An F-16 fighter pilot just retired after 40 years in the Air Force — only because a suicide mission he was prepared to undertake 23 years ago — on 9/11 — was aborted.
Marc Sasseville, now 61, and another pilot, Heather Penney, who was just 26 at the time, were ordered to scramble their jets after two hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center’s twin towers and a third hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
They were told to go after United Airlines Flight 93, which had been hijacked by four al-Qaida terrorists and was on track to hit Washington, DC. Both took off from Andrews Air Force Base without even knowing their mission.
“One of the memories that will stay with me forever is seeing the Pentagon on fire and being able to smell the fumes that were coming off of that,” Sasseville told ABC News.
“The burning concrete, the fuel from the airplane that it hit.”
Then Sasseville and Penney got their marching orders: Locate Flight 93 and stop it.
They couldn’t figure out how at first because their fighter jets were not armed with missiles.
But they decided that if required, they would hit the hijacked plane with their jets — making it a suicide mission.
“The training kicked in,” Sasseville said of his decision. “I felt like I was on autopilot.”
He planned to ram the front of the jetliner and Penney the tail section.
Sasseville had a wife and two young children, ages 3 and 5 at the time.
“It’s a testament to Sass’ leadership that he didn’t ask anyone else to lead that mission,” Penney told the network.
“He wouldn’t ask anyone else to give what he was unwilling to give.”
Before they had to make that harrowing sacrifice, Sasseville and Penney found out that the passengers and crew of Flight 93 had wrested back control of the plane before it crashed in Shanksville, Pa., killing all 44 people on board.
“If those heroes on 93 — and by the way, those are the real heroes — if they hadn’t taken action and they hadn’t done what needed to be done, it would have been a very different outcome for me and my family,” Sasseville said.
Sasseville and Penney returned to Joint Base Andrews to refuel before escorting Air Force One back to DC with then-President George W. Bush on board.
Sasseville ultimately became a three-star general in the Air Force and the No. 2 officer in the National Guard.
“It has been a tremendous honor and a privilege to serve, and a truly rare opportunity for me and my family to make a difference,” he said during his retirement ceremony speech.