JACK THE FAC

By

Ross W. Simpson

A few months ago, a classmate of mine that I haven’t seen or talked to since we graduated from high school in 1960, called my office in Washington, D.C. to enlist my help in finding information about a fellow graduate who died almost 20 years ago.

Don Pierce planned to nominate Lieutenant Colonel Jon Thomas Little, USAF Ret., for induction into the Fern Creek High School “Hall of Fame,” but the only information Pierce could find was a brief paragraph listing Little’s military assignments during 23 years of service.

The last time I saw both of these guys was at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Kentucky on graduation night, so Pierce’s call came like a “bolt out of the blue.”

Perhaps you have received a similar call. Like most of us “Cold War Kids,” we left home after graduation. Some members of the class, like my buddy, Dale Radford, immediately went to work at the Ford plant. Others like Pierce, Little and I went to college and wound up in the military.

Little graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, Class of 1964, and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force. Pierce began his military career as an Airman 3^rd Class assigned to the Air Force Special Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I also began my career as a lowly Airman 3^rd Class, but I got to cover USO tours with stars and starlets like Bob Hope and Jayne Mansfield in Hollywood for AFRTS, the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.

Of the three of us, only Pierce returned home to Fern Creek after his military commitment expired. Today, he spends his days in retirement tracking down classmates like Jack and me for the FCHS Alumni Association, and planning get-togethers with other members of the Class of 60 at Whitney’s Diner. Sadly, the association can only account for the

whereabouts of 166 members of the graduating class; at least 50 have died, and more than 123 are unaccounted for.

One of those among the missing is James David Quisenberry, a shy young student who became the “Audie Murphy” of the class. Like Murphy, the most decorated soldier during World War Two, Quisenberry was shy and quiet, but his actions on the battlefield in South Vietnam spoke louder than any words he uttered. Quisenberry was awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third highest combat award and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. He also received five Bronze Stars, two Air Medals, and the Purple Heart for wounds suffered in Vietnam.

LOOKING FOR LIEUTENANT LITTLE

After earning his pilot wings at Laredo Air Force Base, Texas in August, Lt. Little began a serious relationship with a young woman he met there while playing in the “Ragtops,” a rock n roll band he and some airmen had formed. Jack Little married Jane Sawyer in May 1966 and began his flying career “hauling trash,” a term he used to describe flying C-124 Globemaster IIs for the 23^rd Military Airlift Squadron at Hill AFB, Utah. The aircraft carried a crew of 5 and could haul 200 troops. Pilots called the plane “Old Shakey,” because when they advanced the throttles on the four 3,800 hp Pratt & Whitney engines, the big transport plane literally shook as it lumbered down the runway. Jack hated flying transports, but while waiting for an F-100 Super Sabre class to begin, he was offered an assignment as a FAC, a Forward Air Controller, and jumped at the chance to get out of C-124s.

In 1966, First Lieutenant Jon Thomas Little, known as “Jack” to his high school buddies, was assigned to 23^rd TASS, a tactical air support squadron in South Vietnam, but once he arrived in Saigon, he was told he was going to be stationed at a clandestine base in Thailand about eight miles west of Laos.

A few minutes of “googling” WP-Org, a privately-run West Point website and searching for 23TASS, turned up a wealth of information and within 24 hours Jack’s former roommate at the USMA and a wingman in the 23^rd Tactical Air Support Squadron responded to e-mail queries.

The 23^rd’s theater of operation was the Steel Tiger portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, one of the most deadly stretches of Hanoi’s critical supply line to North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam.

“The Trail,” as it was called, was actually a misnomer. It was a network of roads that snaked its way along the Laotian border. A heavy canopy of jungle trees and foliage concealed truck and troop traffic from the air. It also

hid deadly anti-aircraft batteries that protected the NVA lifeline. But I’m getting ahead of my story

THE LONG GRAY LINE

It took years to prepare Jack Little for the Vietnam War. His sister, Sue, who still lives in the family home in Kentucky, says her brother always

wanted to be a soldier. Their father was an infantry officer during World War Two. One of their relatives, a West Pointer, helped Jack gain a

Congressional appointment to the United States Military Academy upon graduation. Congressman Frank W. Burke sent Jack a congratulatory telegram.

