Remembering 9-11 20 Years Ago

[Wyandot Jim]

Yea I know I have posted this before and will continue to every year.
Never forget.

Hey Guys,
At the time 9-11 took place around 8:45AM or 9:45ET (CRS) was when I became aware of it. My wife and I were flying back to Houston from Norfolk Va.in our Beechcraft Bonanza. We had just spent 6 weeks with my Son and Daughter.
At that time I received a radio call, we had been in the air about a hour, from Air Traffic Control to land immediately. I thought something wasn't right before I got the call. The reason was that a Mercy Flight, flying sick folks, out of NC was told if he landed at his NY destination he wouldn't be able to take off. ATC would not tell him why, so he went back to NC. It was about 10 mins. later when I got "the call"
I asked what was the reason and I was told that there had been a national emergency and we had to land at either Raleigh Int. or Chapel Hill NOW. I chose C H because it is a nice little airport. Boy did I make the right choice for once. I was given a phone number to call when I got on the ground.

At that time I told the controller that I had four kids in the Navy, Son, Daughter, Son and Daughter-in-law, and I wanted to know what the He## was going on. Needless to say I was SCARED I thought someone had set off a Nuke.
The controller was very nice then and told me what was going on.
Anyway we landed at Chapel Hill NC and spent 2 days there before we rented a car and drove back to Norfolk and stayed another 10 days. We could not fly and the kids needed our help. We saw the second tower fall on the TV in the airport office.

Within 2 hours after the attack my Daughter was flying the air group personnel out to the aircraft carrier Harry S Truman, while it was on it's way to New York City. The F-18s could not land without the LSOs and other support people that had to be flown out to the boat.
My Son-in-Law flew his helo that day to go to a ship off the coast of NC to support a Marine amphibious force that was being loaded on board to go to New York City.
That night my Son, who was flying the Navy radar plane E-2, was flying off the coast of New York to see if any other aircraft were coming. If so they would have been intercepted.
It was a bad day for every American. I will never forget how scared I was at the time then how mad I got.

After all these years it still does.

Jim

 

[Fox Mike]

I remember it well. Was called at the office I was managing and told to turn on the TV. Just in time to see the second plane impact the tower. Lost a friend in the Pentagon disaster. Though the article says he was in the USAR, he had served with the Maryland Army National Guard also, which is how I initially met him.
https://www.pentagonmemorial.org/explore/biographies/cw4-william-r-ruth-usar

 

[Kevin]

My wife had flown to California for work the day before 9/11. At my job we wheeled in televisions, I doubt much work got done in the office that day. She had a colleague in New York, he had to rent a car and drive back to California.

Jim:
So they wanted you to land right away. What about the bigger aircrafts already in the air? If a flight from say St. Louis to California was midway, what did they do? Or all the aircrafts flying in from overseas?

 

[contender]

Yep,, a lot of us saw things, worried a lot, and wondered what the heck was going on. Never forget.

 

[Selena]

I was 15 at the time, we had just come back from my uncle's funeral when one of the employees told Dad he needed to turn on the radio. I shall never forget the look on his face when they announced the tower(s) had fell and the Pentagon had been hit. My uncle dying had been sad, the attack was a look of horror.

 

[Wyandot Jim]

My wife had flown to California for work the day before 9/11. At my job we wheeled in televisions, I doubt much work got done in the office that day. She had a colleague in New York, he had to rent a car and drive back to California.

Jim:
So they wanted you to land right away. What about the bigger aircrafts already in the air? If a flight from say St. Louis to California was midway, what did they do? Or all the aircrafts flying in from overseas?

ALL planes were told to land as soon as possible.
I know a bunch of flights that were coming from Europe landed in Canada.

TIMELINE
https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/9-11-timeline
• 9:42 am – For the first time in history, the FAA grounds all flights over or bound for the continental United States. Over the next two-and-a-half hours, some 3,300 commercial flights and 1,200 private planes are guided to land at airports in Canada and the United States.

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,174912,00.html
At 9:25, Garvey, (The head of FAA) in an historic and admirable step, and almost certainly after getting an okay from the White House, initiated a national ground stop, which forbids takeoffs and requires planes in the air to get down as soon as reasonable. The order, which has never been implemented since flying was invented in 1903, applied to virtually every single kind of machine that can takeoff — civilian, military, or law enforcement. The Herndon command center coordinated the phone call to all major FAA sites, the airline reps in the room contacted all airlines, and so-called NOTAMS —notices to airmen — were also sent out. The FAA had stopped the world.

Meanwhile, domestic flights were getting down — fast. Southwest Airlines planes descended on Denver, an airport the airline doesn't even fly to. JetBlue Airways, based at New York's John F Kennedy Airport, ended up with a plane at tiny Stewart Airport in upstate New York. United Parcel Service, which had 25 planes in the sky, had safely landed each of their aircraft at one of the company's eight hub airports. International flights, which were clearly getting low on fuel, apparently started dialing their transponders to indicate to Canadian controllers that there were emergencies on board. Some apparently even dialed in the 'hijack' code, and for a few frantic minutes the airspace near Alaska was peppered with "hijacked" planes. The FAA immediately called NavCanda and asked what was happening. The Canadians opened the system back up, but implemented rigid security procedures including keeping passengers on aircraft for hours.

 

[eveled]

I just saw a fascinating documentary about the Canadian air traffic controllers who had to land all the planes. The ones that could turn around went back to Europe. The rest were diverted to small Canadian airports. One had to use an abandoned ww2 runway to part all the plains.

They kept saying how the airports never had wide body plains land there before.

Lots of unsung hero’s that day,

My son is a history buff and wanted to watch all the documentaries and talk and ask questions. I had a hard time trying to help him. I wasn’t even there I didn’t loose any friends or relatives. I still must have some sort of mild ptsd over it.

 

[blume357]

I was up on a roof repairing the top of a chimney and the lady who owned the house came out and told me we had been attacked in NY city... I finished what I was doing and came home and watched it all the rest of the day on TV....