The Michigan Air National Guard’s 127th Wing is being highlighted in a 9/11 anniversary feature centred on Lt. Col. (Ret.) Tom Froling, who was airborne on a routine F-16 training sortie from Selfridge Air National Guard Base when the attacks began. Froling and flight lead Maj. Doug Champagne later returned to a rapidly altered mission set, with the unit shifting to armed combat air patrols over the United States after civilian air traffic was grounded.
The account recalls an 08:50 local take-off for low-level training over Michigan’s Thumb region and a clear morning in which Froling remembered that “nobody else was flying”. Once the scale of the attacks became clear, the squadron loaded live AIM-120 AMRAAMs and AIM-9 Sidewinders and moved into homeland air defence duties. Maintenance crews reportedly slept in tents beside the jets, reflecting the sustained alert posture at Selfridge in the hours after 9/11.
The piece is a retrospective interview rather than a new operational development, but it captures how Air National Guard units in the Midwest were already airborne and then quickly repurposed for U.S. airspace protection. It also ties into broader anniversary coverage of the aircraft and personnel involved in defending the homeland that day.