35 USAF Bases Within Range On 911
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The 7 Air Stations On
Full Alert Covering The Continental United States The Air National Guard exclusively performs the air sovereignty mission in the continental United States, and those units fall under the control of the 1st Air Force based at Tyndall Air Force Base (AFB) in Panama City, Florida. The Air National Guard maintains seven alert sites with 14 fully armed fighters and pilots on call around the clock. Besides Tyndall AFB, alert birds also sit armed and ready at; Homestead Air Reserve Base (ARB), Homestead, Florida; Langley AFB, Hampton, Virginia; Otis Air National Guard (ANG), Falmouth, Massachusetts; Oregon ANG, Portland, Oregon; March ARB, Riverside, California; and Ellington ANG, Houston, Texas. http://www.af.mil/news/airman/1299/home2.htm Beside the 7 Air Station on full alert covering the continental United States, here are 28 more Air stations that could have done something -- if they were left to do their job. The following happened on September 11, 2001; At 10:01 a.m. the FAA ordered the 180th Fighter Wing out of Swanton, Ohio to scramble their F-16 fighters. Although the base has no fighters on stand-by alert status, it manages to put fighters in the air 16 minutes later, a "phenomenal" response time - but still 11 minutes after the last hijacked plane has crashed. One interesting aspect is that NORAD has explained that it didn't scramble fighters from bases nearer to the hijacked planes because they only used bases in the NORAD defensive network. Yet the 180th Fighter Wing out of Swanton, Ohio wasn't part of that network, so why weren't planes at other bases scrambled at 8:20 or 8:40 or 8:43 or 8:46:26 or 9:02:54 or 9:24 or at the very least at 9:37? Maybe some of these Air station could have managed to get fighters up just as fast as the 180th Fighter Wing. Why weren't they? Stand Down. Andrews AFB 11 miles SE of Washington D.C. Bolling AFB 3 miles south of US Capitol Dover AFB Dover, DE Hanscom AFB 17 miles northwest of Boston, MA McGuire AFB 18 miles southeast of Trenton, NJ Wright-Patterson AFB Dayton, OH Cape Cod, MA AFS New Boston, NH AFS Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Bases Atlantic City Airport, NJ 10 miles west of Atlantic City Barnes Municipal Airport, MA 3 miles northwest of Westfield Bradley International Airport, CN Windsor Locks Byrd Field, VA 4 miles southeast of Richmond Eastern West Virginia Regional Airport 4 miles south of Martinsburg Frances S. Gabreski Airport, NY Westhampton Beach Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, PA 15 miles nw of Pittsburgh Harrisburg International Airport, PA 10 miles east of Harrisburg Martin State Airport, MD 8 miles east of Baltimore New Castle County Airport, DE 5 miles south of Wilmington Pease ANGS, NH Portsmouth Quonset State Airport, RI Providence Rickenbacker ANGB, OH Columbus, Oh Stewart International Airport, NY Newburgh, NY Toledo Express Airport, Swanton, Ohio Westover ARB, MA 5 miles northeast of Chicopee Willow Grove Naval Air Station, PA 14 miles north of Philadelphia Yeager Airport, WVA 4 miles northeast of Charleston Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport ARS, OH 16 miles north of Youngstown Also, there is an Air Defense Intercept Zone just off shore for the entire Atlantic Coast. This zone is constantly being patrolled. In general fast movers would not need to be scrambled. They can be diverted from routine patrol and training flights for the intercept. The odds are that on a beautiful blue morning in September many flights would be on patrol just off shore. It would be most improbable that even one commercial flight could go more than fifteen minutes without being intercepted. |
