Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys Were First F-16s Over World Trade Center Minutes After 9/11 Attack

By Ted Cohen

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The photo of a Vermont F-16 pilot in the air over the 9/11 rubble in New York City has now become an iconic memory of the legends of the state's legendary air guard.

The image (seen above) is of the military jet piloted by Lt. Col. Barent Rogers, a pilot with the Vermont Air National Guard.

Rogers was photographed by a fellow F-16 Green Mountain Boy.

The Green Mountain Boys were sent out to fly a mission in the chaotic, tense hours after the attacks 25 years ago on the World Trade Center.

Rogers had been flying routine training when he was radioed to come back to base immediately.

He wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew something was out of the ordinary about this specific order.

Once Rogers returned to base, he was briefed on the attacks at the Trade Center and was sent back up to head for New York City.

The task was as simple as it was complicated - patrol the skies: intercept any planes violating the airspace.

The dangerous-but-necessary mission was to look out for any plane that might come into the restricted area over the city.

Because of the nature of the attacks - the fact that commercial planes had been used - there was no protocol for this type of attack.

Rogers and his fellow pilots had to simultaneously react cautiously and immediately to any threat.

"When we scrambled out of here, Burlington ground and controllers told us 'talk directly to your military controllers - you don't need to talk to anybody. The United States Air Force owns the air.'

"So we went right to our military controller and worked our way down to New York flying, you know, like, 100 feet over New York City to intercept low-flying aircraft. It was pretty bizarre."

"I'll always remember the orange glow of the fire raging below and the smoking rubble which was the decimation below," Rogers recalled.

The Vermont Air National Guard pilots maintained continuous combat air patrols over New York for 122 consecutive days following the attacks.