Maj.

Dean Eckmann, interview 12/6/02

(701)451-2511, command post

Enlisted in unit 1986, commissined in 1992, Operational pilot in 1994, Senior alert pilot
Unusual, first x, we launched everything we could get airborne, Very unusual, Max-subsonic
Normally cruise out in tactical Max subsonic is get there in a hurry, we need you there now
What I knew and, it's kind of funny, all 3 of us had different inputs Was ready to do a training sortie, didn't
have tv on or anything, a crew chief came up and said hey an airplane just flew into the wtc, pre 9-11 I'm
thinking it's some guy in a puddle jumper, little Cessna
I fly for nwest, 1 know airliners don't fly into bldgs. On their own free will
When scramble order came, it was a heading and max subsonic speed, and heding from langley, crew chief
asked so where you going, said it looks like we're going up to n.y. as we go out the door
Something happened in ny but didn't know it was an airliner
After he told me that, we got put on battle stations,
Get scramble order, it's go and get priority over every airplane
I've been on scrambles before where you have a general on final coming on conf,
It was a high priority scramble, immediate takeoff
Initial heading is east for 60 miles, takes us 4 to 5 to get to that pt. And then we go northbound

9:24 scramble orer,

airborne right before 9:30 airplanes are set up for a quick response
continue to east, go out about 60 miles, I'm requesting
they end up giving us 010 heading, in my mind, as an airline pilot, thought we were going up to n.y. didn't
have to even break out a map to figure tha ton eout
push craig and brad over to huntress, neads controllers, I'm talking to ate because im out in front,
I'm talking to them and we have an innerflight radio and I tell them to go over and talk to huntress and they
come back w/new orders
New orders, 330 max subsonic spped and to get there, there are no orders, give us some coordinatees

Give us, neads

Change my code to all 7s, now as ate - called Mode 3 - four digitis, all 7s, made it significant, and the
speed issue
Have priority over everybody, kind of like a distress, we need to get there now, higly unusual

Code that means everybody needs to get out of the way, these guys have to get there NOW
But don't' know what it is
Get coordinates that give us lat and Ion and say get to this pt. Now
I can tell from knowing the area, we're goig to d.c. - no doubt about it
What's the mission? They said cap the point
I'm not talking to huntress, I'm getting secondhand on other radio
I'm still talking to air traffic control
We didn't know it was an airliner that hit the pentagon until the next day
Beautiful, crystal clear day, wasn't even any haze, visibility was unbelieavable, at 40 miles -50 miles, can
see its wash., d.c.
Everything at that pt. Looked normal
Noticed black smoke starting to come up
And can tell it's on other side of river, knowing the area, you have to
Flown there w/nwest
What's on the other side of the river?
Thought a plane crashed at reagan national
Oh my god it's the pentagon, about 35 miles, I'm in lead airplane, other guys are 2-3 miles behind me
Smoke from factories is white or gray and this was dark black which really drew my attention to it
Radio call make was somethiing like, hey do you guys see what's burning down there and brad, my #2 guy
says 1 think that's why we're here
Other guy syas:
I can't believe it

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Then I'm thinking the angle we're coming in from, maybe it's on the other side of the pentagon
As we get to 20 miles out, you can tell it's the pentagon and that was utter, what's going on here? All of our
initial thoughts
We're thinking truck bomb
As we're coming in, I set up a cap w/air traffic controllers and ate guy comes back to me and says there are
a couple unknowns heading north on the river toward the white house
And what they ended up being, we're up in the high 20s, I basically roll inverted and go straight down and
iget a radar contact o n one of them and go up and id him and it take sme no time to get there, one is a mili
helicopter and they other one is a Iw enfrocement heli and they're obviously heading toward the pentagon
to aid
Pentagon is west of the river, capital is furthest east
Rolled inverted, did a split s maneuver down to id the two helicopters, heading east, I decided to clear area
out, fly east toward the capital and turn around and fly westbound down the mall, mall runs east to west, as
I'm doing that, huntress is asking for damage assessment of the pentagon and I get past wash monu and
turn down southwest toward the pentagon then fly over the pentagon

