Hmm. I Dunno.

The Washington Post HERE has an article on Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney, an Air Force combat pilot who took to the skies on 9/11 in an unarmed F-16 ready to ram United 93 with her jet.

Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.

The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.  Except her own plane. So that was the plan.

“We wouldn’t be shooting it down. We’d be ramming the aircraft,” Penney recalls of her charge that day. “I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot.”

On one hand, of course it's incredible that someone would do such a thing.  But on the other hand - wait, what?

I don't wanna sound like some cynical asshole, but this just sounds impossible to even have been considered.  Are we really supposed to believe this?  There's NOTHING the Air Force had within proximity of Penney's plane that had ANY ammunition? Really? And then they'd ask, of all people, a WOMAN to act as a kamikaze pilot?

This seems heard to believe to me.  I know there's men and women who's job it is to take a bullet for the president, but they're never asked to do so without guns.  We're really supposed to believe that the only F-16 close enough to get to DC quickly just happened to not be loaded with weapons?  And then it wouldn't be worth a little more time to get one loaded up?  For not the first or second hijacked plane, but the fourth?  Really?

I just find this incredibly doubtful, and will be looking for a "Hoax" correction over the next several days.

Besides, as you already know, kamikaze pilots are rarely so gung-ho.  How on Earth would she have accepted such an order?  This whole thing seems bizarre to me.  But then, I served in the early-late 90's, during the Cola Wars, so.  I remember trying to stage a walkout over there being no Cocoa Puffs in the...whatever military people call the cafeteria.