On 8 June 2011, Gary Sinise strapped into the back seat of a two-seat U-2 at Beale Air Force Base in California, sealed inside a pressure suit, and climbed to 70,000 feet. Down below, America knew him as Lieutenant Dan, the bitter, legless veteran of Forrest Gump. Up there, for a few minutes, he was something else: one of the highest people on the planet.

Fifteen years later Sinise is in the news again for a very different milestone. On Sunday 27 September 2026, his Lt. Dan Band played Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island, the 50th and last US state the band had not yet performed in. It is a good moment to look back at the flight, and at the four decades of showing up for troops that led to it.

Seventy Thousand Feet Over California

Flying in a U-2 is not something you simply book. The day before his flight, Sinise went through the same preparation as a new crew member: altitude chamber training, ejection and escape training, and a fitting and briefing on the U-2 flight suit, the full pressure suit without which nobody survives at that altitude. He was briefed by the commander of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, Brig. Gen. Paul McGillicuddy, and flew with a pilot from the wing’s 1st Reconnaissance Squadron, the unit that trains every U-2 pilot.

The aircraft was a TU-2S, the two-seat trainer version of the U-2 Dame Dragon, with a second, raised cockpit behind the first. From 70,000 feet the sky overhead turns dark blue to black and the curvature of the Earth becomes visible. General Aviation News reported that fewer than 1,000 people had made that flight in more than 50 years.

Eight years later to the day, Sinise marked the anniversary on social media and finally named the man in the front seat.

The flight became a documentary. High Flight: A Voyage to the Edge of Infinity, directed by Jon Tennyson with music by Bill Brown, follows the training at Beale, interviews U-2 crews and rides along to 70,000 feet. The Gary Sinise Foundation released it on DVD in 2013, with the proceeds going to its programmes, and it premiered on US television in May 2014. The foundation has since put the whole film online.

Not Just a Passenger

The U-2 was not Sinise’s only ride. In 2017, after survival training at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, he flew in the back of an F/A-18 Super Hornet and made an arrested landing on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. Years earlier he had landed on USS Ronald Reagan while it was operating in the Persian Gulf, and went up to the bridge. What stayed with him was not the ship but the crew.

From Lieutenant Dan to the Lt. Dan Band

Sinise’s connection to the military predates Hollywood fame. In Newport this September he explained where it started.

Playing Lieutenant Dan in 1994 made him instantly recognisable to veterans, and he became a regular on USO tours. In 2003 he formed a cover band to play for troops and named it after the character people kept calling him by. The Lt. Dan Band played its first show at Naval Station Great Lakes, near Chicago, in November 2003, and went on its first overseas USO tour, to South Korea, Singapore and Diego Garcia, in February 2004. By September 2025 it had played 600 shows.

The last three states fell in a single week this September: New Hampshire on 24 September, Vermont’s Camp Johnson on 25 September and, on 27 September, Naval Station Newport. Rain moved the Newport concert indoors to Kay Hall, and Sinise was handed a dog tag engraved “RI 50”.

The Foundation

Sinise founded the Gary Sinise Foundation in 2011, the year of his U-2 flight. It raised more than $300 million in its first decade, and its revenue for the year to March 2026 was about $100 million. Its best-known programme, R.I.S.E., builds specially adapted, mortgage-free smart homes for severely wounded veterans; the 100th was dedicated on 19 November 2025 to retired Sgt. 1st Class Joe Bowser in Cedar Hill, Tennessee. The foundation says 90 percent of its spending goes to programmes; independent evaluators put the figure at around 85 to 86 percent, which still earns it top ratings.

The honours followed. President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal in December 2008. The Navy made him an honorary Chief Petty Officer in August 2012, and a year later the Marine Corps made him an honorary Marine. He has never served in uniform.

What the Viral Posts Get Wrong

Sinise’s story is now a staple of social media, and some of the numbers that circulate do not hold up. The Lt. Dan Band was formed in 2003, not 2004; 2004 was its first overseas tour. The often-repeated tally of 174 military bases and 21 military hospitals visited since 2003 appears in his Wikipedia biography without a source, and we could not trace it to the foundation or to any official count. Likewise, a cumulative total of more than $400 million raised is plausible but we found no published figure for it; the last sourced total is “over $300 million” for 2011 to 2021. The U-2 flight, the quotes and the 50-state milestone are all on the record.

Sources: US Air Force, “Lt. Dan flies high” (June 2011); Code One magazine; General Aviation News (7 January 2013); Gary Sinise Foundation (High Flight release, financials, band history); Gary Sinise on X (8 June 2019); USO, “Gary Sinise on Patrol” (11 March 2009); Rhode Island Monthly (28 September 2026); RI News Today (1 October 2026); WCAX; NewsChannel 5 Nashville; CharityWatch; Charity Navigator; DVIDS; White House archives (Presidential Citizens Medal, 2008)