Doug Lomheim

An Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) plane takes off from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma and subsequently accompanies Air Force One as it makes its way back to Washington, DC, after leaving Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. [Air Force Print News, 9/9/2011; Kennedy et al., 2012, pp. 61] An AWACS, also called the E-3 Sentry, is a modified Boeing 707 that provides surveillance, command, control, and communications to military commanders. [New York Times, 9/23/1995; GlobalSecurity (.org), 4/16/2006; US Air Force, 9/22/2015] The AWACS that scrambles from Tinker Air Force Base is apparently piloted by Air Force reservists Major Doug Lomheim and Captain Greg Miller. The two men had been preparing for a student training sortie on their E-3 early this morning but then learned of the crashes at the World Trade Center during a delay due to one of the plane’s engines failing to start. After being told they would be assigned to do something in response to the terrorist attacks, they sent their students back to the training squadron and gathered their “NORAD material.” Lomheim and Miller take off from Tinker Air Force Base at around midday and check in with NORAD’s Southeast Air Defense Sector (SEADS). SEADS instructs them to head to Barksdale Air Force Base, where Air Force One, with President Bush on board, recently landed (see 11:45 a.m. September 11, 2001). “We want you to escort [Bush] wherever he goes,” they are told. Their plane goes into an orbit over western Louisiana while Bush is at Barksdale. They then accompany Air Force One after it leaves the base (see 1:37 p.m. September 11, 2001) and orbit overhead after it lands at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska (see 2:50 p.m. September 11, 2001). They continue following the president’s plane after it takes off from Offutt and heads toward Washington (see (4:33 p.m.) September 11, 2001). [Air Force Print News, 9/9/2011; Kennedy et al., 2012, pp. 61] An AWACS plane that had been flying a training mission was instructed to accompany Air Force One earlier on, after it took off from Sarasota, Florida (see Before 9:55 a.m. September 11, 2001). Whether that plane is escorting Air Force One while Lomheim and Miller’s plane follows it is unclear. [Filson, 2003, pp. 86-87]