HIGH ALTITUDE EJECTION

“Out of control, upside down, and spinning.”

Air Force Captain Jon T. Little, U-2R Pilot

By

Ross W. Simpson

Two weeks before North Vietnamese tanks and troops stormed into Saigon on April 30, 1975 and toppled the U.S. backed government, a couple of highly-decorated veterans of the conflict in Southeast Asia were ferrying two U-2R spy planes from Utapao Royal Air Base in Thailand back to their home base at Davis-Monthan in Tucson, Arizona.

Captain Jon T. Little, known as “Jack” to his friends, had directed air strikes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and in South Vietnam almost a decade earlier as a Forward Air Controller [FAC] with the 23^rd Tactical Air Support Squadron based at Nahkon Phanom Royal Air Base in Thailand. His wingman in the early morning hours of April 16^th was Captain Jim Barrilleaux, who flew 120 F-4 Phantom combat missions from Udorn, another base in Thailand, into North Vietnam.

Capt. Little and Capt. Barrilleaux had just climbed to altitude above 65,000 feet and settled back in their ejection seats for an eight hour flight to Guam, the first stop of their flight home, where they would change off with U-2 pilots from the 349^th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron flying behind them in a KC-135Q tanker.

Captain Warren Pierce, another U-2 pilot, says three of the reconnaissance aircraft had been flown to Thailand to do some high-altitude air sampling of nuclear explosions in the spring of 1975.

“We had been given a heads-up that someone might be popping one off,” said Pierce, a retired Lieutenant Colonel who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado. That never transpired and the 349^th SRS was ordered to take two of its three aircraft in Thailand back to the states.

“Snake,” as Pierce was known in the squadron, was the “mobile,” the guy who pre-flighted Little’s U-2 before takeoff at Utapao and pronounced the bird ready for a two a.m. takeoff.

Pierce says U-2 pilots were known by their nicknames back then, not like today when Air Force pilots are known by their call-signs. Little was called “Little Jon,” because another pilot named John Sanders was much

taller than Little and was therefore called “Tall John.” Barrilleaux was known as “Captain America” for his ability to drink a lot of beer and dance on table tops. “Snake” wouldn’t divulge the source of his nickname.

HEADING HOME

Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Sinclair, who flew U-2s for ten years and later became the squadron commander, was the enroute team commander, the officer who escorted the aircraft to Thailand and was now escorting them back home to Arizona. His aircraft, the tanker, carried other U-2 pilots for the long ferry flight. Maintenance personnel from the 349^th SRS were also on board, along with spare parts and supplies. After climbing out of Utapao, the tanker took up a position below and behind the U-2s.

As they leveled off above 65,000 feet, their cruising altitude, “Little Jon” and “Captain America,” who had taken off about five minutes ahead of him, checked the gauges on their instrument panels. All systems were normal. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The only sound Little and Barrilleaux could hear in the headsets of their space helmets was an occasional radio transmission as the tanker checked in with Colonel Roger Cooper, the squadron commander in the command post at Utapao, as they sped across the night sky at about 470 miles per hour.

Outside the cockpit it was 90-degees below zero, but inside their pressurized space suits, they were toasty warm. Far below through the clouds was the Gulf of Siam.

What started out an hour and a half earlier as a routine flight suddenly turned into a nightmare.

Without warning, the control column in Capt. Little’s plane slammed forward against the instrument panel, causing the aircraft to “porpoise,” go up and down.

“Little Jon” disengaged the auto-pilot, eased back on the throttles and tried to pull the control column back, but it wouldn’t budge. The U-2 pitched over nose first and spun out of control.

“Captain America” heard a brief radio transmission from “Little Jon” before he ejected.

“Out of control, upside down, and spinning,” radioed Little as the violent maneuver ripped off the tail of his U-2.

“That’s all I heard,” said Barrilleaux who immediately contacted the tanker. Sinclair who had just dozed off was awakened by a crewmember who said, “Little Jon’s punched out.”

Sinclair didn’t know it at the time, but on the way out of the aircraft, something hit Little in the forehead, cracking the face shield on his helmet, and knocking him unconscious. Barrilleaux thinks it must have been one of two oxygen hoses that are designed to pop out of the plane’s internal oxygen supply on ejection. The hoses have metal connections on the end,

but aren’t tied down to the pressure suit. During ejection, they crack like whips.

