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.
The systemâlike many of the best ideasâis rather elegantly simple. The personnel parachute from the aircraft into the drop zone in the normal way. Then, when they are ready to be picked up, the pilot drops (also by parachute) a package of harnesses, ropes and a big helium balloon. The paras get into the harnesses, and release the balloon on the end of a long rope. The skyhook aircraft has a V-shaped metal structure mounted on the nose, and manoeuvres so as to âcatchâ the rope hanging below the balloon. What happens next is that the paras hurtle sky-wards in a particularly violent-looking manner. If I had to choose one word to describe this moment, it would be yoink. Once they are off the ground, flapping around behind the aircraft like pants on a snapped washing line in a gale, they get slowly winched into the fuselage.
Apparently, the paras who got âhookedâ thought it was quite gentle, but this is obviously some meaning of the word gentle of which I wasnât previously aware. It did look like fun, though, and was even funnier when Dick and Diarmud recreated it with a petrol-driven scale model of a B-17 picking up Action Man from the tarmac. They didnât bother with the winch, so Action Man had a somewhat bumpy landing under the wheels of the B-17.
1 Catchphrase: âJust buzz it off with the sozzle!”. No, I donât know what it means, either.
2 Much of the most interesting TV in recent weeks has involved warfare in some way. I hope that this is a coincidence.
1
Note to self: if I ever have a mid-life crisis, I will not buy a roofless red sports car to pick up young girls. Instead, I'll try to participate in Operation Skyhook. Girls must love that...----- By the way. I feel sorry for the sheep mentioned in the article on "Operation Skyhook"
by AP @ 22/01/2004 9:01 pm • Permalink •
2
AP: No, keep that open-top sports car, and get Skyhooked out of it - that would be waaay cooler. And yes, poor sheep. Imagine what it might have been thinking. "Mmmm. Grass. Hey there's some weird reedy stuff around my body. And a round type thing in the sky, but it isn't the sun. Mmmm. Grass." Yoink! "Where did the grass go?"
by bsag @ 22/01/2004 10:02 pm • Permalink •
3
& i'm thinking they meant gentle as compared to jumping out and hitting the ground
by stacy @ 23/01/2004 12:02 am • Permalink •
4
I rather liked the plane-that-became-a-car invented by the same man as the Skyhook.
by Caitlin @ 23/01/2004 11:01 am • Permalink •
5
Speaking of things that morph into a car, how about the Aquada?
www.aquada.co.uk
Looks really nice to me... Not that I'll buy one - I'm waiting for someone to invent a plane-becomes-a-car-becomes-a-boat-sort-of-thing.
by AP @ 23/01/2004 12:01 pm • Permalink •
6
Lets have more info and PICS of this highly entertaining and "EXTREMELY WELL TACHED MAN" all the best from Clive
by Clive Butcher @ 04/02/2004 11:02 pm • Permalink •
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