HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE -- Dr. Ed Baldwin, an author and retired colonel who lives in Hot Springs Village, recently spoke to the HSV Rotary Club about his experiences on Sept. 11, 2001.
At the time of the attacks, Baldwin was deep underground at the top-secret strategic command post that has control over the nation's nuclear weapons. He was, in fact, part of a military exercise that was conducting global nuclear war games that morning.
Just as armed forces were simulating an enemy engagement in the role-playing exercise, things became very real.
Within minutes, the war games command group went into crisis mode for real. No one knew if, or where, there would be more attacks. Even though the FAA grounded hundreds of airliners, there were dead zones where communications between the ground and airborne planes were not possible. The concern was that other planes may have been hijacked.
As the moments ticked by, more than a dozen passenger aircraft still in the skies remained incommunicado. The worst-case scenario was to shoot down planes that were thought to have been hijacked.
Part of the task for Baldwin's war games group was filling in those blanks to make sure all planes were accounted for before being targeted as possible enemy craft. Happily, they did.
Rotary meets in the Fireside Dining Room at Good Samaritan Campus-Hot Springs Village, 121 Cortez Road, Thursdays at 7 a.m.
Local on 09/23/2014