Scrambled on 9/11
During the first hour, Ian chatted with Martin Richard, a former F-15 fighter pilot who was scrambled during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He recounted that his squad was ordered to return from a training mission and then were scrambled again as the event of 9/11 unfolded. During their mission, they were patrolling the skies for wayward air traffic, "chasing around aircraft and making sure they were going where they needed to go." Following that, they were ordered to form a combat air patrol over Ground Zero. Should the order have come to shoot down a hijacked commercial plane on 9/11, Richard said that he would have had to obey the command. However, he theorized that the commanders who would have given the order would not have had enough credible information to make such a bold command.