District of Columbia Air National Guard

They, they curtailed the B-2 by, um, they, they retired, uh, a, a tremendous, they'd retired numbers of bombers, literally chopped the wings off.

I mean, so, so this is a moment where all of the units that used to sit alert, which the DC Air National Guard was one of them, um, uh, they, we, we shut down many of these alert sites.

So in the CONUS, in the contiguous f- uh, 48, we only had five alert units, uh, sitting that day that were armed, that were hot cocked, r- ready to scramble, with pilots waiting in the, in the, the ready room to go.

And DC was not one of them.

So, yeah, so there were still aircraft flying around.

The FAA at that point had not started to ground aircraft.

Um, we knew we had to get airborne, but here was the problem, right? We're the 121st Fighter Squadron, the DC Air National Guard.

We don't have an alert unit.

On September 11th, 2001, I was lucky enough and fortunate enough to be stationed at Andrews Air Force Base.

At the time, I was serving as the Chief of Weapons and Tactics for the 121st Fighter Squadron in the DC Air National Guard, a unit at the time that didn't do alert operations, was sort of a general purpose F-16 squadron.

And I was lucky enough to go through the Air Force's Top Gun school where we play no volleyball and we play no beach football.

We just focus on execution.