Years before David Harris became director of the Johnston Regional Airport in Smithfield, he was a Navy aviator and instructor at TOPGUN in Nevada.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Harris was preparing for what was supposed to be a routine training flight for his TOPGUN airmen. Within hours, he would send two fighter jets to protect the Golden Gate Bridge from a potential terrorist attack.
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Within months, he was flying combat missions over Afghanistan.
“The response of the nation in that moment was incredible,” Harris said. “That’s what amazes me.”
A training mission suddenly becomes real
Harris was a staff instructor at TOPGUN, where he taught other instructors and helped write doctrine on how the Navy conducts air warfare.
Early in the morning on September 11, 2001, Harris and three students were preparing to fly F-14 Tomcats when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center's North Tower.
Harris and the others saw the news on television, along with the rest of the country.
“We obviously realized there’s something really, really wrong going on,” Harris recalled. “The phone rings, and it’s the admiral.”
TOPGUNS’s admiral asked for the most senior person in the building. At the time, that was Harris.
The training organization was suddenly being asked to prepare for combat.
“The switch flipped in everybody’s head; we all immediately just started responding,” Harris said.
But TOPGUN had a problem.
Its aircraft were there primarily for training, not to defend American airspace. Most aircraft were not configured to carry weapons.
Out of roughly 50 or 60 aircraft, Harris said only two were ready to carry ordnance: an F/A-18 Hornet and an F-14 Tomcat.
Both were camouflaged. Each could carry a single missile along with its gun.
The admiral gave the order: Get them airborne as quickly as possible and send them toward San Francisco.
“Obviously the Golden Gate Bridge is a symbol of America that you know would be an attractive target,” Harris said.
Harris said the order was that if the pilots exhausted their limited weapons and still needed to stop an aircraft, they were to use their own planes if necessary.
“No questions were asked, everybody just took the orders, got in their flight gear, and we put those two aircraft into the air and they went out over the Golden Gate Bridge,” Harris said.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered civilian aircraft across the country to land, eventually emptying American airspace. Harris said the TOPGUN jets remained near the Golden Gate Bridge for roughly half an hour before it became clear the skies had emptied.
The pilots returned safely.
But Harris' response to 9/11 was only beginning.
From Nevada to Afghanistan
Harris was nearing the end of his tour at TOPGUN and preparing to rotate into an operational squadron based out of Virginia Beach.
“I had orders to join them as fast as I could,” Harris said.
Harris recalls arriving aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt in early December.
The aircraft Carrier was conducting operations in Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom.
“The Roosevelt shows up with all of her guard ships and all of her air wing on board,” Harris said. “And they began operations in support of the ground troops that were going into Afghanistan to find those responsible for 9/11.”
Harris said the air wing's job was to protect and support those troops from above. One of his primary assignments was combat search and rescue and overwatch.
The missions were dramatically different from his flights at TOPGUN.
“A training mission at TOPGUN, if we’re airborne for an hour, that’s a long flight,” Harris said. “In these flights, the shortest was 8 hours, and the longest I flew was 13 hours strapped into a Tomcat which there’s not a lot of room, there’s no bathroom, there’s no Starbucks. So I’d pack my flight suit with Cliff Bars.”
For three months, Harris supported ground forces as the United States pursued those responsible for the attacks.
“To think about in the moment as it’s all unfolding, something completely unprecedented, nobody’s ever even dreamed, or we didn’t drill for it, there was no practice for it,” Harris said. “And yet, all of a sudden, it happens and the whole mechanism just starts executing. And very well.”
Twenty-five years later, Harris still sees that response as an example of the country's ability to mobilize in a crisis.
“It is a phenomenal mechanism that we have put together in this nation to be able to support ourselves, protect ourselves and project power when needed,” Harris said.
“The response of the nation in that moment was incredible. That’s what amazes me.”
Publishing note: AI assisted in the formatting of this article. All reporting, research, interviews, fact-gathering, and fact-checking were conducted by WRAL journalists.