Tandem46

Tandem46

Well Known Member
Although there's no way to be sure, I dare say this photo is the last aerial photo ever taken of the Twin Towers pre-attack. This photo was taken by my good Navy buddy flying in an H-46D helicopter returning to Norfolk VA from an airshow. The photo was taken with a disposable camera. Date and time, around 8:15am, September 11th, 2001. Even though he's a Navy pilot in a Navy aircraft, he was forced to land short of his destination just like everyone else. He tried to offer assistance, telling the controllers he was a Navy helicopter, but the controllers were too busy and simply couldn't use his help. I believe the dark shadow in the upper middle of the photo is one of his rotor blades.


sep11pp8.jpg
 
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I will never forget that day

I was Captain on a 737 flying that ( what we thought was a beautiful ) day. After we landed one of the maint. guys told us what had happened. At that time they still thought it was an accident. We were boarding pax for another segment when the United plane hit the second tower. Our ops folks had no guidance for us so I cancelled the flight and deplaned the aircraft. The events of that day are still affecting every ariline employee. When I think of how many times I opened that cockpit door after hearing " the secret knock" it makes me sick.
 
Silence

I was preparing all the birds to deploy the next couple of days and Boston center was silent...... erie...

Best
Brian
 
I was on vacation and on my way to the airport for my BFR. The CFI (my sister) and I turned on the TV and saw the replays and everything just went out of us. Neither of us had the heart to even do the ground portion.

Like most people, I will never forget that day, nor the people that died in NY, Washington and Pennsylvania.

I just took another look at the picture. I wonder what the people at the Statue of Liberty saw and thought about when the smoke started rising, and then the second plane hit, and then the buildings came down. That must have been incredible standing close to Lady Liberty and seeing the attack.
 
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I had just gotten out of the shower that morning and flipped on the TV in my hotel room. The second plane had already hit the Towers. I jumped into a pair of pants and ran to the elevator in the hallway. I took the elevator to the top floor, found a fire exit to the roof, and went outside. There, I watched the collapse of the first tower. I was staying just across from the City in New Jersey. I didn't get out of Teterboro for several days, and was one of the first jets allowed to finally leave. The flight, together with almost no other chatter on the frequencies, was really spooky.
 
I was building a garage for a friend of mine. I grew up about forty miles from the World Trade Center. You could see the towers from the Lifeguard stands at the beach I worked at. I also happen to have been an Air Force Officer stationed at the Pentagon back in the late eighties and early nineties. The cockpit of the plane that hit it basically ended up in my old office. I watched on TV as the second plane hit the Trade Center. I knew many of my friend's family had worked there when I was growning up and I was hoping no one I knew was killed. It paralyzed me. I knew my old office was hit by the plane that hit the Pentagon. I didn't find out to weeks later that my old office was under renovations and everybody was in a different part of the Pentagon at the time of the crash. When it was all over there wasn't a single person that I knew that was killed or injured in either attack.
Still to this day I am amazed on how few people were killed compared to how many people were in all these buildings. You had a potential of 75,000 people being killed in all three buildings. The economic damage was extremely powerful. I had a commercial flight a few years before the attack out of Newark up to Albany. We flew right past the Towers. It was one the greatest flights I have ever had. [political text here removed. dr]
 
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That day I was...

My wife and I were in the final preparations for travel to China to pick up our first adopted daughter, then named Yong Min who was living in an orphanage somewhere near Changsha. I was at work while my wife was at home getting packed for the trip. We were to travel two days later catching a flight from Boston to Los Angeles and we had our airplanes tickets in hand. The tickets said that we were to fly on United flight 175.

I was at work and was hearing the news from over the radio in the mailroom. At first, the report was that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center and I thought, "Well, I always wondered when someone would accidentally hit a building with an airliner." But then, another airplane hit and I thought, "Could some computer bug be causing the air traffice controllers to send airplanes in the wrong direction?" But then it became obvious that the only explanation was an attack of some sort.

I got on the phone to my wife who had her head down doing the packing that morning. We had spent nearly two years so far getting ready for this adoption and she was in her final moments of getting it done. In the past months we had worked through what would happen if Chinese-American foreign relations suddenly went bad - as they almost did during the recent E-3 spyplane incident. I called her up on the phone and asked her, "Are you watching TV? " She said, "No, I am busy packing." and I replied, "Do you remember what I said about how something bad could still happen internationally and interefere with our plans? You might want to turn on the TV" and she did and said, "Oh, no..."

