Lecture. Since 1982, this lecture series has spotlighted more than 140 of the biggest names in modern aviation history. Like all of our public programs, this lecture is presented free of charge. This is possible thanks to the generous support from g. E. Aviation. Private contributions like theirs are critical to our programs and exhibitions. And it is my privilege to acknowledge them for their longstanding and valued support. Representing g. E. Aviation with us tonight is lisa balkly, Digital Solutions leader of military Systems Operations at g. E. Aviation. Lisa, to you and your colleagues at g. E. , we thank you for your substantial and enduring support. [ applause ] since we opened the museum here on the mall in 1976, and the Housing Center in chantilly in 2003, more than 350 Million People have walked through our doors to be informed and inspired by the history of flight and space travel. Drawing from the museums priceless collection of iconic artifacts and intellectual trust, our curators, educators, docents, volunteers and others endeavor to tell stories about aerospace and how it has defined and shaped the american experience. This evening, we are joined by a Father Daughter Team who by virtue of their professional roles on september 11th, 2001, offer us a unique glimpse into the horrors and tragedy of that fateful day. Not every aviation story is an uplifting or happy one. Indeed, for those of us professionally committed to the furtherance of aerospace, the horrific use of commercial jet airliners as weapons of terror was particularly disturbing. And yet, we endured as a community. And in the years since 9 11, the Aviation Industry has become more safe, more accessible, more affordable, more proficient, and even more influential than ever before. 9 11 for all its pain and tragedy is indeed a story to be told and remembered. To help do that, i would like to introducewidely recognized for service on september 11th, Heather Penney was part of the first wave of women who went directly into fighters from pilot training. She grew up around aviation and warbirds and applied to the Air National Guard to fly f16s as soon as she Learned Congress had opened combat aviation to women. The first and only woman in the 121st fighter squadron, heather deployed to Operation Iraqi freedom for initial combat operations in nighttime scud hunting in the western deserts of iraq. And also supported special operations teams. Heather flew the f16 for ten years before joining Lockheed Martin as a director of air force Aviation Training systems, specializing in Government Relations and strategic business development. Heathers passion for aviation has never faded. She has raced jets at reno air races, she has over 3,000 hours of commercial instructor, multiengine, and air transport pilot ratings, and volunteers with the callings foundation, copiloting their b17 when her busy schedule permits. She enjoys flying her own steerman. A 1950 cessna 170 along with her family and rescue dog fittingly named gilmore after roscoe turners lion. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you this evening Heather Penney. [ applause ] so thank you all for coming out here tonight, and again, lisa, really thank you so much and to the generosity of g. E. To support this lecture series. What the museum, what the air and space museum does and what the g. E. Aviation lecture series allows the museum to do is to tell these stories, like mine, so that people like yourselves can experience aviation, can experience history in a far more personal and hopefully impactful manner than when you just simply see the signs next to the airplanes. So again, thank you, lisa, for everything you and g. E. Are doing to support this lecture series, to make it possible so that, for example, people like me can come listen to my heroes when they come and stand up on this podium. Im certainly not calling myself a hero at all, because 9 11 was nothing that any of us planned. And as you all know because you all have your stories, and your experiences of 9 11, every single one of us, every single american was somehow touched by that day. We all have our connections. We all somehow lost people, loved ones. So i appreciate the fact that you all are here today to listen to my 9 11 story. Because really, all i did that day was show up for work. Right . We had just gotten back from two weeks at red flag, which was at that point in my time as a young baby Fighter Pilot, the pinnacle of what i could, you know, ever hope for and experience. I had killed two migs. I had dropped bombs, i had been there for my timeline target. We had just gotten back from that the prior weekend. We had landed on saturday, so most people had taken that monday and tuesday and wednesday off to reconnect with their families. I was single at the time, and so i went home on sunday, did my laundry, and was ready to go to work. So that tuesday, were going through just the normal administration of running a fighter squadron. What jets do we have, what are we going to be flying . We were traditional mostly at the time, were a guard unit, so a guard is comprised of a few fulltime staff. They make sure that the unit runs and all the administration is taking care of so when the parttimers show up, they can jump in the jets and go and train. I was one of those few fulltime staff. Who needs check rides, whos doing upgrades . We had just gotten back from red flag so the jets were fitted out with external fuel tanks and we had our training missiles onboard, and we were moving into a training phase in dog fighting, basic fighter maneuvering. Bfm, just a lot of basic fun, if you ask me. But the maintainers, it was going to take a while to pull the external fuel tanks it was going to take them a while to reconfigure the jets to go do to clean them up so we had slick vipers. We could just go g our noses off. So we had three guys that