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In an instant, US military units around the nation switched from routine training to a real-world missions on Sep. 11, 2001.
However, not all the units assumed responsibility for alert missions as former US Navy F/A-18 and EA-6B pilot John Parker recalls;
‘My last active-duty tour in the Navy was performing post-depot maintenance check flights of the F/A-18 at the Boeing facility at Cecil Airport, formerly NAS Cecil Field (before the BRAC closure). Taking that job was not the smartest move on my part, or the Navy’s. I had only about sixty hours in Hornets at the time. Nearly all of my 3,000 flight hours were in the EA-6B and other aircraft from my time at Pax River serving as a test pilot. In a normal squadron, I would never have been allowed to perform functional check flights with that little time in the model.
‘And these were not normal flights.
‘These jets had been torn apart down to the airframe and then reassembled. Every flight was an adventure in malfunctions. Something almost always failed. Something almost always surprised me.
‘My first day on the job was Sep. 11, 2001.
‘I had just returned from NAS Lemoore where I had been getting refresher training and simulator time, practicing the FCF A-profile checklist and as many emergency procedures as the instructor could throw at me. That morning, as I was getting settled into my new office at Cecil, the Boeing manager stopped by and casually said that someone had accidentally flown into one of the buildings in New York.
‘I remember thinking that didn’t make sense. I pulled up the weather for New York City. It was crystal clear.
‘I walked down to the front office where a small group had gathered around a television. Nobody was talking. We just stood there watching the footage replay, over and over again. It was obvious to everyone in the room that this was no accident. You could feel the air change. The room got very quiet in a way I had never experienced before.
‘At the time we had more than twenty aircraft in the hangar undergoing various modifications. One of them belonged to a Marine VMFA squadron in Beaufort. That afternoon they called and said they needed their jet back immediately to meet a deployment requirement.
‘There was one problem. The cockpit was in pieces, and the modification wasn’t complete.
The Boeing team worked through the night putting it back together. Panels were still off, tools still scattered around the jet, when I coordinated with my chain of command to get approval to fly the next day. All civilian flights were grounded and the US airspace was closed. It took time, but eventually I received an IFF transponder code directly from the Pentagon authorizing me to ferry the aircraft from Cecil to MCAS Beaufort.
‘On the morning of Sep. 12, I called the Cecil tower and explained what was about to happen, giving them the code. The hangar felt oddly still as I walked out to the jet. The airplane looked like it had been hurriedly stitched back together. You could tell it had been a long night for the maintenance crew.
‘I don’t remember sleeping much the night before. This would be my first flight following the re-qualification at Lemoore.
‘After takeoff I switched to Jacksonville Departure frequency. I heard nothing. No chatter. No background noise. Just the faint hiss of an open radio. I called again. And again.
‘Finally, someone answered. It sounded almost like they had forgotten how to do this. After some back and forth about what I was doing, they eventually cleared me to continue on the short flight.
‘There were no other airplanes in the sky. No contrails; no traffic calls; no other voices on the frequency.
‘When I asked for clearance to climb to my planned altitude, the controller replied, “The sky is yours. Do whatever you want to.”
‘I had never heard anything like that on the radio before.
‘I pushed the throttles into afterburner and the jet surged forward, pressing me into the seat as the engines roared. The airplane leapt upward into a perfectly empty blue sky. As I climbed, I found myself scanning the horizon out of habit, looking for traffic that wasn’t there.
‘For the first time in my career, I became aware of just how alone I was.
‘This was also the first time I had ever flown in a true single-seat aircraft. I had flown solo many times before, but there was always another seat behind me or beside me, even if it was empty.
‘Not this time.
‘There was no one else in the jet. No one else in the sky. And the day before, the entire country had changed.
‘It all felt surreal, like flying inside a paused world.
‘I ran through as many FCF checks as I could during the short flight.
‘As I approached Beaufort, the contrast was striking. The tower frequency was alive with voices. The pattern was full. I counted roughly a dozen Hornets in the FCLP pattern working to get carrier qualifications back as quickly as possible. The military had clearly shifted into motion overnight, and many of the aircraft would soon be on their way to Afghanistan.
‘Having never been to Beaufort before, I had to ask ground control for directions to the correct hangar. I shut down in front of a squadron that was very eager to have their jet back. I checked in with their maintenance control and they sent a duty driver to take me into town to pick up a rental car for the drive back to Jacksonville.
‘It wasn’t until I was alone in that car, driving south on the highway, that the weight of the previous two days really settled in. The silence in the sky. The urgency in the hangar. The strange calm in the cockpit. The feeling that the rules had changed overnight.
‘I had spent years flying military aircraft, but I had never experienced anything like flying on Sep. 12, 2001, in a jet that had been rebuilt overnight, in a sky that belonged to no one.’
Photo credit: Cpl. Calah Thompson and LCPL John Mcgarity / U.S. Marine Corps