William Murphy first met Cadet Little in September 1962 when they were assigned to the same room in A-2, an old barracks at West Point, where Ulysses S. Grant had carved his now famous initials into a ceiling beam.

“When Jack first entered the room, he was carrying a pair of white track shoes and his beloved Fender guitar,” said Murphy as he recalled rooming with Little. Jack played in a rock n roll band and sang in the West Point Glee Club which appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

“He also had a good record player and loved to listen to Elvis Presley, Bo Diddly, Slim Harpo and Louisiana Red,” said Murphy who was

from Montana, but had never heard of the last two artists. “Maybe they were popular in Kentucky,” Murphy said.

Little loved to pull pranks on people in high school, but he took them to new heights at the academy. When two upper classmen returned

from a weekend in New York City, they found their room stuffed with paper. While they were gone, Little and Murphy had plebes stuff their room from floor to ceiling with newspapers. As a result, the “firsties” could not change into their uniforms and had to march to the mess hall in civilian clothes. The Officer-Of-The Day was not amused, and wrote them up.

Little also loved popcorn, but popcorn poppers were considered contraband at West Point. That didn’t scare Cadet Little who hung it by a nail in the chimney of the Civil War-era fireplace in his room to hide it during inspections. Unfortunately, the nail came out of the masonry one night, and the popper fell down the chimney, knocking loose over 100 years of soot on the way down. The incident occurred just prior to lights out on the eve of a room inspection. Needless to say the 1^st Classmen in the room

below didn’t get any sleep that night as they worked feverously to return their room to white glove condition.

“We also spent many hours trying to figure out how to get the newly installed sprinkler system on the parade field to come on during a parade,”

laughed Murphy. At their 20^th Reunion, their former classmates overheard them talking about the “prank of pranks.” The next day when the Long

Gray Line passed in review, the sprinkler system came on. Someone else had solved the problem, but Little and Murphy were blamed for the incident which saw MPs, military policeman, take off their helmets and try

desperately to cover the sprinkler heads before the Cadet Corps was soaked to the skin. Because they laughed so hard that day, Little and Murphy were blamed for the prank by their classmates.

During their senior year at West Point when it came time to bid for a particular branch in the U.S. Army, Jack told Bill he was going to seek a commission in the U.S. Air Force.

“I called him a traitor,” said Murphy, “but he patiently explained to me that by learning to fly, about $110 per month would be added to our Second Lieutenant’s pay of $222.30 monthly.” In addition, Little told Murphy pilots

were not required to sleep in fox holes or tents. But Cadet Little really wanted the extra cash to buy a white 1964 Pontiac Lemans convertible. Not be outdone by his roommate, Murphy ordered a white 1964 Pontiac Lemans hardtop.

There were only 12 Air Force pilot slots open to the Class of 64, and both Little and Murphy lucked out. Because Murphy had a higher class standing, he was selected to fly fighters. Little had to settle for prop-powered transports.

After earning his wings in Laredo, Texas where he met and married a young woman he met there while playing guitar in the “Ragtops,” a rock n roll band he and some airmen formed. Like his buddy, William Murphy also wound up flying Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs as a Forward Air Controller.

LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE

The O-1 was a single engine, tail dragging aircraft that had a maximum speed of about 80 knots, depending on which way the wind was blowing. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker probably flew faster over the trenches on the

Western Front in World War I. The O-1 was not armed. The only protection the Lt. Little had was a piece of steel plating under his canvas seat. At least

Rickenbacker, America’s first air ace with five enemy kills to his credit, had twin machine guns on his Spad.

The 23^rd Tactical Air Support Squadron operated out of Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand .

Nakhon Phanom was the brunt of many jokes. NKP was known as “Naked Fanny and Naked Phantom.” Comedian Bob Hope once said Nakhon Phanom was so secret, “planes landed backwards there.”

“Like Little, we didn’t know where we going until we reached Saigon,” said Colonel Jimmie H. Butler, USAF Ret., who as a Captain flew at least five missions with Little in what became known as the “Secret War in Laos.”