we could send down to the air force ranges. Down in North Carolina. We call it bully flights. Lou shooter campbell was bully one. Eric was bully two, and then we had Billy Hutchinson was bully three. They brief, they take off. Theyre headed down to North Carolina to go bomb for quarters and strength, because nothing like a little low angle straights. Everybody loves shooting the guns. By the way, i have never seen a Fighter Pilot every pull the gun and not go brrr, we all make the noise. Theyre down, theyre bombing. Were sitting in an administrative meeting, and we get this knock at the door. And david callahan, chunks is what we called him, and dave says, an airplane just flew into the world trade center. And we looked outside, because our Conference Room was right on the flight line. It was a huge plate glass window. And were thinking, how does that happen . Because as you know, i mean, new york actually isnt that far away. Contrary to what traffic would have you believe, its actually really kind of a stones throw as far as the bird flies. And we share a very similar weather pattern. We look outside, and its a perfect, crystal, autumn day that we get here. What . So were thinking, you know, did someone pooch their, you know, their approach into laguardia . It must have been one of those little sightseeing airplanes going down the hudson that just kind of made a wrong turn, maybe it was scud running. We made a couple jokes about little airplanes bouncing off buildings, and then, because they certainly dont do any damage. They sort of fall to the ground. The airplanes, that is. And continued on. It wasnt i mean, it wasnt really anything that triggered us. Until a few minutes later, chunks knocks at the door again and says, another airplane flew into the other world trade center. It was on purpose. We got up from our chairs and walked to the bar where we had the television. And we saw what everyone else in america saw that day. We saw the footage of these airliners crashing into the trade centers. And we were absolutely stunned. So people have asked, how could this have been possible . Right . Didnt we have aircraft on alert . Well, once upon a time, we had that alert, but that was before we had our f16s. We gave up alert when we shifted from the scuds to the f4s, so had it been a long time since we had alert, because if you were call recall in 1991 when the soviet union fell, we didnt need it anymore, right . The soviet bear threat was gone, so we really pared down our entire military to the piece dividends, and on september 10th and september 11th, there were really only four units alert looking out over the oceans and over the polar region to insure no stray bombers came over the north pole to nuke us. I mean, that was that was the paradigm that we were living in. So no one ever imagined that the threat would come from inside. We had never we just had never conceived that something so ingenious in the most horrible way could be done. So nearly immediately, mark sassville, who was our d. O. At the time, he goes to the operations desk, raising cane, dan cane, who was our weapons officers turns to me and says i need you to build up itcs, give us maps, takeoff and landing data. I dont know what it needs to look like, but just make it happen. So Brandon Rasmussen and i go to Flight Mission planning room and we start Mission Planning for something. We dont know what. Again, i mean, this is this is not the defensive counterair mission that i had trained for that i knew how to do. I mean, there was a certain point where you had a combat air patrol and i have a point im defending. But defending against who . We dont have a racks, we just have our own little bitty radars. And we dont know who is hostile, who is friendly. And were not i mean, nothing is clear. Everything is as confused as you could have imagined it. We do our best. We print out our lineup cards with our takeoff and landing data. We get two sets, because some of the jets are clean and some of the jets are still heavy and dirty and the air to ground configuration. We print out maps of the entire local area. We put steer points on top of where we know government buildings are, where memorials are. We load up our Data Transfer cartridges, our dtcs. Theyre like these big bricks that are really kind of like thumb drives for your jets, where you can take all of your data and then put it into the jet and download it so you can accelerate and program all of your avionics. We get that done. And we go to hawk, the ops desk. Now, i need to go through a little bit of bureaucracy because the National Guard in d. C. Is not like the National Guard in any other state. In other states, you know, the National Guard has two chains of command. You have your federal chain of command, which only occurs when you get activated to deploy. And in that case, youre chopped to the active Duty Air Force and youre for all intents and purposes active Duty Air Force and thats your federal chain of command. The civilian chain of command goes up to the states governor, and were seeing that now, where we have texas and florida and montana and washington and oregon activating elements of their National Guard to serve their domestic requirement to protect their people and their state. And so theres a very clear chain of command that goes up to the governor. Well, d. C. Doesnt have a governor. And our chain of command did not go to the mayor. Our chain of command on the civilian side went to the president of the United States. If you can imagine, he was pretty busy at that point in time. And honestly, i dont think he even realized that that was that we were a resource that he had. Because his story was traditionally delegated down through the secretary, to the secretary of the army. And that is certainly not what the secretary of the army was thinking about, how do i get defensive counter air up over