AIR: Human Pickup

Parachute jumping, which titillated county fairgoers 25 years ago, has become routine. Another hair-raising stunt which was once thought too risky even to try may soon become just as routine. The Army Air Forces is now picking men off the ground by plane.

The A.A.F.’s experimenters at Wright Field started working on the stunt four years ago. A plane dangling a nylon rope and a hook on the end of a long pole snatched 50-lb. dummies off the ground. Then a sheep was tried. The first one was hauled into the plane with its neck broken. The process was gentled until experimenters were finally ready to try the trick on a man. Lieut. Alex Doster volunteered.

Bundled in a special harness, lying (in the foetal position, which was thought to be safest) between two poles which held up a nylon loop, Doster watched a Stinson Voyager plane swoop down, suddenly felt himself lifting easily. (“No jerking sensation at all.”) A winch pulled him up into the belly of the plane.

Since then the A.A.F. has found the pickup just the ticket for rescuing stranded soldiers from rubber boats, jungles, remote islands. Pickup gear—ropes, poles, harness —is dropped first. The man below then sets up his rig, waits confidently for the plane to come back, hook on and whisk him away. The A.A.F. is already experimenting with fast-flying combat planes to replace the slow-flying put-puts now used for the job.