What makes Terry’s ejection story unusual is what happened to Jon Lister about a month before Terry’s incident. Captain Jon Lister and Captain Jim Barron were ferrying two aircraft from U-Tapao, Thailand back to their home base (then Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona). Their first stop was Guam, about an eight-hour flight. The aircraft departed about five minutes apart and both were climbing above 65,000 feet. A KC-135 tanker was escorting the two ferries. The tanker was carrying the two relief pilots who would take over in Guam for Lister and Barron. Also aboard the tanker were maintenance personnel, spare parts and supplies.
An hour and thirty minutes into the flight, the control column in Lister’s airplane slammed forward causing the plane to porpoise (go up and down). Lister disengaged the autopilot, pulled back on the throttle, and tried to pull the control column back. It wouldn’t budge. The airplane pitched over and started spinning out of control. Lister was able to make one radio transmission, “out of control, upside down, and spinning,” he said. The last thing he remembered was reaching for the eject handle. As he left the airplane, something hit him in the forehead, cracking the face shield of his helmet and knocking him unconscious.
Lister fell more than 50,000 feet at a speed of over 600 miles per hour. For reasons unknown, the drogue chute, which was supposed to slow and stabilize him down to 15,000, did not deploy. He was in a free-fall more than three minutes before his main chute opened at 15,000 feet. He came down, still unconscious, in the Gulf of Siam. He was fortunate to be wearing a self-inflating life preserver. Without it, he probably would have drowned that night before regaining consciousness. When he did come to, he climbed into his raft. After Lister ejected, immediate search and rescue was initiated. A fisherman about 30 miles east of Pattani, a village north of the Malaysian border, picked him up. He was drifting in the Gulf for eight hours before being rescued.
That afternoon, a rescue helicopter arrived and took him back to his old base at Nakhon Phanom. From there he took a C-130 to U-Tapao where his support crew gave him a hero’s welcome. Once back in the states, Lister was transferred, against his wishes, out of the U-2 squadron; even though the problem was in the airplane, not the pilot. He stayed in the Air Force until the end. He died of cancer in May 1987 and was buried on Memorial Day at his alma mater, West Point.
Chapter 13
One of the several U-2 pilots who had attended my solo party in 1977 was Dave Harrison. Dave did me the honor of dropping the U-2 pin into the yard of beer. Dave was an USAF Academy graduate and a very experienced pilot. He had been to every overseas location more than once. Dave was married to a beautiful woman and had two great kids. He deployed to Akrotiri Royal Air Base in Cyprus in November 1977. On December 7, 1977, Dave took off, fully fueled, for a photo recon mission over the Sinai. He attempted a tight turn after takeoff but it turned out to be too tight. As the airplane rolled into the turn, Dave realized he had too much bank so he tried to roll out. Due to the steep bank angle, his ailerons had stalled. The airplane would not respond to his inputs and roll out; the bank angle only increased. Dave stayed with the airplane hoping he could save it but he was doomed. The airplane crashed into a radar shack on the side of the runway killing Dave along with the senior meteorological officer and four locally employed assistants.
Dave was on my mind when I received my assignment to Cyprus in December 1978, one year after his accident. I read the accident report but found it hard to believe that this highly intelligent and experienced pilot could get himself into an unrecoverable position. The aileron stall he experienced was something I had never heard about before his accident. Other U-2 pilots were all unfamiliar with it, too. But we all learned from it and sharp turns after takeoff stopped after Dave’s accident.
I was touring the runway facilities at Akrotiri soon after my arrival. The crash site was still plainly visible. The site was littered with baseball-sized rocks. I poked around in these rocks and saw something. I had found a piece of Dave’s airplane about three inches square. I still have that piece and keep it as a reminder to fly within the limits, both my own and those of the airplane. There’s an old aviation saying that I have lived by in my aviation career: “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots; but there are no old, bold pilots.”
I had been looking forward to this Cyprus rotation since I joined the squadron. Everything about this place was beautiful — the weather, the food, and the flying. Cyprus is a beautiful green gem set in the blue Mediterranean. It is officially known as the Republic of Cyprus and is the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean. Earliest human activity on the island can be traced to the 10th millennium B.C.. Greek culture dominated the island after its conquest by Alexander the Great in 333 B.C. The island was placed under British administration in 1878, and eventually gained its independence in 1960. The British, however, retained control of two areas of the island, Akrotiri and Dhekelia. These two areas were known as sovereign base areas.
In 1974, violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots prompted a Turkish invasion, resulting in a partition of the island. The Turks took over the north and the Greeks, the south. RAF Akrotiri is located on the southernmost tip of the island, just south of the city of Limassol.
The U-2 presence on the base was well known but unacknowledged by all. We did not wear our uniforms on base, strictly civilian clothes for us. Since we were westerners without a British accent, people knew immediately what we were doing there. We had one airplane, three pilots, and an operations officer. When the airplane wasn’t flying it remained in a hangar out of the public view.
Our mission was photo reconnaissance. We rarely had a cancellation because of the great weather. Our job seemed simple. All the nations involved in the Middle East conflict, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria had agreed to allow U-2 overflights in order to verify that no one nation was cheating on the peace agreement. Our flights would verify, for example, that Egypt wasn’t moving tanks across the Sinai, or that Israel wasn’t placing artillery pieces into the Golan Heights. Satellites also kept an eye on things but satellite schedules could become known. Our missions were top secret and randomly scheduled. No one ever knew when we were coming.
Our typical track took us south out of Akrotiri, all the way across the Sinai, then northeast along the Jordan-Israel border. We then crossed over Syria, Lebanon, and back around to Cyprus. The flight took about two hours, but it was seldom boring. It seemed that every time I flew this mission, a different group tried to shoot me down. One time the Egyptian Air Force scrambled interceptors after me; they didn’t get close. Then it was the Israelis turn. They scrambled U.S. made F-15s after me. They didn’t reach me either, but they got closer than the Egyptians. My highest pucker factor occurred thanks to the Syrians. The Syrians didn’t launch aircraft to intercept me but they did track me with SAM missiles. They never did fire a missile but they did have my full attention. Keep in mind, all these countries knew who we were and why we were there and all had agreed to let us overfly them.
While the flying weather in Cyprus was unbeatable, our non-flying activities were just as good. The Brits had an active social calendar of parties and dinners. They treated us like family and we all got along wonderfully as long as we didn’t talk about work. Our social philosophy was a variation on the Russian peasants’ lament about their communist overlords: “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” Ours was: “ We pretended not to be there and they pretended not to see us.”