Little arrived in Thailand six weeks or so ahead of Butler who graduated from the Class of 1963 at the United States Air Force Academy. In the first

six weeks of his deployment, three FACs from “Crickets,” the nickname for the 23^rd TASS, were shot down over “The Trail.” Captain Karl Worst became the first FAC assigned to NKP to die. He was killed in a mid-air collision with an F-105 Thunderchief. The “Thud Driver” ejected and was picked up, but Worst’s remains was never recovered. Butler believes the F-105 pilot failed to see the Cessna until it was too late. The squadron had received some olive drab colored Cessnas from the U.S. Army in Vietnam, and they were hard to see against the jungle foliage below. Two FACs were injured while ground-looping when they landed on slick steel matting at Nakhon Phanom.

The Crickets were tasked to keep track of North Vietnamese truck traffic down the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail through what was supposed to

be neutral Laos, and mark targets with “Willy Pete,” white phosphorous rockets on launchers under each wing. Fighter bombers orbiting high in the sky like hawks ready to pounce on their prey would drop on the smoke.

In early 1966, successful air attacks along Route 911 forced truck traffic to take the longer, less defended Route 23.

By early 1967, “The Trail” was under observation around the clock. FACs interrupted repairs during daylight hours while C-130 Lamplighter or Blind Bat aircraft lit up area at night with flares, causing huge bottlenecks.

The Crickets christened one of the choke points, “Nailhole,” in honor of their tactical call signs, but Butler says someone higher up the food chain at Seventh Air Force renamed it the “HUB.”

NAIL DRIVERS

Capt. Butler, “Nail 59,” and Lt. Little, “Nail 48,” flew approximately 240 missions apiece over over the Steel Tiger, each earning Air Medals with 16 Oak Leaf Clusters.

“We were awarded an Air Medal for every 20 regular combat missions and one for 10 “counters,” missions over North Vietnam needed to qualify

for combat pay each month since Laos wasn’t technically a designated part of the combat zone. Little flew 72 combat missions over North Vietnam, enough to slice two months off his tour in Southeast Asia.

“Sometimes when a Distinguished Flying Cross was recommended, it came back approved as an Air Medal,” said Butler who added that one of the

problems was that awards were written with “mealy-mouth words” in order to remain unclassified, and not reveal what was really happening in Laos.

Little was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroic actions in the air over Khe Sanh, South Vietnam on July 1, 1967, his wife’s 20^th birthday.

“On that date, Lieutenant Little directed several fighter aircraft against hostile troop and gun positions attacking a Special Forces team awaiting extraction. With the added adverse factors of numerous radio difficulties and combat damage to a helicopter gunship, Lieutenant Little perservered in his control of the fighter aircraft, effecting successful extraction of the ground team,” the citation said.
Flying low over NVA positions in the hills surrounding the Marine base,

Little dodged intense enemy ground fire while marking targets so “Fast Movers,” Marine F-4 Phantoms and A-4 Skyhawks out of Da Nang and off

aircraft carriers in the South China Sea, could swoop down and destroy the enemy positions with rockets, bombs and napalm.

Little’s slow-moving plane was only hit once by enemy fire when an NVA round came through the floor of the aircraft behind his seat. Butler was also shot at while flying FAC missions out of Khe Sanh during a two week TDY.

Capt. Butler was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Silver Star. He received the DFC for directing fighter bombers that buried 50 to 60

percent of two North Vietnamese companies in a cave in limestone outcropping called “karst” along the Laotian border where many “Thud Drivers” were shot down during the war in their Thunderchiefs. Butler was awarded the Silver Star for a night mission where he stayed over “The Trail”

twice as long as he should have, but destroyed eight trucks during the mission. Butler also received a Bronze Star for working more

than 70 hours a week, flying and tending to administrative matters in the squadron.

When Little began flying over “The Trail,” in early 1966, he flew at about 2,000 feet. At first, he stayed above small arms fire, but the North Vietnamese had massed 37mm anti-aircraft batteries around the major choke points. Anything up to 5,600 feet was dead meat. Later, 57mm radar-controlled batteries could reach above 10,000 feet.

“A single hit from a 37mm explosive round could blow a significant hole in an O-1,” said Butler who remembered seeing more than his share of golf-ball sized rounds coming at him.

“Normally, they had 2 to 4 guns firing at once, so you often had a volley of about 60 shells coming up, and one hit would usually take you down,” said Butler.

