"Capital Guardians: Proven, Vigilant, Ready!" New Jersey School Strafed by Air National Guard F-16

The good people of Little Egg Harbor in Ocean County, New Jersey, got a taste of what it must be like living in Fallujah or Gaza City these days. The Intermediate School in the small hamlet was strafed with 20mm cannon fire from an F-16 Fighting Falcon jet on the evening of November 3, 2004. Fortunately, there were no injuries except for the pride of the pilot who had apparently inadvertently unleashed the air assault on the school.

The F-16 was attached to the 121st Fighter Squadron of the 113th Wing of the District of Columbia Air National Guard, based at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. (The unit’s motto is quoted in the title of this article.) The pilot was on a night training mission near the Warren Grove Gunnery Range in neighboring Burlington County. Apparently, the pilot’s objective was a ground target 3.5 miles north of the school, but a premature burst of over twenty-five rounds from his 20mm Gatling gun wound up hitting the school, causing damage to the roof, classrooms and surrounding grounds. A custodian in the building during the 9:30 pm attack escaped injury. Earlier that evening, the school was host to a Boy Scout Troop holding one of its regular meetings.

Needless to say, residents of the community, military officials and politicians are very concerned about the accident. Lt. Col. Roberta Niedt, a spokesperson for New Jersey’s Department of Military and Veteran Affairs, said, "The National Guard takes this situation very seriously. The safety of our people and the surrounding communities are our foremost concern." Apropos, Mike Dupuis, president of the local school board, remarked, "It is very scary. I have children in that school..." An understatement, to say the least. One can only guess at what might have resulted if the incident had occurred while school was in session.

Col. Brian Webster, Commander of the 177th Fighter Wing, New Jersey Air Natioonal Guard, which is responsible for the Warren Grove range, said he didn’t know why the M61 A1 Vulcan cannon fired prematurely and would not comment on the pilot’s identity or on possible disciplinary action. (In my opinion, the pilot is in deep doodoo.) New Jersey junior Senator, Frank Lautenberg demanded a cessation of all training exercises at the range until the cause of the accident is determined and rectified. Good idea, Senator!

Incidentally, if you’re thinking that this is just another example of military incompetence, consider this fact. In 2002, the 121st DCANG Fighter Squadron was awarded the coveted Spaatz Trophy, presented annually by the Air Force Association to the overall outstanding Air National Guard flying unit. The accompanying citation highlighted two reasons that led to the awarding of the trophy; A successful deployment to Argentina, "...in spite of many obstacles," according to Lt. Gen. William Hobbins, and the squadron’s response to the attacks on September 11, 2001. "I’m particularly proud of the performance of the organization’s members..." said Brig. Gen. David Wherley, Jr., the then Commander of the 113th DCANG Wing. This unit was the best in its field of military expertise. This is not the first time, however, that the 121st has been the subject of controversy. The first time occurred on September 11, 2001.

When the military and political leadership of the United States finally came out of its apparent stupor on the morning of 9/11, the 121st was one of the first units ordered to launch planes against the deadly threat from hijacked planes. But, it was not until approximately 10:05 am, twenty-eight minutes after the attack on the Pentagon at 9:37, that the first Fighting Falcon took off. Although the pilots knew about the World Trade Center attacks, they had no obligation or orders to take to the skies since the 121st was not part of NORAD’s defensive net at that time.

Curiously, as reported in Aviation Week & Space Technology, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93," by William B. Scott, 9/9/02, it was the 121st that initiated the communication with the Secret Service that resulted in its taking to the skies on 9/11. An unnamed pilot had called a Secret Service friend, according to the AW&SP article, minutes after Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center (9:03 am) "to see what was going on," (in New York) according to Lt. Col. Marc Sasseville, the then Director of Operations and Air Operations officer for the 121st FS. The Secret Service returned the call and asked if the squadron could get some planes aloft. Several minutes later, the Secret Service called back a second time, presumably at the behest of the Executive Office, and commanded the squadron to "Get in the air now!" Moments later, an unnamed White House official called to say that the skies over Washington D.C. were a "free-fire zone."

"At the time, we weren’t thinking about defending anything. Our primary concern was what would happen to the air traffic system," Sasseville reportedly said. Nevertheless, once the first Secret Service request was made, the squadron began to take action. I would guess that the time was approximately 9:15 am when this occurred.

Scott writes, "Anticipating such an order, Col. Don C. Mozley, the 113th Logistics Group commander, had already ordered his weapons officer to ’break out the AIM9s.’ The missiles had to be transported from a bunker on the other side of the base, which would take a while."

Eventually - according to my reconstruction of events, where any given pilot’s "time-line" recollection was "fuzzy," - the first 121st Fighting Falcon apparently went aloft at approximately 10:05. It was unarmed and low on fuel, having just returned from a training mission in North Carolina. Ten minutes later, two more F-16’s were launched, armed with only training rounds in the magazines of their Vulcan cannons. At 10:25, approximate, two more F-16s of the 121st took off, each armed with AIM-9 missiles. If these time approximations are more or less correct, the 121st was able to respond, after the pilot called his Secret Service buddy, in about fifty-five minutes to an hour. By that time Flight 93 had already crashed in Pennsylvania (10:03 am), ending the threat from plane attacks.

For the rest of the day, the 121st flew combat air patrol over Washington D.C. airspace and, at one point in the afternoon, escorted Air Force One on its return flight to Andrews AFB from Offutt AFB in Nebraska.

There has been a great deal of speculation in the 911-Truth Movement regarding the presumed "combat-readiness" of the 121st DCANG FS and the slowness with which it responded on 9/11. According to the timeline outlined above, and assuming that there is a basis in fact upon which it was established, the real question we should be asking is was fifty-five to sixty minutes a reasonable amount of time for the 121st FS to have gotten its planes in the air? Even though the 121st was not a "combat-ready" unit, the pilots, nonetheless, were capable of dealing with new threats at or after 10:05, to the extent that at least three of the pilots had contemplated ramming their F-16s into any incoming hijacked plane to bring it down. Whether the 121st could have responded with greater alacrity to thwart the Pentagon attack is problematic.

Even if the 121st had acted immediately after Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 am, the first F-16 could only have been launched, ceteris paribus, at about 9:46, nine minutes too late to have stopped Flight 77 from crashing into the Pentagon. It could have perhaps figured in a Flight 93 scenario, but this would be sheer speculation without any purpose. The fact is that the squadron did not launch F-16s until 10:05.

The question still remains: Was the one-hour prep time from a cold start to the first F-16 defensive launch at 10:05 good or bad? To put it more bluntly, did the 121st FS perform in an outstanding manner, as befits a recipient of the Spaatz Trophy, or did fossilized military protocol and slow communications in the chain of command conspire, either inadvertently or by design, to keep it out of the skies over Washington D.C. until it was too late to do anything? Hopefully, time will tell.