I was already at work, at American Airlines, when the terroritst attacks on 9/11 began. My manager came from his office to the floor with the news that a plane had hit one of the towers. "What kind of plane was it?" I asked. He didn't know. (He had heard it on the news, not yet from any kind of official internal notification.) My first thought was that it must have been a private pilot trying to fly between the building and lost control. I'm from St. Louis and, shortly after the Gateway Arch was built, it was plagued by "daredevil" pilots trying to "thread the needle." Terrorism didn't even occur to me. My thoughts drifted to the engineering it would take to remove the plane. Then the secomd plane hit and thimgs escalated from there.
My brother's brother-in-law was a pilot for US Airways at the time and was deadheading in the cockpit of a plane on approach to JFK. Many years after the fact he told the story of what he experienced on that day. He was able to fill in many details that a layman wouldn't know about approach vectors and whatnot. The pilot of the plane he was in was even in contact with the pilot of the second plane before they even knew that they, too, had terrorists aboard. I wish I could remember more details of what he said.
I was home on 9/11, watching TV as I had to be at work at 3pm when the news bulletins started. At first, it was simply a plane hit the World Trade Center and I thought that it was a small plane accidently crashing into the building but I saw the second plane hit as it happened.
There were no immediate answers and I would go to work as a section manager at Target. When I got there, the absentee board (which usually had between 3-6 names daily) had at least forty names on it, all people waiting to hear about their loved ones in Manhattan. I had an uncle and cousin who worked nearby but they had gotten out fairly quickly.
There were orgamizations asking the store for donations: food, sleeping bags, bedding, camping gear and the like and being turned down as "corporate approval" was needed.
We were the only Target in NYC at the time and other stores from around the company sent us their prayers and good thoughts.
I was supposed to go to a comics convention in Manhattan, not a big one but a regular one, two weeks after 9/11 and I was determined to attend it, not because I wanted to buy some books but out of the necessity of doing "normal" things, the "not letting the terrorists win" mentality. Not that it mattered because the convention was cancelled.
As in the case of Cap and the Challenger disaster, for me, 9/11 was a work day.
I was assigned to the staff of Commander, SEVENTH Fleet, and it was twelve hours later in Yokosuka, Japan, so it was nightime, around 2000. I was a "geographic bachelor", so while almost everyone else on the staff had homes and families to go to after work hours, I lived on board the flagship. I was in my office on ship, catching up on paperwork, and had the television set turned to The Today Show (it was morning back in the States). Matt Lauer was interviewing some author about a book he'd written about Howard Hughes---or some such thing; I was only half paying attention. Mr. Lauer broke away as the broadcast switched to live footage of tremendous smoking aperture in the upper level of one of the Twin Towers.
Lauer was reporting the few and vague facts that were coming into the studio and speculating that an aircraft of some sort had struck the tower. That's when I happened to glance up at the television screen---and I saw the second airliner hit the second tower.
I knew what that meant, and I switched to work mode. I called the Chief of Staff to report (I'd let him notify the admiral), but he'd already seen it. Then I called my boss, but he had already been told, and he was busy making notifications at his level. The U.S. DEFCON level world-wide was just about to take a big jump upward.
Even as the details of the event were still pouring in, we knew---or more precisely, we had to assume---that it was a terrorist attack. The immediate concern was that it wouldn't stop with just the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but that it was only the first enemy action, with more to follow.
As the N43 for SEVENTH FLEET, it was my job to ensure the material and combat readiness of all U.S. Naval assets assigned to or travelling within the Pacific Fleet---and I knew that concern was about to become a huge priority. I spent the rest of the night receiving immediate readiness statuses from all of the hundred-sixty-odd ships in theatre and prioritising them according to most urgent need. There were phone calls with the repair and upgrade facilities, because their timelines for ship repair and refit had to be accelerated.
Where I had been virtually alone on board, except for the duty personnel, an hour later, the N4 office and the rest of the ship was swarming with busy officers and men.
The rest of that week was packed almost hour to hour with meetings and debriefings about things which, even now, I'm not allowed to divulge.
