The Fulton surface-to-air recovery system was a genuine military "skyhook" technology that enabled aircraft to retrieve personnel from the ground without landing by snagging a line attached to a large balloon. A C-130 Hercules aircraft would rapidly snatch the person into the air and bring them safely aboard. | History In Pictures

The Fulton Skyhook, officially known as the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system (STARS), was developed in the 1950s by inventor Robert Edison Fulton Jr. to solve the problem of extracting personnel or cargo from hostile or inaccessible areas without landing an aircraft. The system used a helium balloon to raise a line into the air, which could then be snagged by a specially equipped aircraft flying overhead. A V-shaped yoke on the plane’s nose would catch the line, and a winch would reel in th

#OTD 1 Dec 1984 at Edwards - NASA test pilot Fitzhugh “Fitz” Fulton crash-landed a Boeing 720 airliner onto the east shore of Rogers Dry Lake by remote control. The event was the climax of a project by NASA and the FAA called the Controlled Impact Demonstration which was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a flame retardant fuel. Additionally the plane was instrumented for a variety of other impact-survivability experiments, including new seat designs, flight data recorders, galley and sto