{"id":6570152,"date":"2026-07-21T18:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T16:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/?p=6570152"},"modified":"2026-08-24T16:55:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T14:55:01","slug":"fulton-skyhook-surface-to-air-recovery-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/it\/fulton-skyhook-surface-to-air-recovery-system\/","title":{"rendered":"The Balloon That Yanked People Off the Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style><\/p>\r\n<p>The test subject was a pig. It was chosen because its nervous system is close enough to a human's for the results to mean something, and because nobody was quite willing to find out the other way first.<\/p>\r\n<p>The pig was harnessed to a nylon line, a helium balloon lifted the line five hundred feet into the air, and an aircraft flew into it at 125 miles an hour. The pig was snatched off the ground, spun violently, and winched aboard in one piece. Disoriented but unhurt, it recovered its composure and attacked the crew.<\/p>\r\n<p>This is not a tall tale. It is in the CIA's own in-house journal, and the system it was testing went on to pull two men off a Soviet ice station in the Arctic.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background: #f5f5f5; padding: 20px 24px; margin: 24px 0; border-radius: 8px;\">\r\n<p style=\"margin: 0 0 12px; font-weight: bold; font-size: 17px; color: #222;\">Informazioni rapide<\/p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.6;\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Sistema<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">The Fulton surface-to-air recovery system, STARS \u2014 universally known as Skyhook<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Inventore<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">Robert Edison Fulton Jr. (1909\u20132004), who as a young man rode a motorcycle 40,000 miles through 32 countries<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Development<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">Began 1950 with weather balloons and small weights; funded by the Office of Naval Research; system finalised 1958<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Ground kit<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">A harness, 500 ft of braided nylon rated at 4,000 lb, a helium bottle and a dirigible-shaped balloon<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>On the aircraft<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">Two 30 ft tubular steel horns spread at 70 degrees, plus deflector cables running nose to wingtips to protect the propellers<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>First human pickup<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">12 August 1958 \u2014 Staff Sergeant Levi W. Woods, USMC, recovered by a Navy P2V Neptune<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>First operational use<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">Operation Coldfeet, June 1962: two men recovered from abandoned Soviet drift station NP 8 at 83\u00b0N by a CIA-operated B-17<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Service life<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">Fitted to C-130 variants and the C-123 from 1965. AFSOC stopped maintaining the capability in September 1996<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>On screen<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">Thunderball (1965), The Green Berets (1968) and The Dark Knight (2008)<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">How you pick a man off the ground at 125 mph<\/h2>\r\n<p>The obvious objection is that it should kill you. It does not, and the reason is geometry.<\/p>\r\n<p>The line does not snap taut horizontally. It is vertical, held up by the balloon, and the aircraft catches it in a V-shaped yoke on the nose. The person on the ground is lifted almost straight up before being accelerated forward, which spreads the load over a couple of seconds rather than delivering it all at once.<\/p>\r\n<p>Fulton's testers reported it produced less shock than a parachute opening. The initial contact was described as feeling like a kick in the pants; you then rise about a hundred feet, streamline out behind the aircraft, and get winched in. Start to finish, roughly six minutes.<\/p>\r\n<p>The hardest engineering problem was not the line or the balloon. Fulton considered the sky anchor \u2014 the locking device that grabs the line and holds it against the aircraft \u2014 the most demanding part of the entire development.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin: 0 0 24px; width: 100%;\"><img data-opt-id=1622142855  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: auto; max-width: 100%; display: block; border-radius: 6px;\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/mc-130e-combat-talon-fulton-nose-yoke.jpg\" alt=\"Close-up of the V-shaped Fulton recovery yoke fitted to the nose of an MC-130E Combat Talon\" width=\"1024\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" \/>\r\n<figcaption style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: 6px; font-style: italic;\">The business end: the V-shaped yoke on the nose of an MC-130E Combat Talon. The cables running back to the wingtips deflect the line away from the propellers. US Air Force \/ public domain<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">Coldfeet<\/h2>\r\n<p>In 1961 the Americans found an abandoned Soviet Arctic drift station and realised there was intelligence sitting on the ice \u2014 equipment, documents, acoustic gear used for submarine detection. The problem was straightforward: you can parachute people in, but there is no runway, no ship, and nothing to get them out again.<\/p>\r\n<p>Skyhook was the answer. A CIA proprietary airline, Intermountain Aviation, fitted a B-17 with Fulton gear at Marana, Arizona.<\/p>\r\n<p>On 28 May 1962, Major James Smith of the US Air Force \u2014 a paratrooper and Russian linguist \u2014 and Lieutenant Leonard LeSchack of the Naval Reserve, an Antarctic geophysicist, jumped onto Soviet station NP 8 at 83 degrees north. They had 72 hours.<\/p>\r\n<p>Getting them back took three attempts. The first failed. A second search on 1 June found nothing. Conditions were grey ice under grey cloud with no discernible horizon and a 30-knot surface wind, at the very edge of what Skyhook could handle.