Fulton surface-to-air recovery system

[1] Snatch pick-up did not use a balloon, but a line stretched between a pair of poles set in the ground on either side of the person or glider to be retrieved.

Using a weather balloon, nylon line, and weights of 10 to 15 pounds (4.5 to 6.8 kg), Fulton made numerous pickup attempts as he sought to develop a reliable procedure.

Based at El Centro, California, he conducted numerous flights over the Colorado Desert using a Navy P-2V Neptune.

The ground system could be dropped from an aircraft and contained the necessary equipment for a pickup, including a harness, for cargo or a person, attached to 500 feet (150 m) of high-strength, braided nylon line and a dirigible-shaped balloon inflated by a helium bottle.

Later the US Navy tested the Fulton system fitted to modified S-2 Tracker carrier-based antisubmarine patrol aircraft for use in rescuing downed pilots.

The CIA had secretly trained Special Activities Division paramilitary officers to use a predecessor system for human pickups as early as 1952.

CIA paramilitary officers John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau, themselves hurriedly trained in the procedure during the week of 24 November, were to recover a courier who was in contact with anti-communist sympathizers in the area.

The mission failed when Chinese forces downed the aircraft with small arms fire, capturing survivors Downey and Fecteau.

[3] The first human pickup using Fulton's STARS took place on 12 August 1958, when Staff Sergeant Levi W. Woods of the U.S. Marine Corps was winched on board the Neptune.

After the initial contact, which was described by one individual as similar to "a kick in the pants",[5] the person rose vertically at a slow rate to about 100 ft (30 m), then began to streamline behind the aircraft.

Edward A. Rodgers, commander of the Naval Air Development Unit, flew a Skyhook-equipped P2V to Point Barrow, Alaska, to conduct pickup tests under the direction of Dr. Max Brewer, head of the Navy's Arctic Research Laboratory.

With Fulton on board to monitor the equipment, the Neptune picked up mail from Floating Ice Island T-3, also known as Fletcher's Ice Island, retrieved artifacts, including mastodon tusks, from an archaeological party on the tundra, and secured geological samples from Peters Lake Camp.

On 26 April 1982, SFC Clifford Wilson Strickland was picked up by a Lockheed MC-130 Combat Talon of the 7th Special Operations Squadron at CFB Lahr, Germany, during Flintlock 82 exercise, using the Fulton STARS recovery system, but fell to his death due to a failed bushing at the top of the left yoke pivot bolt.