Skyhooks
The ingenuity of some people really astounds me. Iâve been watching âCrafty Tricks of War”, a programme on BBC2 in which Dick Strawbridge (irrepressible former Army Colonel, Scrapheap Challenge team leader and luxuriantly moustachioed man1) and his friend Diarmud attempt to recreate some ingeniousâand frequently downright whackyâengineering solutions developed during the war2. One of the best ideas featured this week was the Skyhook.
The problem the Skyhook was designed to solve was this: itâs relatively easy to drop military personnel behind enemy lines by parachute from a plane, but how do you get them back out again without being shot down or detected? Large aircraft would be unable to land in most areas, but a landing by any size of aircraft would attract unwelcome attention. In the 1950s, American inventor Robert Edison Fulton Jr. developed and perfected a system originally used to pick up mail bags in the 1920s, and piloted in the Korean War to extract CIA agents from behind enemy lines.
