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Tributes for Flight 93 heroes
11/09/2006 10:10 - (SA)
Stephen Collinson
Shanksville - The first Americans to hit back at al-Qaeda on September 11 will be eulogised as heroes on Monday, five years after a passenger revolt forced down a fourth hijacked jet short of its target.
President George W Bush will join tributes to passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93, which slammed into a Pennsylvania field, 18 to 20 minutes flying time short of its presumed target, Washington.
Passengers had learned of the unfolding 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon after calling relatives on cellphones, and were captured on a cockpit tape trying to overpower hijackers before their plane plummeted to the ground.
Temporary memorial
Several hundred people travelled to a temporary memorial overlooking the crash site in western Pennsylvania on Sunday, looking on silently as the sun periodically breached grey clouds and bathed a large US flag placed at the point of impact in golden light.
Many wept, or bowed their heads, others sat quietly on brown, wooden benches engraved with names of victims.
"It is very heartbreaking to see a site where we lost so many of our fellow Americans," said Korean war veteran Tom Restak, from Rochester, Pennsylvania, making his first visit to the crash site.
His wife Margaret, added as tears brimmed in her eyes: "This is so very sad, but I just had to come."
Heroes
The crash was overshadowed at the time by horrifying scenes at New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, turned into horrific infernos by fuel-laden airliners steered on suicide missions by hijackers.
But as the heroism of the Flight 93 passengers emerged, it was seized upon by political leaders and ordinary Americans in grief-wracked days after the attacks, and steeled resolve to strike back at Osama bin Laden's network.
Relatives of the 33 passengers and seven crew aboard the Boeing 757, hijacked after it left Newark, New Jersey, bound for San Francisco, will attend memorial services on Monday morning.
- AFP
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