Since the first military aircraft took to US skies 11 September 2001, active Air Force, Reserve, and Guard pilots have logged more than 25,000* combat and air support sorties over the United States for Operation Noble Eagle. North American Aerospace Defense Command has directed more than 750 scrambles or mission diversions by NORAD fighters to identify or escort unknown airborne aircraft.

Within the first five months of the operation, Noble Eagle sorties exceeded those flown over Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom. Initially, ten Air National Guard units were assigned to Noble Eagle. Today, twenty-nine units are assigned. Two F-16 ANG units profiled here, the 177th Fighter Wing of New Jersey and the 144th Fighter Wing of California, show how the tempo of operations changed from the Atlantic to the Pacific with the events of that day.

Within two hours, the F-16s of the 177th FW were turned from a routine air-to-ground training mission to air-to-air live combat air patrols over the Northeast Air Defense Sector of NORAD.

The 177th FW at Atlantic City International Airport was preparing for routine bombing training the morning of 11 September. Two F-16Cs loaded with BDUs were taxiing to the runway where weapons loader TSgt. Emil Martinelli was waiting at the end of the runway to pull the pins on the jets. Halfway down the ramp, the jets suddenly stop and turn back to the flightline.

“Within two minutes, we get a radio transmission to come back to the flightline,” recalls Martinelli. “That’s when we were told what happened to the World Trade Center towers.” Two F-16s already airborne are also called back. The order comes down to remove all training munitions and upload live air-to-air missiles. People from other parts of the base descend on the flightline. Ex-crew chiefs, ex-maintainers, and former weapons loaders help bring out wing tanks and roll out large gray caskets of live AIM-120s and AIM-9s.

Maj. Tom Cleary, a traditional Guard pilot, was one of those F-16 pilots whose training mission was cancelled. “We launched almost immediately after the Pentagon was hit,” he recalls. “I was still carrying training munitions, but I had live guns.” Later, four F-16s with live missiles were launched followed by four more loaded F-16s.

Within two hours, the F-16s of the 177th FW were turned from a routine air-to-ground training mission to air-to-air live combat air patrols over the Northeast Air Defense Sector of NORAD. “We were airborne within the hour after the Pentagon attack,” recalls Col. Mike Cosby, Commander of the 177th. “We were the first non-alert unit to fly armed ordnance over the Northeast corridor anywhere the Northeast Sector of NORAD wanted us to fly between New York City and Washington, DC.”

In less than an hour, the 144th scrambled F-16s from Riverside to fly CAPs over Los Angeles and F-16s from Fresno to fly CAPs over San Francisco.

The 144th FW in Fresno already had two F-16s on alert for NORAD as part of a previous commitment. They were sitting on alert at the 194th Squadron in Riverside, a long-time detachment of the wing at March Air Reserve Base. The pilots, Squadron Commander Lt. Col. Ryan Orian and Operations Group Commander, Col. Amos Bagdasarian, were rousted from alert quarters around six a.m. Pacific Daylight Time 11 September.

“We ran out to the airplanes to something I have never seen before in my ten years of pulling alert here,” recalls Orian. “We had a runway alert signal, which means to park at the end of the runway with the engines running.” Shortly thereafter, the Western Air Defense Sector of NORAD called the jets back to the hangar where the pilots sat in the cockpit on battle station status until almost noon.

Meanwhile at Fresno, Maj. Rob Swertfager, a fulltime technician of the 144th FW, listened to events unfold on his car radio as he drove to work. “As soon as I stepped in here, the boss told me to go to tail No. 271 and sit on battle stations,” recalls Swertfager. He sat on battle stations in the F-16 for two and one-half hours.

Later that afternoon, Orian and Bagdasarian in Riverside were launched to establish the first of the CAP missions over the West coast. With air tanker support coordinated, they flew CAPs over Los Angeles until 6:30 or so that night. Swertfager in Fresno was scrambled later that morning but to escort a recalcitrant airliner heading straight for San Francisco.

The 144th was one of the few units actually sitting alert with live air-to-air missiles before 11 September. “We had heat-seeking missiles already loaded on the jets,” explains Col. Phil Skains, commander of the 144th. “Adding radar-guided missiles post-11 September was not that big of a change for us.” In less than an hour, the 144th scrambled F-16s from Riverside to fly CAPs over Los Angeles and F-16s from Fresno to fly CAPs over San Francisco.

The Mission Change
The change in mission from air-to-ground to air-to-air for Noble Eagle is a strange twist for the 177th FW. “We used to be a NORAD alert base before our mission changed to general purpose,” recalls MSgt. Kate Urie, 177th FW flight chief in charge of crew chiefs. “Now we perform both missions.” The air-to-air mission was a big changeover for the back shop to reconfigure at first. “Now everything is pretty much a routine since we set up the shop that way.”

Urie was in New York for an air-to-ground training mission when the towers were attacked. “By the time I got to Atlantic City eight hours later, the mission changed from air-to-ground to airplanes already configured to fly the air-to-air mission,” she says. “Everything just took off. We jumped straight into a twelve-hour shift. No lunch. In no time, the jets were ready to go and in the air.”

