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On the eve of the 25^th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Heather “Lucky” Penney shares her story on the Tango Alpha Lima podcast.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Air Force 1st Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney had one job: get airborne and take down United Flight 93 before it reached its target in Washington, D.C. However, because of the urgency her F-16 wasn’t armed.

In the briefing room Penney and her flight lead, Lt. Col. Marc Sasseville worked out a plan before launching from Andrews Air Force Base. Sasseville would fly his jet into the cockpit to take out the terrorists and the flight controls, and Penney would ram hers into the tail section, so the airliner would be unstable and go down.

“And I was at peace with that,” she says of �������� Tango Alpha Lima podcast. (In 2021, Tango Alpha Lima published a special 20-episode series of unique, riveting and little-known personal stories about the 9/11 attacks. )

Penney has said she wasn’t scared and didn’t spend those minutes thinking about what she’d be leaving behind.

“I was completely at peace with that mission, with the potential sacrifice,” she recalls.

Of course, Flight 93 never reached its target. The passengers aboard fought back, and the aircraft went down in a field near Shanksville, Pa., before Penney and Sasseville caught up to it.

It’s a fact Penney returns to often, and with feeling: Flight 93’s passengers were not trained for what they did. They were, in her words, “just ordinary everyday Americans” who made the choice anyway. “That gives me hope in Americans today,” she says.

Her link to 9/11 is the chapter of her life most people know. Now the retired major helps shape the future of aviation through Purdue University’s National Aviation Symposium and is a passionate advocate for education, preserving our nation’s aviation history, and inspiring the next generation of pilots, especially women pursuing careers in flight.

On this episode of Tango Alpha Lima, Penney walks through the rest of her story, too. Among the highlights:

• Her childhood spent idolizing her father, an Air Force “Sandy” pilot in Vietnam.

• Showing up at Purdue University ROTC ready to fly fighters and being told flatly that girls couldn’t do that job (“I had no idea. My mom had never told me no.”).

• The F-16 career that followed anyway, flying combat air patrols over the capital, two deployments to support Operation Iraqi Freedom, and night “Scud hunter” missions over Iraq.

• Her retirement spent flying warbirds, working as the director of research at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and advocating for the next generation of aviators.

Twenty-five years on, Penney is candid about what that day still means to her. “I was sent on a suicide mission because our nation was unprepared,” she says. That’s part of why she now works in policy and advocacy, so that the pilots who come after her aren’t sent on one too.

Also in this episode, co-hosts Adam Marr and Stacy Pearsall:

• Look ahead to Sept. 17, Constitution Day, the day back in 1787 when the U.S. Constitution was signed.

• Discuss the history of women aviators.

• Dive into the Mitchell Institute’s new report, “Technology and Military Disruption Inbound from the Space Frontier,” which talks about creating a U.S.-India partnership and focusing on how we fight wars in orbit.

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