United 93, you’re here. Cleveland Center. United 93 is one of 4,500 planes in the sky above America. It’s under the control of Al-Qaeda terrorists and just 34 minutes from its target: the capital.
A top-secret recording from United 93’s cockpit reveals what happens in its final moments. Few people have ever heard the tape. You could hear the sound of the wind passing over the wings, so there was a lot of background noise. But even so, it was fascinating. You could hear the scuffling, you could hear people moving quickly. The sense was that there were several people working together.
You could hear a hijacker being hit with some type of object, and you could hear the pain that he felt when he was hit. It was a cry and a wail, as if he had been fatally struck. All of a sudden, Saeed, one of the hijackers in the front, yells, “Fight!” and his buddy said, “Yeah!” They were realizing that the passengers and crew members were coming to get them.
We started to see changes in the aircraft’s flight. The airplane started making some pretty extreme maneuvers. It turned to the north, it turned to the south, it did like a 270-degree turn. I didn’t know what was going on there. Cleveland enlists the help of a nearby light aircraft. “We’re five-six-eight-six-five, Cleveland. We have a Boeing 757. Can you see him up there, sir?” “We’ve got him. What else too? Does it appear to be?” “He’s probably at 8,000 feet. He’s behind us at only about a thousand above us.”
In the opening moments of the passenger fight back, the terrorists lose altitude and veer away from their target of Washington, DC. Then they ran up the length of the 757 with all their improvised weapons, and you could hear them coming. We could hear it in the recording. It became louder and louder, people yelling, and I’m thinking maybe they should have just done it quietly.
There was smashing, and it just sounded like things were being banged around and commotion. And then we all heard Tom’s voice, all of us just jolted. He was trying to get home to us. You could hear him yelling, “In the cockpit! The cockpit!” They were chanting. Tom Burnett started that: “We’re in the cockpit!” and they were going, “In the cockpit! In the cockpit!” They rattled the heck out of those guys in the front. They were terrified.
“If you can report what he’s doing, sir.” “It looks like he’s rocking his wings, by shaking the aircraft back and forth, left to right.” The hijackers tried to dislodge the passengers. You could hear the passengers and crew members outside of the cockpit door, really loud, and the guys yelling together and encouraging one another.
You could also hear the hijackers inside the cockpit. They said, “Is that it? Should we put her in the ground now?” and someone said, “No, wait.” And then you could hear the noise blasting them: “Get him!” And then Tom said, “I’m injured.” It was in a way that you had this sense that he was saying, “Don’t wait for me. Keep going.” You could hear that they were working together, and Deena said it was Tom that said, “If we don’t get in there, we’ll die.”
