How to pick up airmen and sheep

[Anonymous]

MAN PICKUP: A SECRET WORLD WAR II PILOT RESCUE MANUAL
by Michael Ravnitzky

During World War II, a dedicated bunch of engineers and aviators developed a
means of rescuing pilots downed in enemy territory.

This rescue device used a "trapeze" system invented in the 1930s to allow airplanes to snatch gliders off the ground, which itself was based on a system invented by a Pennsylvania dentist in the 1920s as a way to pick up parcels from the ground with an airplane. The dentist went on to start a company called All-American Aviation which won contracts to service mail stations along dangerous mountain routes using this method.

The first "volunteers" to test the device were sheep, picked up in July 1943. After a number of sheep trials were successfully completed, the first manned pickup occurred on September 5, 1943, when Lt. Alexis Doster was retrieved near Wright Field near Dayton, Ohio.

According to Harry C. Conway, an engineer on the project and the third man to be picked up from the ground, the system was used in China and Burma toward the end of World War II, and later in Korea. (An air-droppable version of the system was also used by the British to extract operatives from occupied Europe during World War II.)

However, a CIA history says that the first operational use of the system came in February 1944, when a C-47 snagged a glider in a remote location in Burma and returned it to India.

More, and the scanned document, here.

 

[SoundDust]

just a thought, from looking at the photo, but I wonder if any planes crashed after snagging the wire on trees/buildings?

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

I've seen the more common one in films, etc. where the send up a balloon which gets grabbe at altitude but this does seem much more hazardous.

Emps

 

[Anonymous]

I've seen the more common one in films, etc. where the send up a balloon which gets grabbe at altitude but this does seem much more hazardous.

Emps

In..a james bond film..at the end bond and girl are adrift in a raft and a coastguard plane (looks like flying fortress to me).. with big Y shaped arms on nose catches a line and houists them up ... was it Doctor No?

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Fulton's Skyhook

Ah yes thats not what I was thinking of though (which was possibly a John Wayne Vietnam film where they have to get in and get some important person out and the extract them rapidly). This is the kind of thing I was thinking of:

They also started experiments with insertion/extraction by helicopter. Jumping from a moving helicopter into the water or rapelling like mountain climbers to the ground. Experimentation developed a system for emergency extraction by plane called "Skyhook." Skyhook utilized a large helium balloon and cable rig with harness. A special grabbing device on the nose of a C-130 enabled a pilot to snatch the cable tethered to the balloon and lift a person off the ground. Once airborne the crew would winch the cable in and retrieve the SEAL though the back of the aircraft. This technique was discontinued for training purposes after the death of a SEAL in Coronado on a training lift. The Teams still utilze the Fulton skyhook for equipment extraction and retain the capability for war if an extreme situation requires it.

http://www.ranger95.com/special_forces/SEALs.html

Which led to finds like:

http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/95unclass/Leary.html

Some pics of the kit:

http://www.thedogtag.com/FG-009.htm

[edit: I suspect the John Wayne film is "The Green Berets" (1968):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063035/ ]

[edit: Yep:

The film then embarks on a plot in which Wayne infiltrates a commando team armed with drug tipped arrows and crossbows deep into enemy territory. Sneaking into the general's bedroom, the Green Berets drug him and pack him off in a body bag to a rendezvous where he is lofted on high by a helium balloon and whisked away by an American airplane dragging a hook.

http://www.hfac.uh.edu/mintz/lec13.htm

Watch as the general is carried away on the balloon caught by the C130, he was sitting down before the balloon is caught and amazingly he manages to hold this rigid sitting position even while dangling in mid air. That couldn't be a dummy, could it?.

http://www.continuitycorner.com/Gfilm/00223.htm ]

Emps

 

[Anonymous]

The baloon rescue version was described in a Vietnam War novel called Storm Flight by Mark Berent.

 

[Anonymous]

The webpage goes on to mention a more high-tech usage of this technique.

This ground to air pickup technology was later used by the United States Air Force to retrieve hundreds of reconnaissance satellite space capsules in mid-air during the 1960s and 1970s in the Corona and successor programs.

I've managed to find a photo of this "catch a falling star" trick here.
http://www.hrw.com/science/si-science/earth/spacetravel/spacerace/SpaceRace/sec400/img/432l1p1.jpg

Absolutely bonkers.

 

[Philo_T]

Fortis:
I've seen film of a pickup from the Corona program. There was a program on Corona on one of those channels that regularly shows airporn, like Discovery Wings or maybe the History channel.

[edit:] Here's a picture of a C-119 "Flying Boxcar" retrieving a Corona capsule.

and FAS has a good summary of Corona - with visual aids.

 

[Anonymous]

Maybe I'll catch some evening while flicking through the channels.

 

[chris_in_LA]

I have this book, "Project Coldfeet", by the Naval Institute Press where the US finds an abondoned Soviet ice station on an Arctic ice floe. The station has all kinds of cool stuff, so the CIA has this guy who parachutes down, grabs a bunch of booty, and gets picked up with the Fulton Skyhook deployed from a B-17. It's pretty crazy- all sorts of low-speed low-altitude aerobatics in Arctic weather conditions. A pretty exciting read! It happened in the early 1960s. Imagine the stuff they can do now!

 

[raven186]

hmmm...

You know - I thought this thread was going to be about something else.

Ho hum, back to more mundane ideas for my social life...

 

[tuckeg]

In movie version of Ice Station Zebra, the film was going to be picked up in a similar manner by the Ruskies but Rock Hudson triggered the booby trap and destroyed it. Can't recall if a similar device was used in the book but I don't think so. I also saw film of human tests and it looked like a fantastic ride.