“Sept. 11 literally was just a normal day for us,”  says Col. Mark Tillman, remembering that morning.
Millions of Americans can say that. But only one can  say his job that day was flying the President of the United  States as the pilot of Air  Force One. Col. Tillman found out about 9/11 as many of us did, by watching  the news.
“The plane was getting ready to go and then when I  was actually on the aircraft, the radio operator called me and said ‘Hey you  need to come upstairs right away; take a good look what I have on the television  right now.'”
He watched the unfolding horror on a television on  the president’s plane.
It was after the second plane hit that they knew  something was terribly wrong.
“It was at that point that we realized that  something was occurring, was going wrong. At that point also, our radios to all  the different agencies started coming alive,” he recalls, and says his goal was  then to get President Bush, who was reading to a second-grade class at a nearby  Sarasota, Fla., elementary school, safely back home.
“We got word that there were about nine aircraft  that had been hijacked, that’s what we were passed from the Secret Service  channels and everything else. We were trying to figure out exactly whether we  were about to be under attack, whether we were a part of it. No one really knew,  so the plan for us was get the plane moving as quick as possible because sitting  on the Sarasota tarmac I was just a big target, a 747…We are a sitting  duck.”
So Tillman awaited his passenger, President Bush,  who quickly arrived and wanted to immediately fly back to Washington.
“In the cockpit I look out, that’s my job, is to  watch him come up the stairs and make sure he gets up safely. So I watched him  come, he came up the stairs, all business; he came to the top of the aircraft  and came on board. At that time we had the right engines running.”
Col. Tillman didn’t know it, but that was the  beginning of an unexpected journey, filled with various, alarming threats. The  first came even before he took off. The Secret Service reported an unidentified  man with some type of device, standing by the fence at the end of the Sarasota  runway. So Tillman deviated from standard procedure, and decided to take off in  a different direction.
“We assumed everybody was a threat. They asked if I  could not taxi by him, take off in the opposite direction. They didn’t know what  the gentleman had, but he had something in his hand, they thought it might have  been a long gun… I took off opposite direction and just rotated fairly  quickly, got the plane climbing out as much as it can climb out then turned away  about mid-field so the gentleman just wouldn’t have a shot at us at all…. As  it turned out, the gentleman was just a guy taking pictures at the end of the  runway.”
But at that early point, it didn’t seem as if the  skies were safe either. The air controllers told Col. Tillman that it appeared  that another aircraft was following Air Force One.
“As we got over Gainesville, Fla., we got the word  from Jacksonville Center. They said, ‘Air Force One you have traffic behind you  and basically above you that is descending into you, we are not in contact with  them — they have shut their responder off.’ And at that time it kind of led us  to believe maybe someone was coming into us in Sarasota, they saw us take off,  they just stayed high and are following us at this point. We had no idea what  the capabilities of the terrorist were at that point.”
Col. Tillman was taking no chances.
“It was kind of the classic response of the  terrorists that day that were hijacking airliners,” says Tillman. So he decided  to see if he indeed was being followed. He turned out into the Gulf of Mexico to see if  the mysterious plane would do the same. It did not, and turned out to be an  innocent airliner that had lost its transponder, and the pilots hadn’t switched  to the correct frequency to talk to controllers.
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But the possible danger wasn’t over. Once Col.  Tillman determined that plane was not a threat, he received an ominous  message.
“We got word from the vice president and the staff  that ‘Angel was next,’ Angel being the classified call sign of Air Force  One.”
“Once we got into the Gulf and they passed to us  that ‘Angel was next,’ at that point I asked for fighter support. If an airliner  was part of the attack, it would be good to have fighters on the wing to go  ahead and take care of us.”
It turned out that the message was erroneous, but  the decision was made not to fly back to Washington, D.C., as controllers were  unsure about how many hijacked aircraft were still in the air.
Col. Tillman flew the president to Air Force bases  in Louisiana and Nebraska, where the commander in chief addressed the nation and  could communicate with military leaders from the ground.
As the day wore on and U.S. airspace was closed, the  skies were nearly empty. “It was very eerie,” Col. Tillman recalls. “No radio  calls; the controllers would not even talk with us.
“Basically, they were told to just let us do what we  wanted to do. We would tell them we were climbing to a certain altitude, and had  given them a cardinal direction to where we were headed, but for the most part  there was no conversation so no one knew where we were. There were no other  aircraft talking except for a couple of military aircraft … planes just weren’t  flying; it was very eerie for the United States of America.”
As the day neared an end and it came time to take  the president home to Washington, D.C., Col. Tillman faced possibly the most  stressful part of his journey.
“They were rolling fighters off the major cities to  roll in on us to support us as we came across country. As we got closer to  Washington, D.C., the concern was had I done everything I was supposed to do, to  make sure that when I landed there everything would be safe?”
Col. Tillman thought the terrorists could be  waiting.
“All along, everybody knew I was bringing him home,  so my fear was they’ve done all of this, they know Air Force One is eventually  going to come back to Washington, D.C.; they are sitting there, they’re waiting  for us.”
The fighter jets stayed with the plane all the  way.
“That’s what the whole military and the United  States Air Force is about. To see a fighter roll up on the wing, and salute you,  get you right there and protect you as you’re coming in — that capability is  tremendous.”
But, Tillman says, as they approached Andrews Air  Force Base, the damaged Pentagon was clearly visible.
“The whole day came into perspective at that point.  You know, I had been evading so-called threats the whole day long, keeping him  safe and now was the big finale. I had to make sure we got him in there, he  stayed safe so he could get back to the  White House.”
After one of the most dramatic of all days, Air  Force One landed home safely.
“Our job was to take care of the president of the  United States. We’d been trained to keep him safe and that’s what we were  executing that day,” says Tillman proudly. He went on to serve as the Air Force  One pilot throughout the Bush term, retiring in 2009. His last flight at the  controls of Air Force One was when he flew President Bush to Crawford, Texas,  the day President  Obama was inaugurated.
He now flies the president of an American  corporation, albeit in a much smaller jet.
For Col. Tillman, the lessons of that day a decade  ago remain.
“I’m a strong believer that there will be other  attacks,” predicts Tillman. “They caught us with our pants down, they attacked  our country, they attacked from within… You got to assume right now that  they’re going to go ahead and infiltrate us and they’re going to go ahead, take  advantage of everything we offer to them. …I think President Bush did a great  job making sure the American people realize our safety is important, but we’ve  got to go ahead and protect each and every one of us, take care of each other  and change the way we do business so the terrorists won’t take advantage of us  anymore.”
Read more: https://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/09/06/command-control-presidential-pilots-journey-on-september-11-2001/#ixzz1XDntXDEG
https://video.foxnews.com/v/1145961983001/command–control-piloting-the-president-on-sept-11-2001
https://premierespeakers.com/mark_tillman/video/14296
(h/t to Sharon and Grunt for the info and research!)