Capt. Little fell more than 50,000 feet at a speed of 614 miles per hour, the same velocity Captain Joseph W. Kittinger Jr. experienced long before astronaut Neil Armstrong took “One Giant Step for Mankind” on the moon. Kittinger stepped over the side of a balloon launched from Holloman AFB, New Mexico and broke four world records, including highest bailout and longest free fall.

Like Kittinger, Little’s fall lasted more than three minutes before his parachute automatically deployed at 15,000 feet and carried his limp body to a soft water landing in the Gulf of Siam.

During an interview in 1986 with Airman Magazine at Patrick AFB, Florida where then Lieutenant Colonel Jon T. Little was deputy base commander, the West Pointer [Class of 1964] said the last thing he remembered was the guy in the tanker telling him to “Get Out.”

“I pulled the eject handle, and the next thing I remember I was in the water,” said Little.

Capt. Kittinger may hold the world record for highest bailout and longest free fall in a test flight, but Capt. Little claimed the highest non-test flight bailout in the Air Force and the longest free fall. A claim no one disputes.

The tanker was about 100 miles from where the U-2’s autopilot malfunctioned and put the plane into a violent, inverted spin. Just before he ejected, Little told Airman Magazine “the extreme pressure resulting from the spin cracked the plane in two.” The U-2 is designed to take a maximum

of 2.5Gs, Anything beyond that, and the aircraft comes apart like a cheap tailored suit airmen had made during their tours in Thailand.

The tail section of Little’s U-2 was found later, but nothing else was ever located. Little’s son, Dax, has a piece of Tail No. 68-10334, the 56^th of 99 U-2s built by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation.

A check of U-2 family serial numbers shows Little’s aircraft was lost near Taiwain on August 19, 1975 – not over the Gulf of Siam on April 16, 1975. The list was last revised on 31 May 1998. Maybe the list needs to be revised again.

UNDER GOOD CANOPY

A radio signal in Capt. Little’s survival kit was picked up by the tanker after ejection, telling those listening that he had managed to eject and was under a good parachute. But the signal that can lead rescue planes to the spot where the pilot is located apparently stopped when he hit the water. Nothing but static was heard aboard the tanker.

It’s a good thing “Little Jon” was wearing a self-inflating life preserver. Only U-2 pilots and Naval aviators had them at the time. Without it, Little may have drowned that night before he regained consciousness.

Downed pilots are taught to climb into their self-inflating life rafts on their bellies, but Little feared the oxygen connections on the front of his pressure suit would puncture the raft and leave him bobbing up and down in shark-infested waters, so he eased into the raft on his back. He noticed his emergency oxygen bottle was empty, but couldn’t remember activating it.

“Perhaps I did it in a semi-conscious state,” he said, “Or maybe I was conscious and just blacked it all out.”

If you have to fall more than 50,000 feet, maybe the best way is to be unconscious. Little said if he had been conscious, he might have done something stupid, like mess with straps and try to get out of his ejection seat. It was totally dark when he ejected; no moon and no stars, and if he had been conscious, he could have become disoriented on the way down.

After “Little Jon” punched out, “Captain America” contacted LtCol. Sinclair in the tanker who also began talking to Col. Cooper at Utapao.

While Cooper set in motion a SAR [Search and Rescue] mission, Sinclair and Barrilleaux set up a search pattern.

NOTIFYING NEXT OF KIN

Jane Little was taking a shower at their home in Tuscon, oblivious to what had happened to her husband on the other side of the world, when their six year old daughter came running into the bathroom out of breath, and said, “Mommy, there’s a whole bunch of people in uniforms at our front door.”

“Any pilot’s wife will tell you those are words they never want to hear,” said Jane as explained to this reporter how the squadron commander, his wife, a good friend, his wife and the base chaplain only come to your door when something bad has happened, “and those are words that will make your heart skip a beat,” Little said.

Wrapping a towel turban-style around her wet head, and throwing on what he called an “old crummy white robe that no one’s supposed to see,” Jane Little walked slowly to the front door.

“I can’t say that I thought he was dead, but all those things were running through my head as I opened the door,” said Little.

“Why are you here?” asked Little as she invited the officers in their dress blues to come in.

