Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
First 109 Minutes

First 109 Minutes

Air Force History and Museums Program
Jones, Priscilla D.

Paperback

21st Century United States HistoryAir CombatInternational Relations

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1025149416
ISBN13: 9781025149417
Publisher: Hutson Street Press
Published: May 22 2025
Pages: 86
Weight: 0.29
Height: 0.18 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned cool and clear, with sunny skies all along the eastern seaboard. For Air Force aviators like Lt. Col. Timothy Duff Duffy of the 102d Fighter Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts, the day held the promise of perfect flying weather, at a time when the U.S. civil aviation system was enjoying a period of relative peace, despite concerns about a growing terrorist threat. More than ten years had passed since the last hijacking or bombing of a U.S. air carrier. That morning, however, the country came under a shocking, coordinated aerial assault by nineteen al Qaeda hijackers at the direction of the network's leader and cofounder, Islamist extremist Osama bin Laden (1957/1958-2011). The attack plan carried out by the suicide operatives had been years in the making. It was intended to cause mass, indiscriminate casualties and to destroy or damage the nation's financial, military, and political centers, four high value U.S. targets selected by bin Laden, independent operator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and al Qaeda operations chief Mohammed Atef. Analysts in the United States immediately recognized the historic nature of the strikes, launched without warning against targets in New York City and Washington, D.C., and compared them to another deadly surprise aerial attack against the United States almost sixty years earlier. The December 7, 1941, assault by Japanese forces on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor had been the most devastating attack against U.S. territory by a foreign adversary until the morning of September 11, 2001. The four al Qaeda hijacker pilots and their teams commandeered the four fuel laden commercial jets in which they were passengers and intentionally crashed them into 1 and 2 World Trade Center, in New York City; the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia; and an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. This final hijacking, of United Airlines Flight 93, fell short of its intended target in Washington, D.C.

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