DH B2 Langley MFRs Fdr- 12-1-03 MFR- Craig Borgstrom

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    U N C L A S S I F I E DC O M M I S S I O N S E N S I T I V EME MORANDUM F OR THE RECORD

    Event : Langley Air Force Base Site VisitType of event: Recorded InterviewDate: M onday, December 01 , 2003Special Access Issues: None, some of the discussion was classified and the tape classifiedaccordingly. Those discussions were technical and are available on tape.Prepared by: Miles KaraTeam Number: 8Location: 119 th Fighter Wing, Detachment One, HeadquartersParticipant - Captain Craig Borgstrom, Trail (3d Man) for the Quit scramble on 9-11Participants - Com mission: M iles Kara, Kevin ShaefferObserver - Colonel Pam Jefferson, USAF, Base Legal OfficeNote: Please refer to the recorded interview for additional details.Background:

    Captain Borgstrom enlisted in the U S A F in 1993 and in January 1997 left for pilottraining. He got back to the un it in July 1999 and was hired as a full time pilot until M ay2000. He then flew com me rcially for about a year and return to the 119 th in April 2001an d assumed his then duties as the Operations Officer at the 11 9 lh Detachment atLangley.Scramble Experience an d 9/11:

    Prior to 9/11 he sat alert three w eek-long tours. If they were scrambled it was fora dru g mission or civilian traffic in distress or other m ilitary aircraft not squawking avalid code. Response requirements haven't changed. What ha s changed is the sense ofurgency and the combat load the aircraft carry.

    He was asked about th e wait from battle station to scram hie nn 9/11 Rnrgstrnmdistinguished! S/ll Classified I n f o r m a t io n Ibeen started. The detachment doesn't determine which condition to assume, M E A D Sdoes that. Ru nw ay alert is a little more tim e critical, from the Detachment's perspective.When asked again why not runway alert on 9/11 he said that was not their decision.

    They have a scramble phone at the D etachment as a heads U P. I9/11 Classified Information

    [His action as SOF would call the Sector for additionalinformation. On 9/11 th e Sector called first to ask how m any aircraft they could send up.He answered "three" and was directed to do that. He also talked to the Wing Intel Officerin Fargo an d learned about the first tower.

    He first called the Wing Commander in Fargo to give him a heads up that threeplanes were scrambled, "something that had never been done on alert, ever." They gotC O M M I S S I O N S E N S I T I V EU N C L A S S I F I E D

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    UNCLASSIFIEDCOMMISSION SENSITIVEthe horn as he was climbing up the ladder into his aircraft. He started basically about thesame time as the other two. He do esn't recall exactly the heading, he wrote 020 on hischeck list, he recalled. His notes of that day in the cockpit were not retained.

    Borgstrom was on the HUNTRESS frequency. He detailed the facts he knew inthat capacity. He kno ws they were told to go m ax sub-sonic, he knows they were givinga heading of 020 at one point. He knows they were in the 20K range altitude-wise. Heknows that they were told to CAP. He knows that the controller superimposed twonumbers at one time. Derrig took the comm s lead initially with HUN TRESS . He doesn'trecall when he took over, it was at some point in the CA P. At no time did they receiveany situational awareness of what was transpiring on the groundsecond tower, otherhijacked aircraft, an aircraft approaching DC from either the north or the west, or thatUA93 was hijacked and turned around. They did know that all aircraft had been told toland immediately. Their mission was to keep airplanes away from Washington DC; hebelieves they go t that mission from HUNTRESS.

    AFIO. He believes that D errig received that instruction and passed it to E ckmannover VHP. At the time, AFIO was someth ing they had never used.The CAP coordinates. Both he and De rrig heard and wrote down the coordinates,so they knew they heard what was transmitted. So they knew there had been atransposition.Mission. As background he had heard from his wife that something had impactedthe WTC. He never dreamed it was a commercial aircraft. He never thought at first thatan airliner had h it the Pentagon; he thought it was a truck bomb . That was all unreal,didn't seem feasible, the hum anitarian part. He thought, however, that the nation wasunder attack. There wa s no mission on take o f f , just a heading and an altitude.ROE . He was asked what they were protecting against, what did Eckmannportray as the tactics of the CAP. He thought they were to keep aircraft away fromWashington DC. Intercepting was not comm on in the C AP, as he recalled. He thoughtWashington Center did a decent job in making sure aircraft didn't come their way. The

    fighters coming up from Andrews did cause some concern. Overall they split up as athree-ship and spread out but did not comm unicate that to Sector. So that led to theconfusion about an aircraft over the White House. It was one of the Quit flight. Derrigescorted the Attorney G eneral's airplane in.SoF duties. The SoF keeps track of weather, safety, and other ground-relatedadmin and logistics duties. The S oF does not do anything with tactics in the air. Wh enBorgstrom scrambled there was no SoF, so an F-16 pilot from First Fighter W ing cameover. There is no recorded record of the flight in the air from that day. Any "cameras

    on" or other recording would be at the call of any one of the pilots, not the SoF. He doesno t recall an y recordings being made . Perhaps the cameras were on at one point, but thetape would have been recycled.Shootdown. He recalls General Arnold calling either that day or in next day ortwo asked for a detailed, in writing, accounting of wh at happened that day. He believesthat ammun ition records were checked as a part of the response to First Air Force. He

    COMMISSION SENSITIVEUNCLASSIFIED

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    UNCLASSIFIEDCOMMISSION SENSITIVEdoes not recall anything that day conveying a shoot down order. He never heard"weapons free" terminology used that day.

    He estimated it would have taken 11-12 minutes to CAP the Pentagon from theend of runway heading at max sub-sonic and with calm winds and flight level 290.He was show the Langley scramble path as depicted by radar and the scramble

    order. He was asked how that is explained to the American public? "We didn't go outhere because we wanted to go there." We don't have the big picture concept in thecockpit so we go where we are vectored. We could have come off the runway andheaded to a vector right away. He does not recall any comms directed at changing theirheading from 090 for 60. He does no t recall anything about Baltimore. He does notrecall going supersonic at any point.HUNTRESS coordinator was the originator of the inaccurate coordinates for the

    initial CAP location.

    COMMISSION SENSITIVEUNCLASSIFIED