When she asked what’s wrong with Jack, the squadron commander told her he had to bail out of his plane a few hours ago.

“Is he dead?” asked Little.

“No, but he’s missing,” said the Colonel.

Jane didn’t want to frighten her daughter, Jenifer, who was standing beside her, so she made up a quick story about her father jumping out of his airplane into the water.

“Isn’t he silly?” asked Jane, “He could have gone right next door and jumped into the swmming pool.”

Jane encouraged her daughter to go next door and tell their neighbors what her daddy had done.

After an hour or so of idle chit-chat with the officers and their wives who came to Jane Little’s house, the telephone rang. It was the squadron calling to say that her husband had been located on a fishing trawler.

Capt. Little was picked up by fishermen about 30 miles east of Pattani, a village just north of the Malaysian border after drifting in the Gulf of Siam about 350 miles south of Bangkok for seven to eight hours.

While Little can’t remember anything about his free fall, he could remember details of his rescue by three fishermen, father, son and grandfather from one family. When they lifted Little aboard their tiny boat, his survival radio began beeping again.

It wasn’t long before Little saw the tanker coming low over the water right at him. As it passed over the trawler, he gave the tanker crew a “Thumbs Up,” and the pilot dipped his wings, a signal that the crew had seen him and could now give Little’s location to Col. Cooper back at the command post in Utapao. The crew also saw the orange parachute that Little had tied to the stern of the trawler as a signal for any plane that might be looking for him,

Normally, a pilot who goes down at sea, is taught in survival school to cut the parachute free, because it could drag them under. But “Jack the FAC” learned long ago in the skies over the Ho Chi Minh Trail to think outside the box, before that term became popular. He knew the parachute was bigger than anything else he carried in his survival kit, and it could be seen for miles from the air.

Once Little arrived at the fishing village on the Malay peninsula, an old man stepped out of the crowd and helped him spread the parachute in a rice paddy. The villagers gathered around this strange-looking man in a space suit, sipping Nehi orange soda that someone gave him.

Little was a laid back kind of guy. So it wasn’t surprising that the only reference to his hairy ejection from a high-flying U-2 in a tiny notebook he carried in his flight suit read, “0340, bailed out of my aircraft.”

Later that afternoon, two rescue helicopters arrived at Pattani. Air Force PJs, Pararescumen, carried his life raft, parachute and cracked helmet to one of the waiting CH-53s which took “Little Jon” back to his old base at Nakhon Phanom where he caught a C-130 for the flight to Utapao where “Captain America,” “Snake,” Col. Cooper and other members of the 349^th gave him a “Hero’s Welcome” as stepped off a C-130, barefooted and wearing a borrowed flight suit. Cooper gave Little a bottle of champagne in

a plain brown paper bag, but he missed out on the “Little-Jon-Is-Alive-Party” at the Officer’s Club. Little was hospitalized with a nasty bruise on his forehead that blackened both of his eyes.

“We called him Vampire Man,” laughed Barrilleaux who retired from the Air Force as a Colonel, and spent 18 years flying ER-2s, NASA’s civilian version of the U-2R. ER stands for “Earth Resource.” Barrilleaux has since retired as assistant chief pilot for ER-2s at NASA’s Dryden Flight

Research Center at Edwards AFB, California. “Captain America” now flies his private plane in Grass Valley, California.

Although Capt. Little missed tying one on in Thailand, and planned to throw the First Annual “Little-Jon-Is-Alive Party” once he returned to the states. the time was never right. However, he and his wife celebrated the 10^th anniversary of his rescue a year before he died of cancer. They dined on what else; Oriental food.

John Thomas Little met Jane Sawyer while in pilot training after graduating from the United States Military Academy. Seven months after pinning on his wings at Laredo Air Force Base in Texas, the two were married.

After Lt. Little returned from Southeast Asia, he spent four years at Laredo learning to fly T-37s, and later instructing other pilots to fly the twin-engine jet trainers. It was there his two children, Jenifer and Daxton, were born.

From Laredo, Capt. Little was assigned to Malstrom AFB, Montana as a Minuteman missile officer. While sitting deep in a reinforced concrete silo, he saw a “Help Wanted” ad in the May 1974 issue of a magazine called, “Combat Crew.”

