I think I was watching MSN on Friday and they were doing a story on the pilots who were over New York and Washington. The story went on to state that there were two F-15's over New York and two F-16's over Washington. That's it? Four thousand commercial airliners in the air and only four planes to escort them? And they weren't even regular Air Force, they were National Guard.

ya gotta quit believing the press.....And Ari Flescher

For those interested in the details of who did what when and how fast, here's a good place to check: [url]http://cooperativeresearch.org/completetimeline/[/url]

Seems quite accurate according to other resources I have read and researched on 9/11.

Mike

I didn't say there's anything wrong with the National Guard. Obviously they were the only ones up there defending our country. I'm just surprised that out of all the fighters we have only four were in the air during the attacks. What if this was an all out attack? We wouldn't of had sufficient air cover.

If I could choose between an active unit and a Nationl Guard unit I would choose a Guard unit, so did NORAD or who ever was the controlling agency.  The active componet cant compare to its Guard counterpart in warfighting capibility.  A active unit can put up a tent and paint a rock better than us, but not fight.

CWO-2 Snakedriver
National Guard-AIR CAVALRY

GO GUARD!

All out air attack? From where? From who? Martians?

Its true there were only 2 air defense aircraft over the north east at the time, and only 2 more over the central Atlantic coast. And they were spotted to be closest to the New London, CN sub base and Norfolk and the Navy yards.

There is no great threat out there that requires the large fleets of interceptors that we had during the 1950's. However, its quite clear that they had let the CAP get too thin, although there is no danger of the pairs of F15's or F16's being overwhelmed, they were now covering so big a area that their reaction times to a incident were no longer adaquate.

Flight 94 WAS almost shot down, there was at least one ANG F16 chasing it down from behind that was spotted over the crash site no more than 5 min later perhaps as little as 2min. This has led to the persistant belief amongst tin foil hat types that it WAS shot down. The two F16s that had failed to get to Washington to stop the Pentagon crash would have beat Flight 94 to Washington and been waiting for it. Had the passengers not acted, it would have been shot down before it crossed the beltway.

They do need to increase the number of CAP aircraft enough to get a reasonable reaction time back. But that will not require a return to what we had during the Cold War.

Why is that?

Paint a rock? Maybe that's how things are done in the Army, but when the sh*t hits the fan, the ACTIVE DUTY F-16 base I am at is usually one of the first called.....not to mention the standby ALERT fighters we have which are obviously not patrolling enough for some people. Let's think about the pilot of the Alert fighter, and when he's told to shoot down and kill hundreds of people, possibly some he might be related to, and ask yourself if you could do it.

An Airman [USA]

One of my older cousins just retired from the ANG this past May at Lt Col. or full Col.  not sure.   I do know he was active duty Air Force for a long time.   F4's in Germany, WildWeasles in Desert Shield/Storm.  Then ANG F16's  out of Langley AFB.   He was one of those pilots up there patroling the eastern seabord after 9/11.  From what I understood many of the pilots flying patrols over the US post 9/11 are ANG.   From what he told my family, those flights become very boring.  

No, Al-Queda. Didn't you see the planes crashing into the WTC and the Pentagon?