Flight 93

 After South Carolina  we stopped in Maryland to see my brother and his wife. Knowing we were headed for Kane, Pennsylvania, she recommended a stop at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, PA. I found it deeply moving.

From the National Park Service brochure:

September 11, 2001, morning: Four commercial airliners are hijacked by al Queda terrorists in a planned attack against the United States. Two are flown into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York City. A third is flown into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane, United Flight 93, a Boeing 757 bound for San Francisco, California, from Newark, New Jersey, is delayed 25 minutes before takeoff.

After 46 minutes flying, when over eastern Ohio, hijackers in first class attack at 9:28 am, incapacitating the captain and first officer. Hijackers turn Flight 93 southeast, headed for Washington, DC, most likely the US Capitol.

Just before 10 am the plane is seen flying low and erratically over southwestern Pennsylvania. At 10:03 it crashes, upside-down, at 563 miles per hour into this Somerset County field. There are no survivors. All 33 passengers, seven crew members, and four hijackers are killed.

It’s a sobering story, told with TV news clips, photos, artifacts from the crash site, and even recorded voice messages by crew and passengers trying to send one last message of love to their families.

The courage of those forty people is awe-inspiring. They were just regular civilians, taking a routine cross-country plane trip. They hadn’t been trained for combat. The crew’s training against hijacking focused on negotiating and deescalating a tense situation. No one was prepared to deal with suicide pilots.

But these brave men and women, in a matter of minutes, responded to the unprecedented situation. Forced to the back of the plane, they made a plan and voted to storm the cockpit. Again, from the NPS brochure:

Recovered from the crash site, the cockpit voice recorder captured the shouts, thumps, crashes, and breaking of glass and plates. The 9/11 Commission reported that the hijackers, although remaining in control of the plane, must have judged that the passengers and crew were mere seconds from overcoming them. To continued sounds of the counterattack, Flight 93 crashed into this field.

The crash site is 18 minutes flying time from Washington, DC. The action of unarmed passengers and crew thwarted and defeated the terrorists’ plan.

May they rest in peace.