CIA: Flying Skyhook Wasn't Just For James Bond, It Actually Rescued Agents 123
coondoggie writes "This had to be one hell of a ride. The CIA today said it added a pretty cool item to its museum archives — the instruction card for officers being plucked off the ground by a contraption that would allow a person to be snatched off the ground by a flying aircraft without the plane actually landing."
Is this a surprise? (Score:5, Informative)
They practiced this, pretty regularly at Hurlburt Field, Florida... within view of the general public. Several of the MC-130's were fitted with the catch arms. (It's even had a wikipedia page for awhile now.)
So, yeah, it's cool... but it's hardly new or a secret.
Re:The Unit... (Score:5, Informative)
They showed this extraction method on The Unit. Season 2, episode 1 "Change of Station".
Also, Morgan Freeman used it to get Batman out of China without taking the bat boots off for the TSA.
Re:It's in the Archive so now they use... (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC, the skyhook was featured in "The Green Berets" (1968). I've definitely seen it in some Vietnam War flick. At any rate, when I was in the USAF, as a loadmaster on C-130s, I remember reading about a procedure and rig for the extraction. Definitely a corner case, though, like JATO bottles.
See this in a museum (Score:4, Informative)
You can see a display about this in the Evergreen Avation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. They have an airplane on display with the "catcher" appratus mounted on the nose, and I think they have the other hardware too. (It's been a few years since I went there, and I mostly remember my tour of the Spruce Goose.)
http://www.evergreenmuseum.org/ [evergreenmuseum.org]
They had some other intriguing stuff. I remember a short-range VTOL device that was basically an airplane engine mounted vertically; it sucked air in from the top, blew it out the bottom, and the operator would stand on a ring that circled the outside of the engine. I remember wondering how difficult that might be to fly, since it was too old to have a computer-controlled active stabilisation system. Also, I think I would want to wear hearing and eye protection if I was riding that thing.
steveha
aka Fulton Recovery System (Score:5, Informative)
Many more details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_system [wikipedia.org]
Re:Is this a surprise? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is this a surprise? (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, the Fulton Recovery System - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_system [wikipedia.org]
I get the impression it was similar to ejecting from an aircraft: Yes it worked, yes it was fairly safe, but you only did it if you really had to.
Re:simpler system used 50+ years ago (Score:5, Informative)
You could also lower a (wired) telephone for the person on the ground to discuss things with the aircraft crew, like what stuff needed to be delivered. Phone comes down, ground guy takes/makes call. Phone goes up. Cable with box comes down. Ground guy disconnects the snap. Cable goes back up. Rinse and repeat if you need more than one box.
Fly the aircraft high enough and it looks like a phone, or a box of stuff, is just being lowered by a cable out of the sky with no obvious source. And the craft has to be reasonably high for the cable to be stable, rather than circling, when it's near ground level.
I understand this was used by missionaries in remote locations. I wonder how careful they were to let the congregation know that they were talking to / getting stuff from other missionaries, rather than heaven. B -)
I hear you can also use it to raise (or lower) a guy in a harness.
The main disadvantage compared to skyhook is that the aircraft has to circle the landing zone for a half-hour or so - at radar-visible height. It's there long enough to shoot down, and puts a big target on whom/whatever you were interacting with on the ground. NOT what you want for a black op behind enemy lines. Skyhook just flies an airplane over the target, with nothing to distinguish that spot from anywhere else on the flight path.
Re:It's in the Archive so now they use... (Score:4, Informative)
IIRC, the skyhook was featured in "The Green Berets" (1968).
You are correct: extraction method [youtube.com]