Maj. James Mark, commander 144th aircraft generation squadron, was walking out the door of the Guard Center in Washington, DC, on his way to the Pentagon when the second airplane hit the second tower. “We thought the first plane was a Cessna,” remembers Mark. “After the second plane hit, I immediately jumped on the phone, called my chief, and told him to generate eight jets. I told him the message was going to be coming down the pipe in about thirty minutes. It did.”

The workload was really pressed the first eight or nine days, according to Mark. “Then things started to normalize,” he explains. “Once everybody realized we were flying CAPs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week until we heard otherwise, things just settled right down and we got to a nice steady pace of business as usual.” Business as usual included two twelve-hour shifts everyday from six to six.

“Everything just took off. We jumped straight into a twelve-hour shift. No lunch.In no time,the jets were ready to go and in the air.”

President George W. Bush partially mobilized seventy percent of the Guard for Noble Eagle, which means the traditional Guard members can be activated for up to two years. For the 177th, mobilization meant calling up all twenty-seven traditional F-16 pilots to support Noble Eagle. Nine pilots are full-time. The 177th also called up 249 of its 464 traditional support personnel, all of whom are still activated. One hundred ninety support personnel are fulltime technicians.

Partial mobilization for the 144th meant calling up all 700 traditional Guard members at first. Less than 300 are still activated. No traditional pilots needed to be called because of the “fifty-five mile rule.” “Our pilots have to live relatively close to the base because of our historical air defense mission,” explains Skains. “The rule paid huge dividends for us on 11 September because we had all but about four pilots here in Fresno. When we got into the twenty-four-hour CAPs over California, we already had the people here to do it.” One-third of the pilots at the 144th are fulltime.

Mixed Opportunities

Operation Noble Eagle has been a golden training opportunity for traditional Guard members who support the jets on the ground. “They are spun into a schedule of working round the clock and learning our daily work everyday instead of just one weekend a month,” explains SMSgt. Don Martenz of the 177th. MSgt. Sheldon Williams of the 144th agrees, “They get training real fast right here in Fresno instead of having to wait to go somewhere else to get it.

” But for the pilots of the 177th FW and 144th FW participating in Noble Eagle, training has been deferred to the arduous tasking of homeland defense. The 177th suffered a long-term training backlog. “Our mission still requires general support,” explains Urie. “We spend a lot of money to have our pilots trained to drop bombs. We’re trying to incorporate some training with the Noble Eagle missions for our pilots so someone can train to drop bombs while we still support the CAP mission.”

Training proficiency fell to minimum levels at the 144th. “In fact, we scaled back to be able to support the Noble Eagle mission and that’s about it,” says Skains. “Now that things have calmed down a bit, we are putting some of those airplanes back in the training mode. We’re catching up with our training requirements pretty quick.”

“We had just come back from Operation Southern Watch probably at our highest capability before 11 September,” explains Orian. “Everything now is geared towards just flying CAPs over the major cities. Maybe just a few guys get to go out every now and then, but it is very, very low because we are so heavily tasked.”

The training missions interrupted on 11 September have now resumed for both wings. And the double and triple shifts at both wings have returned to single shifts. Both wings now prepare to deploy to the Middle East for their turns in the Aerospace Expeditionary Force cycle.

Leaning Forward

Maj. Rob “Tigger” Swertfager and Col. Ron “Spanky” Manner were sitting on battle stations at the 144th FW in Fresno, California, the morning of 11 September 2001 when the order came to scramble. Western Air Defense Sector of NORAD wanted the F-16 pilots to identify an inbound 747 airliner that refused to divert to Canada or Mexico. Every other airliner had already been pulled from the sky or diverted away from US airspace. Was the West under attack?

The fighter pilots were cleared afterburner full speed to intercept the 747. With the help of the ground control interceptor at McChord AFB in Washington, they picked up the airliner even before the jets went feet wet. The Jumbo Jet was heading straight for San Francisco. The early track gave the 144th pilots time to devise a game plan. Eighty or so miles off the coast of San Francisco, the F-16s rolled in at the airliner’s six o’clock. Over their radios, they monitored the conversations between the air traffic controller at the Oakland center and the 747 pilot. The controller told the pilot to lower his gear, turn south, and fly parallel to the coast. The pilot refused. He said he was low on fuel.

The controller told the airline pilot what occurred earlier that morning. That four hijacked airliners had reigned terror on the East coast. That all transoceanic air traffic inbound for the United States had been diverted away from US airspace. The airline pilot said his fuel was too low to make Mexico. Who could believe him? The controller told the airline pilot he would be escorted to San Francisco by F-16 fighter jets.

Twenty or thirty miles off the coast of California, still feet wet, still in international water, the F-16s moved in to escort the airliner. One fighter pilot closed in on the airliner’s wing to check out the cockpit, to see if everything was all right. The other fighter pilot closed in behind the airliner. In that formation, the threesome approached San Francisco International Airport.

After the airliner landed, the fighter jets flew some low-speed and some high-speed approaches off the side of the airliner, announcing loudly to all on board they would stay put on the ground. No fake landing and takeoff for metropolitan San Francisco.

The F-16 pilots recovered at Fresno, low on fuel and physically and emotionally drained. It was still before noon on the West Coast. The airline pilot just wanted to deliver his passengers safely to San Francisco. Still, the intercept procedure—practiced well in training—worked well in real life.

Mary Lou Vocale is the editorial assistant for Code One.