This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib with Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Peter Braxton was the first military pilot in the air over the burning twin towers in downtown New York City.

It was his first day on the job. Not long after he did multiple tours of flight combat in the

Middle East, here's Peter with the story of his first combat mission in Afghanistan.

Most people don't, they spend their whole career and they don't go to combat. And I was one of

those like those kids that went to preschool or kindergarten at four because my birthday's in

October. The next thing you know, I'm 22 and I'm, I'm being shuttled off to the Middle

East. My first combat mission, you know, I'll never forget it. You know, we're flying,

you know, pushing into Afghanistan and refueling all of these coalition fighters and F-16s and

Marine F-18s. And one of our receivers, you know, asked us to turn off the chaff, like the stuff that drops out of your

plane if you're being shot at. And I was like, well, you know, we don't have any of that.

If that gets stuck, we're a big gas tank in the sky. I don't know, we'll blow up or it's not

going to end well. So they don't put it in. We don't have any offensive or defensive threat

detection or. And so I remember he radioed. He's like, all right, well, you're getting shot

at. Day one. First day. And there's stuff, you know, blowing up next to our plane, and it's a big

KC. 10, it's a big, you know, refueling tanker.

Look, we were briefed on, every day before your mission, you're briefed by the Intel

officers, you know, where the service air missile sites are, where the activity is,

what types of weapons they have, and, you know, they have these shoulder-fired kind of ancient

missiles. But, you know, we called it, I guess, the Golden Beebe, right? They're not,

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