Fargo Pilots Remember Sept. 11 Duty

by Jack Sullivan
The Associated Press
August 19, 2002

Maj. Brad Derrig flew his F-16 over the burning Pentagon on Sept. 11. As weeks passed, he watched from the cockpit of his fighter jet as charred rubble was cleared away and new walls were built.

His emotions were different on almost every patrol flight. "You can run the whole gamut of feelings - from sadness to anger to pride," he said.

Derrig, Maj. Dean Eckmann and Capt. Craig Borgstrom were the first military pilots scrambled over Washington as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks unfolded. All fly for the North Dakota Air National Guard's 119th Fighter Wing, which stations pilots at an alert post at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

They and other pilots from the Fargo-based unit patrolled above Washington and New York after Sept. 11. While boring at times, the flights drove home the magnitude of the attacks, Derrig and Eckmann said.

"I don't think any fighter pilot in the United States would have ever thought they would be flying combat air patrols over American cities," Eckmann said. "That was huge, huge culture shock."

The Sept. 11 flights were the most dramatic duty pulled in the last year by North Dakota National Guard personnel, who since the attacks have guarded airports, bolstered Customs Service posts along the Canadian border and served in Afghanistan and near the Persian Gulf.

They are among the North Dakotans whose lives were changed the most after Sept. 11. Some find their civilian lives paused indefinitely.

Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Erica Rohrich, 23, put the start of her career on hold when she was forced to turn down her first job as a social worker, a job she was offered on Sept. 12.

"That was probably the most heartbreaking thing for me," she said.

Rohrich joined the National Guard at age 18 to earn tuition for the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. She moved to Fargo from Minneapolis after she was activated last fall.

She never expected a major activation and "never in a million years thought I would be going to the desert," where her security squadron spent 90 days at a Persian Gulf base for Air Force refuelers.

She now works 12-hour night shifts guarding the 119th Fighter Wing's Fargo headquarters, not knowing when she will return to civilian life. It is frustrating at times, but necessary, she said.

"The Guard gave me college, and now I'm giving them something back," Rohrich said. "I just have to remind myself of that sometimes."

At its peak, the Air National Guard unit, nicknamed the "Happy Hooligans," had activated about 700 of its 1,100 personnel, Wing Commander Col. Richard Utecht said. It now has about 550 people on duty, including about 400 who work for the National Guard year-round.

Derrig works full-time as the unit's safety chief. Eckmann, a Northwest Airlines pilot, was called to active military duty after Sept. 11.

Eckmann was on a regular National Guard rotation that day, which was routine until a crew chief told him the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. He assumed it was accident, maybe a suicide.

"I fly for the airlines. I know airliners don't fly into skyscrapers," he said.

But a scramble horn minutes later called him and Derrig to battle stations.

They climbed into their F-16s and waited for orders. Borgstrom ran out and said they had been ordered to get as many fighters in the air as possible. All three were sent toward Washington.

Eckmann said he saw black smoke rising as they raced toward the city.

He first thought it could be a crashed plane near Reagan National Airport, but then pinpointed the smoke closer to the Pentagon, and then, at about 20 miles out, saw it was the building itself.

"My initial thought was that it was a truck bomb ... we didn't actually find out it was an airliner until the next day," Eckmann said.

The pilots patrolled over the city and intercepted, identified and escorted aircraft ordered to the ground.

At one point, Eckmann said, he heard an air traffic controller say "the Secret Service is now in the building."

Then, in the jumble of civilian and military radio traffic, a message: "We need to protect the House."

"And you understand," he said. "What I drew from that is, we need to protect the White House."

United Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, about a half-hour after the pilots took to the air.

If the airliner had flown toward Washington, the fighter pilots say they likely would have intercepted it and waited for orders if it did not land as directed.

President Bush by then had authorized the military to shoot down aircraft threatening the capital.

Derrig said the pilots don't often think about the "hypothetical 'what-ifs"' of Sept. 11.

"If something like that would ever happen again, you are probably the last link in the chain. Everything that could be done probably has been done," he said.

"We just did our job that day," Eckmann said. "Nothing more, nothing less. And again, had we been called on to do it, I know we would have done our jobs because we're trained professionals. What happened with (United Flight) 93, again, they're the real heroes of this thing. ... They sacrificed their lives so others wouldn't die."

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press

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