Dan Hampton - Viper Pilot

A little after nine A.M., as we stood staring at the enormous flat-screen picture of UA Flight 175 hitting the South Tower, it became obvious this was no accident. The military went through its standard procedure of locking down bases and recalling everyone within a day’s travel. Commanders and Weapons Officers were summoned to a hasty conference to get updates on the situation and formulate a reaction. President Bush, in an admirable and unexpected display of courage, continued to read The Pet Goat to some elementary-school students.

By 0945, the airspace over America was closed.

This had never been done before and was truly astounding, since normally there are about thirty thousand scheduled flights over the United States at any given time. This doesn’t count air cargo, military operations, or unscheduled flights, but by 1215 all aircraft were grounded, turned around, or diverted.

Everyone but military fighters, air tankers, and AWACS, that is. I was airborne by noon, leading a four-ship of armed F-16s over Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport. There were no rules of engagement, no real idea yet of what had happened, and no one knew quite what to expect. Was this the leading edge of some sort of mass attack on the United States? Was it a prelude to a larger, nastier assault using chemical or biological weapons through, say, a port? Or was it all a diversion for something else?

No one knew.

So the few of us who were old enough to have been alert pilots during the Cold War were ordered to set up a similar program to cope with this new threat. Whatever “this” turned out to be. Never in a million years had I thought I’d be flying combat air-patrol missions over my own country. Usually the sky above America is a vast place filled with contrails, radio chatter, and aircraft, but now there was nothing. It was downright creepy.

The radios were initially very busy, because the five thousand or so flights that were airborne at the time didn’t take kindly to being directed to land. However, as the F-16s and F-15s got airborne all over the country, the airliners complained a lot less. One Delta flight that was a bit late in answering air traffic control got treated to the sight of my F-16 flying formation off its nose. Turned out, it was just having standard minor radio issues, but it got escorted down to final approach anyway. I’ll never forget the sight of a hundred faces pressed against the windows watching me watch them.

In hindsight, I think it was all handled as well as it could be. Remember, there was no procedure for this and no rules. Add to it the jumpiness of every air traffic controller in the country, and I believe we were fortunate that no one got shot down. It always surprises me how bloodthirsty the ground-pounders seem to be. One controller told me that he’d “give me clearance to fire…”—all I had to do was ask. Well, that wasn’t going to happen unless I saw an airliner roll over and dive for downtown. Even then, if we’d shot one, where would all the wreckage fall? The 20th Fighter Wing reacted admirably by only sending up flights led by extremely experienced combat pilots, and no mistakes were made.

When I landed and made it back to the squadron, there were messages from my sisters and, of course, my mother. Somewhat inured to my lifestyle by now, she wasn’t openly worried about me but she did say that my father was all right.

What?

It turned out that, unbeknownst to me, my father was in the Pentagon when AA Flight 77 hit. I mean, to survive everything he’d faced and then almost get whacked by a hijacked commercial airliner in his own country? That really pissed me off.

He was (and is) a prominent defense consultant, and was in the A Ring to see the assistant secretary of the Army. In an effort to be truly confusing, the building is set up in concentric rings, A–E, with the E Ring on the outside. My dad later told me:

“I’d been walking down the hall to the secretary’s office when I felt a tremendous, vibrating crash. I wasn’t worried about it, because most of the northwest side of the Pentagon was being renovated and heavy loads were routinely being dropped. However, when I got to the office, the secretary grabbed me by the arm and said, ‘Come with me, young man… we’ve just been attacked. Look at your suit.’ Sure enough, I was covered with a fine gray dust.

“When we got outside, there was a huge column of smoke rising from the northwest side. Turns out that the terrorists had probably seen the helipad there and figured it was near the secretary of defense’s office… fortunately, their intelligence was as bad as their flying, because the secretary’s office is on the river side… and the point of impact was mostly vacant.”

Still, 189 people died in the Pentagon that morning, most of them trapped in the basement. I wasn’t used to worrying about my family—it was their job to fret about me. My dad had quit flying fighters when I was a kid, so I never really had to be concerned about it. I was even less thrilled when I found out that the remains of Flight 77 had penetrated all the way into the B Ring and missed my father by less than thirty yards. That feeling of helplessness sums up the day for me. The fighting end of the military is accustomed to living under threats. That’s what we do. America is supposed to be a nice, relatively safe place for folks to go about their lives, and suddenly it wasn’t. I felt somehow that we’d let everyone down because these attacks occurred. It’s a ridiculous thought, but then again, it was a strange day.

Later that night, a bit after midnight on September 12, the klaxon shook me out of my cot in the alert building at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina. Eight minutes later, I was rocketing down the runway in the rain and trying to wake up. As I got airborne in the pitch-black night sky and slapped up my landing gear, the radio broke out on the safety Guard frequency.

“All aircraft within range of this transmission, all aircraft in range of this transmission… this is Charlotte air traffic control… declaring a free-fire zone for twenty miles around Charlotte.”

I blinked. What?

“Repeat… Charlotte air traffic control declaring a free-fire zone for twenty miles around Charlotte!”

What the fuck?!

I was fully awake now.

“Charlotte… this is FANG 69… flight of two Fox-16s out of Shaw. What’s up?”

“Thank God! FANG… this is Charlotte!” He sounded out of breath. “…we’ve got… unidentified hostile aircraft… maybe terrorists… I’m declaring a free-fire zone for twenty miles around the Charlotte airport!”

I swallowed, blinked again, took a deep, deep breath, then keyed the mike.

“No you’re not.”

My air-to-air radar was scanning from the ground up to maybe 30,000 feet. And I saw nothing. “All aircraft on this freq disregard Charlotte’s last transmission. FANG 69 is now the on-scene commander in the Charlotte area… all aircraft on this freq check in.”

No one answered. Big surprise.

Then, on the intra-flight Victor radio, I said to my wingman, “FANG 2… do NOT arm up.”

“FANG… this is Charlotte… we’ve got suspicious helicopters operating in our area!”

Helicopters? So al-Qaeda had helos now? Didn’t think so.

“ Why are they suspicious?” Leveling off at 20,000 feet, I pulled the power back to hold 400 knots and glanced at the radar. A few days ago it would’ve been full of contacts, but tonight it was empty.

“FANG… uh… they’re not operating with lights… and they won’t answer our calls… and we’ve had reports of men… uh… jumping off to the ground.”

I thought I could see where this was going, and I needed to stop the madness. Quickly.