Well, airplanes were grounded for three weeks after that and our plans were delayed. With armed National Guard troops at the airports we eventually got to China and came back with Madeleine. Now the story about what it was like getting a screaming kicking fighting raging little one year old home and settled is a far scarier story - but not the subject of this thread.

--Nomex
 
I had just walked in the house after coming home from a 3 day shift (fireman) and my wife had the TV news on.

Only one plane had hit at that time, spent the next eternity watching it to the end.

I lost 340 brothers that day, still hurts to see/remember.

Please dont ever forget.

D a m n terrorists.
 
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I was on duty at the Fire Dept at Halifax International Airport that day.
We watched in disbelief as 40 + aircraft from many countries landed in the space of an hour and a half. 5000 citizens mostly Americans were stranded at our airport. A call went out, and by evening accomodation was found for them in the homes of the people of Halifax. To understate the obvious, this event shocked the world.

iusa4jv5.jpg
 
I was living in Portland at the time but was at a hotel in Dallas for a business meeting. I was supposed to fly AA home that night, saw the first tower come down live on the hotel's big screen TV and knew that plan was not going to happen.

I actually managed to get home on the 13th on the same flight #, but with only about 40 people on a MD-80. DFW was nearly empty except for all the cops, feds, etc. Creepy. And on top of that, some woman left her bag unattended at DFW, and then tried to snatch it from the cops when the found it and were about to haul it away; she wound up getting "escorted" somewhere by her new best friends. (How many times have we heard "Please do not leave your baggage unattended. Unattended baggage is subject to search and seizure by the airport police.") Rocket science at work.

I don't think I was ever happier to get home than I was on the 13th. I've tried to focus on that feeling every year now, how good it is and thankful I am just to be alive. If only everyone felt that way.....

TODR
 
I was in my office about 10 blocks north of the World Trade Center when someone came in and said a plane hit one of the towers. At that time everyone thought it was a small plane. We went outside and saw the smoke coming out of a hole in the north tower. As we watched, we saw a fireball erupt on the back side. At first we thought it was a secondary explosion from the first plane but we walked a block east to where we could see both towers and realized it was the other tower. Since the second plane hit from the south, we didn't see it as our view was block by the north tower. We alternated between going inside and looking at a television and going outside and watching it live. I saw the first tower colapse on television and went outside just in time to watch the south tower colapse. The headquarters of the company I was working for at the time was right across the street from the towers and everyone had to evacuate. I can still remember one of my friend's whose office faced the towers describe how he watched people who had jumped out of windows to escape the fire fall past his window. I knew at least 2 people who did not make it out that day, one of whom I had worked for a few years before.

Whenever I start to get frustrated at the security lines in an airport, I remember that day and it all falls into perspective.
 
Flags....

And remember the patriotic spirit of our country after this terrible tragedy happened? You could not buy an American flag if you tried (at least in DFW, Texas). I had somehow lost mine in a move somewhere, and ended up buying one a few weeks later at a concert where they had an auction.

I'll never forget the events that happened, nor will I forget the flags everywhere. And.....I was at an airport just shortly after flights were allowed to resume...a guy was in line with me and said "go ahead, after what just happened, I am no longer in a hurry to go anywhere". I'll never forget that.

A sad day, indeed. Never forget.
 
Got cold chills looking at that picture.

My mother was living on Long Island at the time, she absolutely loves NY city. She was devestated by the attack. We must NEVER forget!
 
I was, at that time, a crime scene examiner for the RCMP here in Canada and was at a Break and Enter at a golf course....when one of the club members came in and turned the TV on...that scene took along time to process. I don't think I will ever see anything as unbelievable as that again. The next day I had a call to an island that is in the Bay of Fundy on the south coast of our province. Its normally an all day trip, if not overnight if I had to take the ferry, so I often use the RV to do calls there if our forces helicopter is unavailable. Everything was grounded here as well but I thought I would see what could be done to get permission to fly. I contacted a very helpful fellow at transport Canada, who advised that the only exception to the notam grounding everyone was "aircraft operated by the local police authority or the military" He authorized me to file a special flight plan for the flight, and I did the trip. I learned when I got back to the office that they had called to verify that I did work there and owned an aircraft. Very strange hearing nothing on any frequencies I checked, and getting very grumpy flight service people when I did call looking for altimeter settings etc. I was probably the only RV flying in North America that day.....