“There are current manning requirements for highly motivated, mature and experienced pilots for entry into the U-2 program. Specific requirements are for Captains with about 2,000 hours flying time (1,000 hours jet experience, center-line thrust or high performance time desired) and diversification in at least two aircraft since UPT. Physical requirements are a maximum sitting height of 36 ½ inches, a maximum knee-buttock length of 25 ½ inches and no altitude impairments in your medical history,” read the ad.

At 5 foot 9 inches tall, and a trim 160 pounds, Little met all of the requirements and was accepted into the U-2 program, however the incident over the Gulf of Siam caused him a lot of angst, and could have ended his career, had it not been for his attitude.

His wife remembers the day her husband was called to his squadron commander’s office and told that he was being transferred out of the U-2 community to the United States Air Force Academy as an Air Operations Commander.

“I got screwed,” Little told his wife before bed, “but the problem was the plane, not the pilot.” He never complained, he just saluted and moved on.

“Unfortunately for Little, pilots involved in air crashes are guilty until proven innocent,” said Sinclair, who retired as a bird Colonel.

“Yeah,” said Barrilleaux, “Even if the wings falls off, the pilot is blamed.”

Another U-2 crashed a month later in West Germany; similar problem with the auto-pilot, but the Air Force apparently needed to blame somebody for something and Jon T. Little became the sacrificial lamb on the AF altar.

There was a hint of pilot error from the get-go. SOF has learned that some high-ranking officers who conducted the official investigation didn’t think Capt. Little “managed the problem properly,” but those who knew him and flew with him said he did everything “humanely possible” to save his aircraft that fateful night.

“But the aircraft can be squirrely,” said Barrilleaux who told SOF that there is only ten knots or so between stall and “Maching Up,” the speed for level controlled flight.

“When that aircraft pitched over and began to spin out of control, Little was doomed,” said Sinclair who still doesn’t know how Little who served as his deputy at Patrick managed to eject.

Sinclair says there was an unwritten rule in the Air Force in the mid-70s. “Crash a U-2 and you never fly again.” But that rule was broken at least twice. Col. Cooper crash-landed a U-2 on a frozen lake in Saskatchewan when the internal battery failed, and systems shut down. Major Little went on to fly OV-10 Broncos in South Korea where he served as a Forward Air Controller. He loved that assignment, because he was able to work with fellow West Pointers who commanded U.S. Army ground units.

Jack Little was a track star in high school and at West Point. When he reported to the United States Military Academy, he took with him his three favorite things in life, white track shoes, his guitar and a popcorn popper which plebes weren’t supposed to have in their rooms.

THE FINAL RACE

Although LtCol Little was taking 30 chemo pills a day for cancer of the adrenal glands, he somehow found the strength to run one more race before he died.

Little won five gold medals in the “Over 40” race in Florida. He was medically retired from the Air Force in 1986 before he could pin on the silver wings of a Colonel, fell into a coma, and passed away on May 24, 1987.

Little didn’t live long enough to see his daughter and son get married, or long enough to see four grandchildren born. One of them is named Ian Tevis Dinwiddie. Ian Tevis is Gaelic for Jon Thomas.

His son, Dax, painted his dad’s trunk from West Point blue and stored his son’s toys in the trunk. Dax gave it to Jenifer before the birth of her daughter in June. Jack’s trunk is now painted pink.

In keeping with his last wishes, Lt Col Jon T. Little was buried in the West Point Cemetery on Memorial Day; carried to final resting place by six Cadets in dress uniform.

Jack was dressed appropriately in his orange flight suit, ready for his next assignment.

His widow tried, but could not arrange a flyover of military aircraft for her husband who had more rows of ribbons on his chest than four-star generals, a Distinguished Flying Cross, 16 Air Medals and the Air Force Commendations Medal among them. However, just as the chaplain was about to offer words of comfort at graveside, Jane Little heard a “putt, putt kind of sound,” and looked up to see a single engine Cessna like the Bird Dog her husband flew over “The Trail” coming over the cemetery.

“I thought, you little bugger, you arranged your own flyover,” said Jane.

Jack’s roommate in their junion and senior year at West Point posted a eulogy to his friend and fellow warfighter on January 23, 2006 on WP-ORG, a privately-run website.

William Murphy, a retired Air Force Colonel, wrote, “He was a pilot to the end and is now soaring in Heaven.” Amen.

Trophy Point at West Point, New York