He volunteered for a third tour, and in 1971 returned to the Southeast Asian theater-this time as commander of the 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron-the famed Triple Nickel. and transitioned to the F-4 Phantom-among the Vietnam era’s most iconic aircraft. Senate that America was not winning the war in Vietnam.Īfter two tours of duty, Kittinger returned to the U.S. In 1964, accompanied by a contingent of his fellow combat pilots, Kittinger testified before the U.S. Its value as a morale-booster, however, was indisputable. Whether or not Kittinger’s tactic resulted in enemy casualties remains unknown. During his time with the air commandos, Kittinger pioneered the use of the beer bottle as a weapon of war-loading his Marauder’s bomb bay with empties and dumping them from low altitude. Among the outfit’s aims was the interdiction of freight traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail-a storied, if not idyllic thoroughfare linking Laos and North Vietnam. involvement in Southeast Asia, flew counterinsurgency missions in Martin B-26 Marauders (later designated A-26s). The air commandos, during the early years of U.S. In 1963 Kittinger volunteered to serve in the USAF’s First Special Operations wing-known informally as the air commandos-and was promptly deployed to Vietnam. In short-order, bearing fresh test pilot credentials, Kittinger found himself at New Mexico’s Holloman Air Force Base, flying chase airplanes in furtherance of research endeavors that would, in a few years’ time, give rise to America’s Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo enterprises. Notwithstanding the commencement of a lifelong love-affair with North American’s P-51 Mustang, postwar garrison duty in Europe held limited appeal for Kittinger, whose zeal for precipices prompted him to enroll in the U.S. Trained as a fighter pilot, Kittinger-a Florida native-began his Air Force career flying specimens of America’s last generation of reciprocating-engined warplanes around West Germany. Such a story would mark the literal and figurative apogees of most lives, but Joe Kittinger’s was a wondrous, often wild, eminently admirable life punctuated in equal parts by academia, adrenaline, peril, and unwavering patriotism. Eisenhower personally presented Kittinger with the Harmon Trophy-an award honoring the world’s outstanding aviator, aviatrix, or aeronaut. The following month, during a ceremony at the White House, President Dwight D. At 14,000 feet, Captain Kittinger deployed his 28-foot main parachute and-in addition to setting records for the highest parachute jump and longest free-fall the world had yet seen-provided the Air Force data that would help save the lives of innumerable pilots compelled by misfortune to eject from high-speed, high-altitude jets. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger-kitted out in a pressure-suit and a specially constructed and rigged parachute-boarded a gondola tethered to a helium balloon, ascended to 102,800-feet above the New Mexico desert-and jumped.ĭuring the ensuing four-minute 36-second free-fall, Kittinger’s body accelerated to 614-miles-per-hour-0.80 Mach-and endured temperatures approaching negative-one-hundred-degrees Fahrenheit.
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