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He won't forget the fireball or the smell of burning jet fuel. Or the heat or the smoking chunk of metal that landed near his house as undelivered letters caught the wind and scattered in the nearby woods.

Forever, he'll hold in his mind the image of 40 souls sent to a fiery death at the hands of four terrorists hell-bent on hatred and destruction.

Lambert, who lives on a 100-acre farm in Lambertsville, Somerset County, was shoveling coal outside his house on a hillside overlooking Skyline Drive as United Airlines Flight 93 plunged to the ground.

The aircraft wobbled as it fell from the sky, he said. The wings turned about 45 degrees just before the fuselage gouged a deep crater into the earth of an abandoned strip mine, obliterating the Boeing 757 and snuffing the lives of everyone on board.

It was 10:06 a.m.

In a flash of fire, the crash of Flight 93 near the tiny rural community of Shanksville completed the morning's series of horrific attacks against the United States.

Using jetliners as weapons, 19 hijackers on suicide missions brought down the World Trade Center towers in New York City, badly damaged the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and ripped into the security of Pennsylvania's heartland, killing more than 3,000 people aboard four planes and on the ground.

"I can still see the hot flames," Lambert said, weeping softly. "The night it went down I couldn't sleep at all. I still get choked up thinking about it."

Moments after the crash, Lambert found a chunk of the aircraft — still smoldering and hot to the touch — about three feet from his house. He could feel the heat from the fireball at the crash site several hundred yards away.

The crash knocked out power to his house for the rest of the day and left him without telephone service for six weeks. His frightened herd of 27 cows scattered into the woods. He couldn't get near his skittish livestock for several days.

"The FBI found some letters near my house. A chill went down my back. It really scared me," Lambert said.

A few minutes before the crash, John Hixon was outside with his dog when he looked up and saw Flight 93 cast a large shadow over a pond at his Delmont home.

The jetliner appeared to be gliding, he said, because the turbines in the plane's engines were revolving in a low, soft whir as it cruised over Westmoreland County.

"It was making a funny sound," Hixon said. "It was flying awfully low, and almost hit the tree tops. It went over the top of my neighbor's house and then it was gone."

MURTHA REMEMBERS

As the ill-fated Flight 93 passed over his district before going down, U.S. Rep. John C. Murtha watched the New York attacks on television.

The Cambria County Democrat was in a meeting with House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri in Room 210 of the Capitol when the first two hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center. They had the TV on as they were conducting business.

"We recognized immediately it was not an accident," Murtha said, but added that he kept working and went on to another subcommittee meeting for a defense bill. A few minutes later, he got a call from a Defense Department employee who said a bomb had gone off in the Pentagon.

"Then, we saw people running past our doorways. The police ran in and said, 'A plane is coming to Washington and we think the target is the Capitol.' We evacuated the building."

Murtha's wife, Joyce, was in the Capitol attending a meeting. They found each other in the confusion outside as a plume of smoke rose in the blue sky above the Pentagon. The sonic boom from a military jet, reportedly dispatched to shoot down the wayward aircraft, thundered overhead, he said.

It would be five hours before they could return to the Capitol, retrieve their car and go home to their apartment.

In those five hours, the world had changed.

Devastating fires fed by fuel from the burning jets crumbled the World Trade Center's glistening towers into mountains of rubble on the streets of New York. The death toll there — 2,807 — included the passengers and crew on American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175.

The Pentagon suffered a gaping wound when American Airlines Flight 77 tore through the sky above Washington, D. C., and scored a direct hit, killing 184 on the plane and on the ground.

And above Murtha's Pennsylvania district, heroes emerged when 40 passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93 sacrificed their lives to thwart hijackers' plans to attack a critical target in the nation's capital. The veteran congressman spoke out first to praise their bravery.

"When they made that decision to fight, they became heroes," he said. "This was the first sign that we weren't going to give in to terrorists, that we're not soft cowards, that people in the United States are tough.

"It was a rude awakening for them (the terrorists). They never anticipated unity in the United States. This was an act of defiance."

Murtha said he can only imagine what went on during the doomed flight that began in Newark, N.J., bound for San Francisco. He personally has not listened to tapes from cockpit voice recorders.

"I don't think any of us know for sure what really happened," he said, adding that he believes the fight between the passengers and hijackers began somewhere in the skies above Westmoreland and Somerset counties.

Investigators know that about 90 minutes into the flight, the aircraft suddenly changed course as it neared Cleveland. After turning to a southeast heading, it entered air space over Pennsylvania and flew on a route that took it over Westmoreland and Somerset counties, toward Washington, D.C.

A nearby executive jet heard a radio transmission that caused alarm among air traffic controllers in Cleveland. A controller reported hearing a garbled transmission that sounded like the pilot announcing there was a bomb aboard the passenger jet.

"Say again? Was that United 93?" asked an air traffic controller at Cleveland Center.

"Yeah," replied the pilot of the executive jet. "That transmission you said was unreadable sounded like they said they have a bomb on board."

Family members of some passengers and crew listened to parts of the struggle in cell phone calls their loved ones made from the plane. After hearing of the other three crashed planes, those aboard determined they had to do something to stop the suicidal hijackers from reaching a critical target.

Alice Hoglan, the mother of passenger Mark Bingham, said she spoke to her son and felt he knew what he was facing. She said she believed the passengers had organized a plan and he was calling her to say goodbye in case he didn't make it.

As he has done repeatedly, Murtha insisted that the plane crashed during the struggle and was not sacrificed by a military order to bring it down.

"I checked out those rumors closely. There's no chance of it having been shot down."

But, if necessary, it would have been, he said.

If Flight 93 had come anywhere near Washington, D.C., anywhere near the White House and Capitol, a fighter jet would have brought it down, Murtha said.

"These pilots understand they'd be shooting civilians, but it would save a lot of other people. It's serious business when you start shooting down civilian planes. I get nervous about it, but...their orders are that if it looks like the plane is going into a building, shoot it down," he said.

In his book, "Among the Heroes," New York Times correspondent Jere Longman quoted two Air National Guard F-16 fighter pilots thus far identified publicly only by their call names of "Captain Honey" and "Major Lou."

They said they'd never been dispatched specifically to shoot down the wayward aircraft in Pennsylvania.

"We were fortunate and grateful that the passengers stepped up and did what they had to do to put their destiny in their hands. There's no way you can repay them," Major Lou said.

Murtha, who flew to the crash site in a Blackhawk military helicopter, said his impression was that the hijacked jetliner disintegrated upon impact, with the tail collapsing into the front. Considering that debris was found miles away, he believes the plane started to come apart during the struggle on board.

HALLOWED GROUND

Almost immediately, the crash site was referred to as "hallowed ground" and treated with reverence by Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller, evidence recovery teams, police and investigators.

Miller, the son of a funeral director, said he learned early on to respect the dead. After the crash, he met with all the families personally and respected their privacy, going so far as to refuse to name the victims until all remains were identified.

In the year since, he has visited the crash site numerous times with the victims' family members. He prayed with them, time and again, as they mourned their lost loved ones.

After the crash, Linda French, national director of Disaster Services for the American Red Cross, described her thoughts upon visiting the makeshift memorial at the site.

"You have the feeling when you're there that it is spiritual...It is hallowed ground," she said.

Shanksville Mayor Ernest Stull recently attended a church service held at the site of a temporary memorial to Flight 93. During the service, a wind came through the trees on a nearby hillside.

"I swear I heard voices coming from there," he said. "It was the weirdest feeling to stand here and listen to that.

"Other people turned to look toward the woods...The sounds were like singing."

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