The Weirdest Videos Of Planes Yanking People Into The Sky

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-weirdest...e-s-1713311087

During WWII, American and British military developed a system to retrieve people
following airborne operations, without landing. Then after the war, the
Americans experimented with other ways to pull people aboard a plane in mid air.
Check out some bizarre videos of people being plucked into the sky.

The World War II method of pulling personnel and cargo without landing a plane
involved a pair of poles and a line, but this method wasn’t successful enough
for the U.S. and British military. So in 1950, the US Air Force, the United
States Navy and the CIA tried a different method, involving a weather balloon
and nylon line (capable of holding 4,000 pounds). This in turn led to the
invention of STARS (Fulton surface-to-air recovery system, also called the
Skyhook) by Robert Edison Fulton, Jr. (1909-2004). This system was used by US
Air Force on C-130 Hercules transport aircrafts for almost half a century, until
its retirement in 1996.

A military newsreel from 1944

https://youtu.be/tGAJRAcd-Oo

A test from the 1950s

https://youtu.be/FRu6ZxFAVU8

Retrieving people at Edwards Air Force Base in 1966 and Phang Rang AB in 1968

https://youtu.be/PErEsNhDmo8

A Lockheed MC-130 picks up some cargo using Fulton surface-to-air recovery
system

https://youtu.be/t5GJ4cu311o

But... how does it work?

https://youtu.be/thzKCTk9D38





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