F-16 Pilot Who Witnessed Flight 93 Downing Dies of Heart Attack in 2001

Federal military officials confirmed that the 180th Fighter Wing - an Ohio Air National Guard unit based at Toledo Express Airport - was the first unit outside the East Coast to answer the Air Force's plea for immediate help on 9/11. Although, officially Toledo scrambled their F-16 at 10:14 - after the "crash" in Shanksville...

        A footprint of a sonic boom from an aircraft was recorded in south-central Pennsylvania at 09:22 hours on 11 September 2001. (The Internet page about a NASA research project on supersonic footprints has gone 404 now...) Five minutes after this sonic boom was recorded, passenger Tom Burnett calls his wife from his cell phone and reports that Flight 93 has been hijacked. The timframe is important as such here, because usually the pilots report the hijacking electronically before passengers even become aware of it. The FAA had contacted NORAD at 09:16 hours to report that they suspected that Flight 93 had been hijacked. That was six minutes prior to the sonic boom...

        Lt.Col.Pete Raffa, commander of operations of the 180th Fighter Wing in Toledo, died by a sudden heart attack on Dec. 2, 2001.

            PETE RAFFA, Perrysburg, a member of Alpha Sigma Phi and soccer coach, died Dec 2. Pete was a Lt. Col. In the Ohio Air National Guard, 180th Fighter Group and served as the Operations Group Commander for the past two years.

            http://www.bw.edu/alumni/publications/classnotes/sp02/

        Was he the one in that fighter plane that had shadowed Flight 93 - and moreover - was he the one who shot down the "hijacked" plane? Or did he know too much about what happened on that very morning?

        This debris-pattern of Flight 93 is consistent with what would happen if the airliner were hit with bursts from the 20-mm cannon of a military interceptor flying two assault patterns - one first into the cockpit - and the second for "finishing" the job - about one minute flight in between - to make a turn and do a rerun onto the target...