Kamikaze: F-16 pilots planned to ram Flight 93

[The Brain]

I don't know much about shooting down jet liners, but the tale sounds a little tall.  They weren't even going to try shooting it before they rammed it?

P.S.: If they wanted to limit ground damage, again, wouldn't shooting one plane town be preferable to crashing three?

Those planes had no ammo or missiles.  It would've taken over an hour to arm them.  CONUS hadn't kept armed flights ready to scramble since the mid 80s.

Doesn't anybody read these articles that are posted?

Indeed, classic Languish; the issue is unarmed fighter planes, the discussion turns to redundant systems of thrust and structural integrity of commercial airliners. 

According to the article they had 105 rounds of crap ammo.

[alfred russel]

OK what did I say?

The engine is not going to be peacefully turning itself off.   It's going to be having a bunch of metal hitting it and it's probably going to violently come apart.  The engine is attached to a wing (that presumably has a bunch of gas in it, so an explosion of any type there seems like it would be bad for the airplane).  Even in a best case scenario (for the airplane), if it doesn't tear itself all up and the wing is miraculously unharmed, we're still talking about an untrained "flight crew" trying to fly a plane with a now destroyed engine.  I don't know how easy a 757 is to fly with one engine, but it can't be the same as if it had two intact ones, right?  It's not going to just fall out of the sky, but it can't be as easy as when the thing was intact.

e:  With F-16s now trying to ram it I guess.  vOv

Hey here's a bird taking out a 757 engine:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tLF-3d3PJk  It seems to actually keep flying pretty well, although that might have something to do with the flight crew and the fact that it was "only" a bird, which is pretty...er...soft...compared to any sort of 20mm ammo, I would think, and didn't cause shit to fly around and come off and such.  That pilot is really chill though the whole thing.  Nice.  Sounds like they were really taxing the remaining engine though.

MBM, commercial aircraft go through thousands of birds a year. When a bird takes out an engine it is probably more of a flukey occurance as opposed to evidence that commerical airlines are especially delicate.

I don't know much about the capabilities of military aircraft, but if you have a 1 second burst of inert metal that is being fired from a moving aircraft at another moving aircraft, it seems likely that a) it is a challenge to pick that one spot to guarantee bringing down the aircraft, and b) you are assured of putting that 1 second burst directly on target.

[Razgovory]

I don't know much about shooting down jet liners, but the tale sounds a little tall.  They weren't even going to try shooting it before they rammed it?

P.S.: If they wanted to limit ground damage, again, wouldn't shooting one plane town be preferable to crashing three?

Those planes had no ammo or missiles.  It would've taken over an hour to arm them.  CONUS hadn't kept armed flights ready to scramble since the mid 80s.

Doesn't anybody read these articles that are posted?

I was a little disturbed by that.  I know it's expensive to keep planes on high rediness, but it is the DC area.  It's sort of important.

[jimmy olsen]

I don't know much about shooting down jet liners, but the tale sounds a little tall.  They weren't even going to try shooting it before they rammed it?

Why does it take so long?

[PDH]

I don't know much about shooting down jet liners, but the tale sounds a little tall.  They weren't even going to try shooting it before they rammed it?

Why does it take so long?

Have to finish the game of WoW first.

[CountDeMoney]

It's cute how the government is slowly admitting in stages like this that it took out Flight 93.  A couple of weeks ago we heard Bush say that he gave the order to shoot down airliners if they threatened targets in DC.  I don't think I'd heard that before.

I've been hearing that orders were issued to take down planes if necessary since 2001 I believe.

People who listen have.
Cal has tits on the brain.

[Ideologue]

I don't know much about shooting down jet liners, but the tale sounds a little tall.  They weren't even going to try shooting it before they rammed it?

P.S.: If they wanted to limit ground damage, again, wouldn't shooting one plane town be preferable to crashing three?

Those planes had no ammo or missiles.  It would've taken over an hour to arm them.  CONUS hadn't kept armed flights ready to scramble since the mid 80s.

Doesn't anybody read these articles that are posted?

I was tired.   Also, I would like to take the opportunity to shift some of the blame onto Tim.  He said they had shells in his post, and I missed the heavy qualification in this article.  I mean, that would still be worth a shot, but yeah.

[Strix]

I don't know much about shooting down jet liners, but the tale sounds a little tall.  They weren't even going to try shooting it before they rammed it?

Why does it take so long?

It's the military. The ammo is probably locked up tight somewhere not near the planes.

[The Brain]

The United 93 movie is on TV right now. When talking about ROE they (AF officer on the ground) asked about permission to ram with their unarmed planes.

[The Brain]

The movie was totally OK I thought, btw. Hadn't seen it before.

Man they sure made a big thing of pointing out (at the end of the movie) that no fighters were anywhere near it and that shooting it down was therefore not a possibility.

[HisMajestyBOB]

The United 93 movie is on TV right now. When talking about ROE they (AF officer on the ground) asked about permission to ram with their unarmed planes.

Is that the one where every other shot is of mothers holding children?
Or was that one of the made-for-TV movies?

[Razgovory]

The United 93 movie is on TV right now. When talking about ROE they (AF officer on the ground) asked about permission to ram with their unarmed planes.

Is that the one where every other shot is of mothers holding children?
Or was that one of the made-for-TV movies?

I never watched it.  The GOP sent me an unsolicited DVD of back in 2004.  I thought that a little crass.

[The Brain]

The United 93 movie is on TV right now. When talking about ROE they (AF officer on the ground) asked about permission to ram with their unarmed planes.

Is that the one where every other shot is of mothers holding children?
Or was that one of the made-for-TV movies?

Didn't see any children.

[Ed Anger]

The United 93 movie is on TV right now. When talking about ROE they (AF officer on the ground) asked about permission to ram with their unarmed planes.

Is that the one where every other shot is of mothers holding children?
Or was that one of the made-for-TV movies?

I never watched it.  The GOP sent me an unsolicited DVD of back in 2004.  I thought that a little crass.

I got the one about evil towelheads overseas.

[Razgovory]

They originally were sending out VHSs of Rambo III left over from the 1992 campaign, but those didn't work as good in 2004.