wrote:
Howdy folks,
I was browsing the web and came upon this odd photograph of the Piper
Cub strung on wires above the ground. Apparently it was used to launch
aircraft and catch them without landing/takeoff.

Here's the pictu
http://www.ww2incolor.com/gallery/us...ipercub_brodie

Anyone seen that before? Was it practical? Did they actuallly use it?

Scanned from "Mr Piper and His Cubs" Devon Francis,Iowa State Press - a
interesting book if you want the Cub's history:

"...It was at the invasion of Okinawa, which had to be neutralized lo
permit the use of the air forces' mightiest bombers on the Japanese home
islands, that the virtuosity of the lightplane reached a new high. Back
at Fort Sill, Capt. Tony Piper had experimented with as nmty-yet
workable-an idea as ever was inflicted on pilots.
Known as the "Brodie Device," and named not for the man who jumped off
the Brooklyn Bridge but for an army lieutenant named James Brodie who
pushed for it, it was engineered to permit an L-4 to take off from and
land on a cable strung between a brace of stan*chions. The airplane with
a hook at (he center of gravity atop the wing was mounted in a heavy
nylon sling that dangled from a trolley on the cable. To take off, an
L-4 pilot opened his throttle, sped down the cable, and yanked a lanyard
to free his hook. Landing, he jock*eyed his plane to engage the hook in
the sling.
Tony Piper was one of the first to try out the Brodie Device. Curious
about what reduction in drag would result from removing the landing
gear, he flew off and on the Brodie without wheels-naturally without
authority. The risk was not in an accident. It
was in all the explaining that he would have to do if he crashed the
airplane. The Brodie, happily, worked.
For Okinawa, army artillery had heen set up in the adjoining Keraina
ReUo Islands to shell the Japanese defenses. It needed pho*tography and
air observation, but the Keramas had no suitable area for a landing
strip. The Brodie Device had been installed on some LSTs. The first such
ship, in tact, to be outfitted with it was chris*tened the USS Brodie.
The pilols were ready. They had been schooled by Lt. Earl B. Montgomery,
a pilot with the 77th Infantry Division Artillery.
Brodie cuds zeroed-in the rounds from the Keramas onto the Okinawa
Japanese. Not a pilot or airplane was lost.
Joe E. Brown, the comic, flew in Cubs to entertain the troops. So did
comedian Bob Hope, ("A Cub," wrote Hope in a newspaper column, "is a
Mustang [fighter] that wouldn't eat its cereal.") So did Ernie Pyle. He
flew off a Brodie to his last assignment, a rendezvous with a sniper's
bullet on le Shima."