On September 11, 2001, Heather Penney received a very special mission: to deliberately crash into United Airlines Flight 93, hijacked by terrorists. She tells this suicide mission to the Parisian, this Friday, September 10.
Ready to sacrifice her life to save thousands more. Heather Penney was only 26 on September 11, 2001. She had just completed her training as a fighter pilot. However, she was ordered to crash voluntarily on United Airlines Flight 93, hijacked by terrorists heading straight for Washington. The now 46-year-old American spoke for the first time in France in the columns of the Parisian, this Friday, September 10.
On that tragic day in September 2001, when three hijacked airliners had just crashed into the two towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a fourth plane seemed to be heading straight for the White House. The US military therefore has no choice but to engage in a terrible operation: shoot down the plane before it reaches its target. She then hires several pilots, including Heather Penney, whose mission will be to crash into the hijacked plane. The hired pilots know it: if they succeed, they will not come back. For the young pilot, there is no question of lacking bravery: “I was totally focused on the mission… and on not screwing everything up”, she explains to the Parisian.
One of America’s first female fighter pilots
Twenty years later, the memories of the American are fuzzy, apart from this sky “empty, strangely peaceful and silent” during the hunt to find the hijacked device. In vain. Flight 93 crashed into a meadow in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We will learn later that it is thanks to the rebellion of the passengers on board. That day, Heather Penney was especially touched by the bravery of these innocent people and not her own: “What struck me the most was the heroism of the passengers on Flight 93. Emotionally, this is what I felt most strongly that day.”
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Beyond her immense courage, Heather Penney also has an exceptional career. At the end of the 1990s, women could not be fighter pilots. Quite simply because they were prohibited there at that time in the United States. It was finally on April 28, 1993 that Congress decided to lift this exclusion. The young woman, then 18 years old, immediately sent her application, successfully. In this still very masculine world, Heather Penney was one of the first Americans to officially become a fighter pilot. Having become a symbol over the years, she is one of the members of association Athena’s voice, dedicated to veteran American women pilots. The pilot is now the mother of two teenagers and has become an expert in air defense.