By circumstance, I was at the end of my tour with SEVENTH Fleet. I was due to transfer to a new billet back in the States at the end of the month. My relief reported on board a few days later, and he got a turnover which probably resembled those back during the days of World War II. He had a lot to learn, with shifting requirements coming in virtually daily.
When I finally departed, I learnt first-hand how swiftly and dramatically things had changed. At the Tokyo airport, at the various airports in the U.S., through which my return travel took me---security had been ramped up to the Nth degree. It was more concentrated in my case because I was flying on a one-way ticket, and being a Naval officer cut me no slack. I was searched, my carry-on was searched, my luggage was searched. (None of which I had any issue with.)
I realised that I was returning to a United States that was significantly different in terms of heightened awareness from the one I'd left three years earlier.
I could add that I joined an online writer's community a short time after. One of their members, an honorably discharged Corpsman, had committed suicide on September 10. They were dealing with that when the planes hit. I had no idea of what had happened until some time after I joined. I know him only from the words that he left behind, and from a real-world meeting of members of the group that his widow attended.
I don't know what this adds, but it remains a part of my memories of 9-11, even though my awareness happened afterwards.
---J.F.K., M.L.K., R.F.K., the fire in the Apollo One capsule, the Challenger explosion, 9-11--
I had to research the Apollo 1 tragedy. The deadly oxygen fire happened on January 27, 1967. It took the lives of original Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom and two new astronauts, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee. There had been several non-fatal oxygen fires that should have helped to prevent it. Early 1967 news was very different from today. There were only three TV networks, in addition to newspapers. I was aware of the fatal accident but don’t remember it being a major topic of conversation. I was 18 1/2, working as a temporary employee for L.A. County and had no idea that in a few months I would become a permanent employee and much later retire from there. There are three off-shore artificial islands (disguised oil derricks) here that are named Grissom, White and Chaffee.
The MLK assassination happened on a Thursday night. I had been working for the L.A. County Registrar of Voters since October 1966 and became a permanent employee a year before this. I had been drafted and my last day at work was to be Friday, the next day. At the time my co-workers and I were filing voter registration documents. I didn’t know his name yet and this wasn’t the time to get friendly, but I remember looking at a co-worker who was black and wondering what was going through his mind.
The RFK assassination happened on the night of the Primary Election in California. At the time I was in Kentucky finishing up Basic Training. I think the prevailing thinking was “when is this going to stop?” I still wasn’t allowed to vote because at the time you had to be 21. When I turned 21, I was in Vietnam. I finally voted for the first time at 22 in the 1970 Primary Election.
The Tate–LaBianca murders committed by the Manson Family occurred in early August, 1969. In Vietnam, we read about it in the Stars and Stripes newspaper. The LaBianca killings really upset me because they were not celebrities. My mother was thousands of miles away from me.
When the Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, I was running a section of the department. One of my employees was working on something that didn’t demand full attention. I had allowed him to listen to the Challenger launch on his radio. Consequently, he was the first to tell me about the disaster.
My wife Gayle and I had retired as early as we could because the job was killing us. On 9/11, because it was three hours earlier on the West Coast, we were still in bed. We had a small TV in the bedroom at the time. Gayle had turned it on and I think she was stunned by the news. As I woke up, I heard the phrase “…the remaining tower of the World Trade Center.”
I was in junior high when the Challenger exploded. In shop class to be specific, and my Texas history teacher can into the class crying, and told us about it. It wasn't too long after that some jerk in the class said, "One down..."
9/11, I've probably told this story before. I never watch TV in the morning on work days (still true today). On this day I was waiting for a ride, so I made an exception. I turned on ESPN to watch some Sportscenter, it went in to commercial, so I flipped over to one of the big 3. I want to say Good Morning America, but I'm not 100% sure. They were talking about a plane hitting the Worl Trade Center and were showing the smoke billowing out. Then the second plane hit. How the anchor didn't yell "Holy sh!t!" like I did I will never know.
The Baron > Travis Herrick (Modular Mod)November 24, 2025 at 10:56am
I remember that after the first plane hit, I had a dim memory of a plane hitting the Empire State Building back during Word War Two, so I considered the possiblilty of an accident. Once the second plane hit, I knew that it wasn't an accident.