That was about six minutes after it happened - somewhere in there

You could see the smoke coming up from about 35 miiles, and at 60 miles, if there was smoke, I could see
it
I'm guessing I didn't start seeing the smoke until 30 or 40 miles away, flying time that's' 4 minutes

At that point, we don't know what's going on. we have no idea, I'm thinking truck bomb and I identify
these two guys as friendlies, and now I'm heading back to the east down at low level, probably 1,000 feet
and said 1 got to see what's going on here, we have something that has obviously exploded over the
pentagon, I decide it's time to see if I can see antyhing else, so I fly over themall low and I'm looking, it's a
cleaning sweep, looking down at the thing,

I'm also thinking, the Soviets had a big longrange exercise going on, so I'm thinking a possibility of
something going wrong there, we don't know what's going on, so you got all thes possibilitesyou're tryin
go go what's happening?

I fly down mall thinking easiest way to clear area is to look up, if you look down, you get ground clutter,
your radar will bounce off buildings and the ground in general and moving cars and trucks and that kind of
thing
1 wanted to clear area and make usre nothing else was coming in

Wanted to make sure there's no other aircraft coming in, and also lookiing on ground for somethiing
suspicious, if 1 see a big fuel tanker truck heading toward the wh, I'm going to watch him and need be, take
him out w/my gun
You have so many thoughts racing through your midn at that time and at the same time while I'm doing
this, craig calls me and says they want the extent of the damage at the pentagon,
Fly by wash monument and turn back down and fly over the pentagon, just to the south of the pentagon, 1
tell them damage for usre outer rings have been damaged and they sked me if iknew what it was and I say
I'm guessing a big fuel tanker truck bomb because the amount of smoke and flames comingup, nobody
indicted antyhing about an airplane,

No airplane wreckage off to the side or anything

It was almost a feeling of disbelief, kind of like wathincg a bd movie, you can't believe what you're seeing,
but yet you're still watching it
Tasked to do a job you've been trained to do.

Determined from above, let's clear everyboyd out of here,

We don't know what's happening, we don't know if this is a truck bomb,

Controller says let's get all airplanes out of here, started getting vectored

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Washington Center and Washington Approach - talking to both of them and those guys did a great job,
considering the chaost, controllers in gneral that day putting airplnaes down in a matter ofhours, is
incredible
Ate started turning everyone away from d.c., A pretety busy area
Now we're getting vectored on people who aren't obeying that
Get vectored on the Andrews guys taking off out of Andrews, get vectored on those guys, theyr'e coming
up to help us out in the cap, prob 20 min. after we got there and that's how much

Mili knew they were taking off but ate doesn't realize they're military coming up to help us that
A lot of
Both brad derrig and I got vectored on andrews guys a couple of times and we go, oh that's just andrews f-
16s coming up
Radios were extensively busy, not just n ormal traffic, now you gotta keep people out and the radios are
just constatly going,
Stuff I heard that my wingment iddn't here, eventaully all get to the same freqs, it's just htat busy

We ended up being on the same freq, it was king of funny, we kind of blew them off becuz we figured they
were doing something else and they start in a low cap and don't even know we're there,
They did a fantastic job getting there in the amount of x they did, that wsa great,

We were there 1SI, sitting on alert

All three of us in high cap, both me and my #2 wingman were out after a suspect track, out chasing that guy
down, my #2 wingman was escorting the attorney general in who had requested armed fighter escort in,
which left my #3 wingman, not even a fight lead, just a wingman at that time, up in the high cap, he's just
there alking on a diff. Freq, they're down in low cap and set u a cap

We had high cap set up, they set up a low cap, by the time me and my wingman, also a flight lead, got
back, they say they're cap commander

