, when word of the attacks reached them.
Shore patrol teams scoured the streets of Darwin to round them up and hustle them back to the ships, said Marine Capt. David Romley, spokesman for the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, embarked aboard the Peleliu ARG.
Marines with the 15th MEU, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., said they hope they will be called into action.
“That’s my city, and they just blew it to pieces,” said Gunnery Sgt. Pablo Palma. “Now that I know my family is OK, my worry has been replaced with nothing but anger.”
Marines with the 26th MEU were closer to the action, waiting for the call in Camp Lejeune, N.C. They had been on standby to board the amphibious assault ship Bataan and the dock landing ship Shreveport on Sept. 11, preparing to sail for New York to provide humanitarian aid and protection.
The call never came and the mission was scrubbed Sept. 13.
Who needs a call-up?
The U.S. military members, mostly guard and reserve, who hit the streets of New York were a mix of conventional and mercenary. Some were there on official orders, carrying out official duties.
Others leapt into the fray, called to serve only by their own conscience.
Many of them got to New York before their guard and reserve units were mobilized.
Navy Lt. D.J. Haley, a Navy SEAL and reservist, was taking a taxi to work when he heard a car radio report of the attack.
He got out of the cab, ran home, checked the TV and called love ones. Then he made his way to the National Guard armory and volunteered to help put New York back together.
The National Guard called up more than 2,000 soldiers and airmen to help restore order in Washington and New York. When Spc. Callan Duffy learned he wasn’t one of them, he left his New Jersey home and headed for Manhattan on his own.
Former Army Staff Sgt. James Brown left the New York National Guard last year, but as of Sept. 11, he declared himself back in action.
Once a sergeant, always a sergeant.
He and two soldiers began rounding up the dozens of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines roaming the area in search of a place to volunteer. Eventually, they numbered more than 70. Working in six squads near ground zero, they helped search through the devastation that hours earlier had been the World Trade Center towers.
“We’re all in here together,” Duffy said Sept. 12. “There’s no Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine Corps mentality. We’re using the rank structure, but we don’t care what service anybody’s in.”
Contributing to this report were staff reporters C. Mark Brinkley, David Brown, Matthew Cox, Darlene Himmelspach, Patricia Kime, William H. McMichael, Bruce Rolfsen, Seena Simon and Diane Tsimekles, and wire services.