Replies
I was already at work, at American Airlines, when the terroritst attacks on 9/11 began. My manager came from his office to the floor with the news that a plane had hit one of the towers. "What kind of plane was it?" I asked. He didn't know. (He had heard it on the news, not yet from any kind of official internal notification.) My first thought was that it must have been a private pilot trying to fly between the building and lost control. I'm from St. Louis and, shortly after the Gateway Arch was built, it was plagued by "daredevil" pilots trying to "thread the needle." Terrorism didn't even occur to me. My thoughts drifted to the engineering it would take to remove the plane. Then the secomd plane hit and thimgs escalated from there.
My brother's brother-in-law was a pilot for US Airways at the time and was deadheading in the cockpit of a plane on approach to JFK. Many years after the fact he told the story of what he experienced on that day. He was able to fill in many details that a layman wouldn't know about approach vectors and whatnot. The pilot of the plane he was in was even in contact with the pilot of the second plane before they even knew that they, too, had terrorists aboard. I wish I could remember more details of what he said.
I was home on 9/11, watching TV as I had to be at work at 3pm when the news bulletins started. At first, it was simply a plane hit the World Trade Center and I thought that it was a small plane accidently crashing into the building but I saw the second plane hit as it happened.
There were no immediate answers and I would go to work as a section manager at Target. When I got there, the absentee board (which usually had between 3-6 names daily) had at least forty names on it, all people waiting to hear about their loved ones in Manhattan. I had an uncle and cousin who worked nearby but they had gotten out fairly quickly.
There were orgamizations asking the store for donations: food, sleeping bags, bedding, camping gear and the like and being turned down as "corporate approval" was needed.
We were the only Target in NYC at the time and other stores from around the company sent us their prayers and good thoughts.
I was supposed to go to a comics convention in Manhattan, not a big one but a regular one, two weeks after 9/11 and I was determined to attend it, not because I wanted to buy some books but out of the necessity of doing "normal" things, the "not letting the terrorists win" mentality. Not that it mattered because the convention was cancelled.
As in the case of Cap and the Challenger disaster, for me, 9/11 was a work day.
I was assigned to the staff of Commander, SEVENTH Fleet, and it was twelve hours later in Yokosuka, Japan, so it was nightime, around 2000. I was a "geographic bachelor", so while almost everyone else on the staff had homes and families to go to after work hours, I lived on board the flagship. I was in my office on ship, catching up on paperwork, and had the television set turned to The Today Show (it was morning back in the States). Matt Lauer was interviewing some author about a book he'd written about Howard Hughes---or some such thing; I was only half paying attention. Mr. Lauer broke away as the broadcast switched to live footage of tremendous smoking aperture in the upper level of one of the Twin Towers.
Lauer was reporting the few and vague facts that were coming into the studio and speculating that an aircraft of some sort had struck the tower. That's when I happened to glance up at the television screen---and I saw the second airliner hit the second tower.
I knew what that meant, and I switched to work mode. I called the Chief of Staff to report (I'd let him notify the admiral), but he'd already seen it. Then I called my boss, but he had already been told, and he was busy making notifications at his level. The U.S. DEFCON level world-wide was just about to take a big jump upward.
Even as the details of the event were still pouring in, we knew---or more precisely, we had to assume---that it was a terrorist attack. The immediate concern was that it wouldn't stop with just the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but that it was only the first enemy action, with more to follow.
As the N43 for SEVENTH FLEET, it was my job to ensure the material and combat readiness of all U.S. Naval assets assigned to or travelling within the Pacific Fleet---and I knew that concern was about to become a huge priority. I spent the rest of the night receiving immediate readiness statuses from all of the hundred-sixty-odd ships in theatre and prioritising them according to most urgent need. There were phone calls with the repair and upgrade facilities, because their timelines for ship repair and refit had to be accelerated.
Where I had been virtually alone on board, except for the duty personnel, an hour later, the N4 office and the rest of the ship was swarming with busy officers and men.
The rest of that week was packed almost hour to hour with meetings and debriefings about things which, even now, I'm not allowed to divulge.
By circumstance, I was at the end of my tour with SEVENTH Fleet. I was due to transfer to a new billet back in the States at the end of the month. My relief reported on board a few days later, and he got a turnover which probably resembled those back during the days of World War II. He had a lot to learn, with shifting requirements coming in virtually daily.