We don't forget here in Canada either.

Joe Hine
RV4 C-FYTQ
 
One thing that impressed me about 9/11 is how everyone was together. Nobody was honking in rush hour, people were opening doors for each other. It was as if we realized we were all in something together.

It was such a fleeting feeling. But it provided hope on a day that was otherwise full of despair and fear.
 
Paul Tuttle said:
I was on duty at the Fire Dept at Halifax International Airport that day.
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I was in Halifax as well, but on a scheduled overnight instead of at the fire house. We were to fly the morning departure to Newark; at the hotel as I got up and ready to go I didn't turn on the TV, never saw the news... this was all happening as we were getting ready to go and during the van ride to the airport. As the van dropped us off at operations the Ops Manager told us what was going on and pointed us to the TV news playing in his office. Wow. The first two planes had already hit... we watched as the first tower fell... flight attendants were crying and I was on the phone to my wife to tell her it wasn't me. Woof.

As it all settled in, the Ops Manager told us to get back in the van, go back to the hotel and get our rooms back; with 40-50 widebodies from Europe inbound to Halifax, we knew we'd be there for awhile. Five days later we finally headed back to Newark, and what an eerie flight it was. It was very quiet on the radios with almost no air traffic in the NYC area, and landing rwy 4R at EWR we could see the smoke plume rising from the city...

Thanks for posting that pic of the YHZ parking lot, I hadn't seen that one before. I can see our itty bitty 737-500 parked on the west end of the main ramp... must be the smallest jet on the field.
 
txaviator said:
And remember the patriotic spirit of our country after this terrible tragedy happened? You could not buy an American flag if you tried (at least in DFW, Texas). I had somehow lost mine in a move somewhere, and ended up buying one a few weeks later at a concert where they had an auction.

I'll never forget the events that happened, nor will I forget the flags everywhere. And.....I was at an airport just shortly after flights were allowed to resume...a guy was in line with me and said "go ahead, after what just happened, I am no longer in a hurry to go anywhere". I'll never forget that.

A sad day, indeed. Never forget.
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I was in Denver that morning for day 2 of a two day PT at our UAL training center. I had walked over from the hotel (across the street) and found folks crowded around a small tv in our lobby. The first airplane had hit and as I watched with everyone else, the second one hit........ unbelievable and in disbelief...

Many rumors where flying that morning in the early stages. We were getting reports at the training center that our military was on it's way out to shoot down one of our 777s.... I finally got in touch with my wife back in Northern VA and she said she had heard that Washington Center(Leesburg, VA) had been bombed! Obviously, those things didn't happen but at the time nobody knew that!

In reference to the above quoted poster, once I finally got home ( a week later ), I put out my flag and flew it 24/7 for the next year! I finally retired it on the first anniversary of 9/11 and now is one of my most prized possessions. She is quite tattered now from the long exposure to the elements, but still proudly represents how everyone one of us feel about our country and our freedoms.

Something else followed that I wasn't quite prepared for..... I found that I couldn't work on the RV project for about a month. I just didn't feel like I deserved to enjoy myself in my hobby, after so many people died that day... ....I felt guilty...
 
Liberty Island

jdmunzell said:
In reference to the above quoted poster, once I finally got home ( a week later ), I put out my flag and flew it 24/7 for the next year! I finally retired it on the first anniversary of 9/11 and now is one of my most prized possessions. She is quite tattered now from the long exposure to the elements, but still proudly represents how everyone one of us feel about our country and our freedoms.
Click to expand...

I had a similar experience. Put a flag up within the week, displayed it 24/7 and continue to do so.

As a side note, my Great Grandfather was processed through Liberty Island with his Aunt in the late 1800's. Came over on a boat from Scotland so that place means a lot to me. I was extremely upset when I saw the news about the WTC. I often wonder how much worse I would have felt, or the retribution might have been, if they had made the country's symbol of freedom, a target?
 
The days after the attack...

I remember going to work the next day and seeing a pickup truck driving slowly down the road flying a full size American flag... from my redneck part of New Hampshire, you knew that that meant war. And I remember how many nations took time out and stood with us the day of the memorial services. Canadians, Brits, Russians. And I remember scanning the channels and seeing that even on the spanish channels Sabado Gigante had an American patriotic special on.
 
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