No problem, this is your home turf

We don't have a plan in place to defend wash., d.c.. we just get there and do what we're told
Every area has little idiosyncracies to it
Low cap and high cap merged - this is no one's fault, took awhile before we were talking on the same
radio,
2 diff units hre and 2 diff things going on

iset up a ractrack cap, he set up a tactical cap,

me and my #2 wingman are gone for 10-15 minutes
we eventually said, here's what we're going ot do, we'll take care of high cap and you guys take care of
low cap, they could keep feeding guys in from down low

as it progressed and as the rest of the airpalnes landed, planes started moving up for fuel conservation
soon, lowest cap altitude was 10,000 feet, but at that x we had everything cleared

had two kclOs out of mcguire, awacs showed up (maybe tinker?)

orbitiing us and new york
also richmond guys showed up and langley guys show up
by the time I left the cap, we had been relieved plus, a lot of fighters up
five hours on the first mission

we were so busy, 1 couldn't believe it was 3:30 when I was filling out my log, quickest five hours I've ever
flown, when you're so busy you just don't realize that that time is going by
900 to 1,000 feet over Pentagon, first guy to buzz mall and not get in trouble in 50 years
a lot of intercepts that day, guys who didn't' get the word they weren't supposed to be flying, didn't have to
force anyone down

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didn't have info
didn't know until after we landed that wtc collapsed
wife told him on the phone what happened, that both collapsed,
we were so far ... didn't have information available to us, it was a shock to all of us when we landed
we dind't konwabout 93 until the 12th
not vectored to shoot them down,
a lot of talk on the radio, ate warning airplanes notto come in
one of things I heard on guard was, a preset freq every airplane monitors: wash d.c. airspace is shut down,
if you coome w-in 36 miles ot wash., H.c., you win be snut Down ~ ^
hear that on tne radio yet 1 don't nave orders to shoot, one of those things,
tells me it it comes down to it I'll get order to shoot, but we didn't get orders to shoot but hhen you hear
that, you know they're thinking it
can't take orders from air traffic controllers
that order has to come from mili, a process we use that has to be vereid by authenticator packs wehave in
the airplane
right away started hearing (maybe 30 minutes after we got there) the message that we had clearance to
shoot, before they started landing all the airplanes
shortly hear after, all airplanes in the u.s. have to land at suitable airport, without exception
activated full-x, on military leave from airline job
North Dakota guy
Once they saw me flying over, they actually went back into the bldg. To get other people out, they were
told another plane was coming in
In the amount of time, from when Andrews armed airplanes up, ws phenomental, that was awesome, not
like you have live missiles laying around the ramp
They did a great job,

Hearing stories of pentagon, how people went back in after seeing my fly over, what would have happneed
had we stayed up high, they wouldn't have seen us, they knew, now we're safe, and it just happened to be
pure luck, I happened to be down there and called on that initial intercept

NEADS asking for a damage asssessment, just wanted to know extent of daage
It happened to be a benefit of me flying over,
A lot of people said they felt safe now, initially they felt scanned, they heard a jet engine coming and 1 was
goin gfast,
But they look up and see an armed f!6 and 1 guess they started cheering.
People from pentagon say it was an armed f!6 going over
Slowly ended up getting cap together
Ate - I thought they did a phenomenal job getting all the planes down, thought andrews did a great job
getting airplanes up in that short amount of time, I know what it takes ot get unarmed airplanes fully armed
nad 1 thought they did a great job
When 1 went back at langley, 2 of the squsdrons were fully armed, more missiles on the ramp than I
thought we had total, then richmond sent over two jets to help us out at our alert
And again no one knows what was going on. we were at war, the other thing, by the time I left, langley had
sent fourfully amred f!5s to help out in cp in d.c. and richmond had sent up four f!6s up there too
By the time 1 left, a lot of fighters up
A lot of confusion that day

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