d. C. . That was not what was on his mind. So were trying to get activated were trying to get the chain of command energized. Were trying to find someone who has the Legal Authority to tell us to launch. How do we get airborne . Because we cant just take off on our own. Theres a very real and important reason why civilians have the command of our military. So as much as we know we need to be airborne, we cant, so were grounded. Our general officer, commander david worley, had come down from the building, and hes sitting by the ops desk and making phone calls. Hes trying to find someone to energize through his hes our top guy. Hes making as many phone calls as he can. Raisin cane, dan cane, our weapons officer, takes a risk and calls down to the bomb zones. Thats where we keep all of our explosives, where we keep all of our training missiles, where we keep all of our bullets, its where we keep all of our bombs. We do have some live bombs. We do have some live missiles. But we dont fly with them every day. You certainly wouldnt want live bombs and live missiles flying over your house on a daily basis if we have no intention of dropping them or using them. And that wouldnt make any sense to us either because it would just simply wear out those systems, and oh, by the way, we dont keep the explosives and the fuses and the bodies, whether its a missile body or bomb body, all built up and ready to go. We have it all separated. You have to build it. It takes time. For example, when we go to war, its a threeday cycle from the planning process to come down to the wing for the bomb dump to know how many bombs they need to build, to put it together, to bring it on the flight line, to configure the aircraft. It doesnt happen instantaneously. So he calls down to the bomb dump and tells him to build us up some m9s, heatseeking side winders. Can you imagine if youre one of the enlisted airmen down in the bomb dump, youre not watching television. Youre probably in the middle of a card game. And you get a phone call from the weapons officer, and hes telling you, build me up some missiles. No, live ones. Just trust me. Can you imagine what would be going through your mind . You have no air tasking order. You have no legal paperwork, no paper trail to prove that this is a legal order for you to execute. So it really is a testament to the vision, the leadership, and the courage that raisin must have had to make that phone call, because we desperately needed those missiles. Even though in my case, it wouldnt be in time. Being in d. C. , again, something unique to operating out of andrews is we always had to deal with the hassle of air force one. Any time a distinguished visitor moves on Andrews Air Force base, and especially when its the president , the entire base shuts down. I mean, you cant drive around the perimeter. You cant take off. You cant land. And for very good reason, to secure the important leaders of our nation. But when youre a little tiny fighter that doesnt carry a lot of gas but burns a lot of it quickly, its a big problem. So we had been working with the secret service to try to develop better coordination so that we could facilitate our training as well as meet their security requirements, and as part of developing that relationship, we had brought some of the secret service over to our unit and thrown them in the back seat of the f16s to prove to them we are actually good guys. So we knew who they were, and they knew who we were. As a result, it was when the pentagon was hit that Vice President cheney said, god, do we have some fighters at andr andrews . Somebody get those guys airborne. And they knew who to call. I mean, as i mentioned, when we have the peace in the 1990s and we drew down all of our forces and we drew down our alert forces and we were no longer sitting alert either, even if even if the First Air Force of norad, if that authority had known we were at andrews, i dont even know they would not have had the Legal Authority to be able to activate us. Its a really unfortunate lesson that bureaucracy actually matters and organization actually matters, and it has realworld consequences. So fortunately, we finally had the authorization from Vice President cheney. Get somebody airborne. He looks at me, says all right, lucky, youre with me. Raisin, you take igor. You guys wait. I want to make sure you guys have missiles. Lucky, lets go. We run down the hallway to the life support, putting on g suits and putting on my vest, throwing on my harness, making sure i have my helmet, i have my dtc, my lineup cards, my vest, and he looks at me and says, ill take the cockpit. I knew that i would take the tail. I remembered my dad had been involved in a Safety Investigation analyzing a crash of a 737 out of colorado springs, and they had lost the vertical and the horizontal tails, and the airplane just went straight in. There was just nothing left. There was no way they could have pulled out, no way they could have controlled it, and the other thing is they wouldnt have glided in. There would be no pattern of debris. It would just be straight down. So i knew that i would take the tail. We were running out as fast as we can go, as fast as i could go. Hes outrunning me, and hes a major. Hes an old guy. You know, with all my flight gear, it nearly doubled my body weight. He runs to the first jet on the line. And i run to the next one. Again, were called, you know, im just a brandnew lieutenant. I recently had become combat mission ready. I just went to my first red flag. And as every pilot knows, its when you begin to deviate from your habit pattern that mistakes are made. So i run up to my jet. And i put my gear down and i shake my crew chiefs hand and grab the forms and im going to look through the 781 and walk around as fast as i possibly can, and staff is already in the cockpit and says, lucky, what the hell are you doing . Get in t