On this day, we remember

September 11, 2022

As the world mourns Queen Elizabeth II, who died September 8, we recall that on September 12, 2001, she led her subjects in an extraordinary gesture of solidarity.

The 9/11 Monument in New York, shown May 8, 2016, is a stark reminder of the terrorism that struck the Twin Towers in 2001 to significantly change aviation in the United States. Photo by David Tulis.

As rescuers dug through rubble at the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Queen Elizabeth II broke centuries of tradition by directing her Coldstream Guards to replace the exclusively British music played during the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (without a visiting foreign head of state present) with music more familiar to U.S. military bands, culminating with The Star-Spangled Banner.

Amateur video taken from the crowd includes more of that moving ceremony in which The Star-Spangled Banner was preceded by John Philip Sousa’s quintessentially American march, .

Applause is audible in the video as spectators outside Buckingham Palace begin to recognize the Sousa song. When The Star-Spangled Banner follows, people in the crowd can be heard singing the words.

Recollections

You will find below stories told about 9/11 in the decades since, examining how the terrorist attacks affected aviation, including general aviation, and how we remember those who we lost that day.