When I finally departed, I learnt first-hand how swiftly and dramatically things had changed. At the Tokyo airport, at the various airports in the U.S., through which my return travel took me---security had been ramped up to the Nth degree. It was more concentrated in my case because I was flying on a one-way ticket, and being a Naval officer cut me no slack. I was searched, my carry-on was searched, my luggage was searched. (None of which I had any issue with.)
I realised that I was returning to a United States that was significantly different in terms of heightened awareness from the one I'd left three years earlier.
I could add that I joined an online writer's community a short time after. One of their members, an honorably discharged Corpsman, had committed suicide on September 10. They were dealing with that when the planes hit. I had no idea of what had happened until some time after I joined. I know him only from the words that he left behind, and from a real-world meeting of members of the group that his widow attended.
I don't know what this adds, but it remains a part of my memories of 9-11, even though my awareness happened afterwards.
Golden Age Judge Dredd?
---J.F.K., M.L.K., R.F.K., the fire in the Apollo One capsule, the Challenger explosion, 9-11--
I had to research the Apollo 1 tragedy. The deadly oxygen fire happened on January 27, 1967. It took the lives of original Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom and two new astronauts, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee. There had been several non-fatal oxygen fires that should have helped to prevent it. Early 1967 news was very different from today. There were only three TV networks, in addition to newspapers. I was aware of the fatal accident but don’t remember it being a major topic of conversation. I was 18 1/2, working as a temporary employee for L.A. County and had no idea that in a few months I would become a permanent employee and much later retire from there. There are three off-shore artificial islands (disguised oil derricks) here that are named Grissom, White and Chaffee.
The MLK assassination happened on a Thursday night. I had been working for the L.A. County Registrar of Voters since October 1966 and became a permanent employee a year before this. I had been drafted and my last day at work was to be Friday, the next day. At the time my co-workers and I were filing voter registration documents. I didn’t know his name yet and this wasn’t the time to get friendly, but I remember looking at a co-worker who was black and wondering what was going through his mind.
The RFK assassination happened on the night of the Primary Election in California. At the time I was in Kentucky finishing up Basic Training. I think the prevailing thinking was “when is this going to stop?” I still wasn’t allowed to vote because at the time you had to be 21. When I turned 21, I was in Vietnam. I finally voted for the first time at 22 in the 1970 Primary Election.
The Tate–LaBianca murders committed by the Manson Family occurred in early August, 1969. In Vietnam, we read about it in the Stars and Stripes newspaper. The LaBianca killings really upset me because they were not celebrities. My mother was thousands of miles away from me.
When the Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, I was running a section of the department. One of my employees was working on something that didn’t demand full attention. I had allowed him to listen to the Challenger launch on his radio. Consequently, he was the first to tell me about the disaster.
My wife Gayle and I had retired as early as we could because the job was killing us. On 9/11, because it was three hours earlier on the West Coast, we were still in bed. We had a small TV in the bedroom at the time. Gayle had turned it on and I think she was stunned by the news. As I woke up, I heard the phrase “…the remaining tower of the World Trade Center.”
I was in junior high when the Challenger exploded. In shop class to be specific, and my Texas history teacher can into the class crying, and told us about it. It wasn't too long after that some jerk in the class said, "One down..."
9/11, I've probably told this story before. I never watch TV in the morning on work days (still true today). On this day I was waiting for a ride, so I made an exception. I turned on ESPN to watch some Sportscenter, it went in to commercial, so I flipped over to one of the big 3. I want to say Good Morning America, but I'm not 100% sure. They were talking about a plane hitting the Worl Trade Center and were showing the smoke billowing out. Then the second plane hit. How the anchor didn't yell "Holy sh!t!" like I did I will never know.
I remember that after the first plane hit, I had a dim memory of a plane hitting the Empire State Building back during Word War Two, so I considered the possiblilty of an accident. Once the second plane hit, I knew that it wasn't an accident.
Today's Obscure Reference: "At Kaye, Saunders and Hutton, we will get you your money."
Today's Obscure Reference: "At Kaye, Saunders and Hutton, we will get you your money."
You can believe a promise from a water tower.
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