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background: #f8f9fa; border-left: 4px solid #5C91FF; padding: 20px 22px; margin: 18px 0 24px; border-radius: 0 8px 8px 0; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.7; display: flex; gap: 20px; align-items: flex-start;\">\r\n<div><em>\u201cI was instantly in a situation what could be imagined as flying in a void\u201d<\/em>\r\n<div style=\"margin-top: 10px; font-size: 14px; color: #555;\"><strong>Connie W. Seigrist<\/strong> \u2014 CIA-contract pilot, Intermountain Aviation, flying the Skyhook B-17 over the Arctic ice<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n<p>The following morning they got it done. The cargo went first \u2014 150 pounds of film, documents and samples \u2014 then LeSchack, then Smith. The best pickup took six and a half minutes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background: #f8f9fa; border-left: 4px solid #1565c0; padding: 20px 22px; margin: 18px 0 24px; border-radius: 0 8px 8px 0; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.7; display: flex; gap: 20px; align-items: flex-start;\">\r\n<div><em>\u201cThe line made contact on the outer portion of the left horn. It just hung there for what to me was an eternity\u201d<\/em>\r\n<div style=\"margin-top: 10px; font-size: 14px; color: #555;\"><strong>Connie W. Seigrist<\/strong> \u2014 On making contact with the line carrying Maj. James Smith<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin: 0 0 24px; width: 100%;\"><img data-opt-id=1963057490  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: auto; max-width: 100%; display: block; border-radius: 6px;\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/fulton-skyhook-cia-pickup-instruction-card.jpg\" alt=\"CIA Museum pictorial instruction card showing the Fulton Skyhook pickup sequence\" width=\"1024\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" \/>\r\n<figcaption style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: 6px; font-style: italic;\">The pictorial instruction card issued to whoever was about to be picked up. No text was needed \u2014 and arguably none would have helped. CIA Museum \/ public domain<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">Three systems that keep getting confused<\/h2>\r\n<p>Skyhook has accumulated a folklore that mixes in operations it had nothing to do with, so it is worth separating them.<\/p>\r\n<p>Before Fulton there was the All American glider-snatch system: two poles, a transfer line and a grapple, no balloon at all. It made the first human pickup in September 1943.<\/p>\r\n<p>The disastrous 1952 CIA mission over Manchuria \u2014 in which a C-47 was shot down, two pilots killed and two officers captured and held for two decades \u2014 used that earlier system, not Fulton's. Skyhook did not exist yet. Popular accounts merge the two constantly.<\/p>\r\n<p>Fulton's STARS proper dates from 1958, and the Coldfeet recovery is its unambiguous operational success.<\/p>\r\n<p>It was not risk-free. Wikipedia records one fatality, in April 1982 at CFB Lahr in Germany, attributed to a failed bushing in the yoke pivot \u2014 though that passage carries no citation and should be treated with care.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">Why it went away<\/h2>\r\n<p>Not because it stopped working. Because helicopters got better.<\/p>\r\n<p>By the 1990s, long-range special operations helicopters with aerial refuelling could go and physically land where a Skyhook aircraft would once have had to make a high-speed pass at a balloon. The helicopter option is slower and more vulnerable, but it does not require the person on the ground to assemble a balloon, inflate it with helium, put on a harness and then sit still while an aircraft flies at them.<\/p>\r\n<p>AFSOC retired the capability in September 1996. What remains is one of the strangest problems anyone ever solved in aviation, and the only recovery method in history that was tested on a pig and worked well enough to be used against the Soviet Union.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; margin: 24px 0;\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: 0; border-radius: 8px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/l44azsktXT4\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-no-lazy=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size: 14px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: -8px; font-style: italic;\">Archival film of a Skyhook extraction being demonstrated, on the official US Army special operations history channel.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; margin: 24px 0;\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: 0; border-radius: 8px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7dU9JntKuh0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-no-lazy=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size: 14px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: -8px; font-style: italic;\">The Fulton system in service on the MC-130 Hercules.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; margin: 24px 0;\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: 0; border-radius: 8px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UsTIeZ03Hk8\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-no-lazy=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size: 14px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: -8px; font-style: italic;\">Archival footage of Skyhook pickups, including the balloon rigging and the moment of contact.<\/p>\r\n<p><em>Sources: William M. Leary, \u201cRobert Fulton\u2019s Skyhook and Operation Coldfeet\u201d, Studies in Intelligence Vol. 38 No. 5, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence; CIA Museum; Wikipedia.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background: #f0f4ff; border-left: 4px solid #5C91FF; padding: 16px 20px; margin: 32px 0 8px; border-radius: 0 8px 8px 0;\">\r\n<p style=\"margin: 0 0 8px; font-weight: 600; color: #333;\">Post correlati<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"margin: 4px 0;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/it\/operazione-credibile-razzo-sportivo-c-130-stadio-di-teheran\/\">L&#039;Hercules a propulsione a razzo, progettato per atterrare in uno stadio.<\/a><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"margin: 4px 0;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/it\/constant-peg-red-eagles-secret-migs\/\">I MiG segreti del deserto del Nevada<\/a><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"margin: 4px 0;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/it\/un-1-skyraider-zar-sabbioso-vietnam-bernard-fisher\/\">\u00c8 atterrato nel bel mezzo di una battaglia<\/a><\/p>\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They tested it on a pig, which arrived unhurt and immediately attacked the crew. Then they used it to pull two men off a Soviet ice station at 83 degrees north.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":6569160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6570152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Fulton Skyhook: Snatching People Off the Ground<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Tested on a pig, then used to pull two men off a Soviet Arctic ice station. 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