After the three air losses in January 1967, the 7^th Air Force decided FACs could no longer expect to survive at that altitude, so over high-threat areas, pilots like Little and Butler were ordered to stay at least 5,600 feet AGL, above ground level. The high man stayed 500 feet higher.

“We couldn’t see as well from that altitude,” said Butler, “but we didn’t lose any more Bird Dogs.

TYPICAL DAY OVER THE TRAIL

A typical duty cycle for the “Crickets” was 24 days on, and 4 days off. In early 1967, the 40 pilots in the 23^rd TASS were scheduled to fly 32 missions a day. So with time off, checkouts, and some initial testing of night vision capabilities, it wasn’t uncommon to fly 24 to 26 three-hour missions in a single day cycle.

Briefings were held one hour prior to takeoff. Upon leaving the Tactical Unit Operations Center, Little and Butler would go to Personal Equipment to

pick up survival vests, M-16 rifles, a .357 Combat Masterpiece revolver, lots of ammunition for both weapons, and a parachute.

Missions over “The Trail” ran about three hours to three hours 15 minutes. “If you went over 3+30, fuel started to be critical,” said Butler who often came back on a wing and a prayer with fumes in his fuel tanks.

Since missions were secret, most pilots didn’t keep any documentation. However, Butler kept a detailed diary of his activities, and shared some of his entries with SOF.

“During air strikes along ‘The Trail,’ we kept most of our notes on the side window with a grease pencil,” said Butler, the author of three novels, including, “A Certain Brotherhood,” about FACs. On the hour flight back to Nakhon Phanom, Butler would transcribe the data on the window to a 3-ring notebook for debriefings, and then stapled the pages in his diary after being debriefed.

During his tour from 7 Feb 1967 to 5 Jan 1968, Butler logged 240 combat missions, including 3 or 4 around Binh Thuy, Republic of Vietnam,

enroute to NKP. That’s about 800 combat hours. The 240 combat missions Butler flew included 20 counters into North Vietnam.

“The areas we flew in Laos were generally more dangerous than the areas we flew in NVN starting in mid-February,” Butler said as he recalled one of the FACs, Captain Lucius Heiskell, being shot down at Mu Gia Pass He was picked up by a Jolly Green, a rescue helicopter, only to be shot down again on the HH-3. That convinced headquarters that Bird Dogs couldn’t fly into Mu Gia pass where F-4 Phantoms and F-105 Thunderchiefs were routinely shot down.

On June 14, 1967, Butler and Little flew a mission out to Sector 12, one of the hottest sectors in Laos. It included the Ban Laboy Ford, which as

the years passed, became known as “the most bombed spot on the face of the earth.”

“I have a little asterisk in my log book in the column for counters and a note mentioning Route 137. That tells me that though Jon and I weren’t

ordered to fly a counter across the border that day. On our own initiative, we flew a few miles of recce into North Vietnam,” said Butler, who noted that FACs are known for showing lots of initiative and racing to the sound of battle, “if you can consider 80 knots racing.” Butler said.

Asked to describe his late comrade-in-arms, Jimmie Butler, who now lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado where Jack’s widow also lives, e-mailed the following statement:

“Talk to vets of ground combat in Vietnam, and many have a story about how they survived some desperate battle, because a FAC showed up in a Bird Dog.

“The VC and their NVA comrades understood that once a FAC arrived, they had better break contact if they could, because help and hurt was on the way.

“Many of you vets reading this tale may have been saved by brave FACs like Jon Thomas Little who found and helped destroy a truck that carried a bullet with your name on it,” wrote Colonel Butler.

After the Vietnam War, Lt. Jack Little returned to Laredo AFB, Texas where he learned to fly T-37s. For the next four years, every student pilot wanted to fly with “Jack the Fac.” Jack’s wife, Jane, gave birth to two children while stationed at Laredo; a daughter named Jenifer and a son named Daxton. From Laredo, Captain Little went to Malstrom AFB, Montana where he served as a Minuteman missile officer. In 1974, Little entered training to fly U-2 spy planes. His career ended prematurely in 1986 when he was medically retired with cancer.

“Jack the FAC,” survived the war in Southeast Asia, but succumbed to cancer 20 years later in 1987. Today, LtCol Jon Thomas Little lies among 65 classmates, 23 of whom were killed in Vietnam, in the cemetery at West Point overlooking the Hudson River waiting for their final roll call.