Friday FOIA Fun: The Fulton Skyhook

As you probably know, if you’re reading this, every Friday (more or less) I write about the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, in something I call “Friday FOIA Fun”. Often, it’s mildly therapeutic kvetching about the sorry state of FOIA processing, or the inexplicable and ridiculous redactions made by government agencies. Sometimes - quite frequently, really - I’ve also got interesting documents that I’ve acquired through the FOIA. This, happily, is one of those weeks.

Before I begin, though, I’d like to apologize: This is a long post. There’s a lot to read. If you’re not into military history - or incredibly cool pieces of aviation equipment - you shouldn’t feel guilty about skipping it. If you are interested in this stuff, and just want to get to the goodies, rather than read my inane drivel, skip down to the bottom of the post, where there are links to the goodies. And, if you’ve got something to say about this, you can - as always - either leave a comment on this port, or contact me directly.

So, where was I? Ah yes. For my money, one of the coolest pieces of aviation equipment ever made is one that most people have never heard of. Imagine, if you will, a system to pluck a man - actually, up to three men at a time, be they downed aircrew, special forces personnel, or anyone else - from the ground, using not a helicopter, but a fixed-wing airplane flying hundreds of feet above the ground. Further, imagine that this wasn’t done using any sorts of high-tech devices, but - basically - by having the plane snag a rope attached to the guy, which is held aloft by a balloon.

Sound wickedly awesome? It is, my friend, it is, and it was called the Fulton Skyhook (and later the Fulton STAR System). Developed shortly after WWII by an American inventor named Robert Fulton, the system was used by the Central Intelligence Agency and the USAF Special Operations Command between (roughly) 1960 and 1996. The CIA used the system on a B-17, which I understand is, in private hands, on display in either Arizona or Nevada; the USAF used it on C-130s - mainly the MC-130E Combat Talon. There are at least two surviving aircraft with Skyhooks installed on display in this country, including one in the USAF museum in Dayton, Ohio.

Public information about the Skyhook/STARS is, to date, pretty limited - the official factsheet leaves quite a bit to be desired, and while the Wikipedia page is a little better, it seems largely anecdotal, and doesn’t provide a lot of details on the workings of the system.

Setting about to rectify that, I made a FOIA request about the system to the USAF early last month. After some wrangling - detailed in a previous Friday FOIA Fun - it was eventually determined that whatever information the Special Operations Command had ever about the system, it was no longer in their possession, but rather in the hands of the Air Force Historical Research Agency, at Maxwell AFB in Georgia.

This was, potentially, really bad news. What I really wanted were instruction or training manuals for the system, and AFHRA doesn’t - as a rule - retain “technical” documents, only those of “historical” interest. The Defense Technology Information Center, or DTIC, is supposed to be the repository of all things technical, but a quick check with them showed that they had nothing on the Fulton system. Worse yet, a check of AFHRA’s 2001-era card catalog didn’t find anything particularly promising - just a few mentions in old history books about the First Special Operations Wing. Still, I sent off an email to AFHRA, since that’s where the 1SOW folks at Hurlburt field sent me.

Much to my surprise, I received a response a few days later, informing me that AFHRA does, in fact, have at least some of what I was looking for - though largely by accident. Thanks to the kind staff there, I took receipt this week of two manuals on the Fulton Skyhook - a draft handbook from the Robert Fulton Company, and a detailed report on the system by Lockheed, who manufacture the C-130. The former is interesting, but incomplete, and I may scan it and provide a copy at a later date; the latter, however, is an absolute treasure-trove of information about the system.

In a nutshell, the system involves a pair of booms attached to the nose of a C-130 family airframe, which are used to intercept the rescue rope, which is held aloft by a balloon. While the illustration below, circa 1960, is for a C-130A or C-130B, the system didn’t change much over the years - even when it was reviewed and updated in 1986, as “Project 46″, so the same basic idea would have held true for later MC-130E Combat Talon aircraft. Photos of the system I’ve seen haven’t been real clear on the design of the booms, but this engineering drawing should answer most of your questions:

There was more than just the boom on the nose of the plane, of course; there was also a fair amount of rigging, to hold it in place, and to protect the propellers from making contact with the rope. A minimal amount of modifications were required to make an airplane Fulton-compatible; once modified, it was generally agreed that the Fulton equipment could be installed in about two hours - though I should note there’s no mention anywhere of how many people, or what kind of equipment, were necessary!

In addition to the strange stuff mounted on the nose of the plane, equipment was installed in the cargo compartment to support the actual pickup itself. It’s clear that DARPA weren’t involved; for all the overall awesomeness of the Fulton system, the whole thing was amazingly low-technology, using - basically - a winch and a bunch of pulleys and rollers to haul in the rope. With the assistance of a couple people, of course; the system was nothing like automated:

Assuming everything went according to plan, the lucky fellow on the ground, having climbed into his exposure suit with integral parachute harness and deployed the rope and balloon, would be safely onboard within five minutes of the airplane first contacting the rope. Provisions were made for up to two-dozen subsequent recoveries, but I don’t believe anyone ever performed more than five on one flight.

The 72-page manual survives, as far as I can tell, only because it forms part of the “supporting documents” for a little-known USAF history volume published in 2001. Called “The Praetorian Starship”, and authored by an MC-130E pilot named Jerry Thigpen, the book chronicles the history of the Combat Talon - including quite a bit about the Fulton Skyhook; it even includes a mostly-complete list of Skyhook recoveries over the years. So, really, it’s almost a fluke that anything about the Fulton system survives in publicly-accessible form.

The report is, to be specific, “ER-4112″, produced by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Georgia Division, sometime circa 1959-60.

It runs 72 pages, and you can download a copy here (20MB Adobe PDF file).

Jerry Thigpen’s book on the MC-130E is long out-of-print; at the moment, there’s a copy for sale on Amazon for $170 USD. If you don’t want to pay that much, you can download a copy of that, here (14MB Adobe PDF file).

So, there you have it - everything you ever wanted to know about the coolest bit of now-obsolete aviation equipment ever designed, and then some. Go forth, enjoy, and ask yourself: In an era of extreme sports, how come nobody ever tried to charge money for taking rides on something like this? It’s like skydiving, only in reverse, right? Seriously, how awesome would that be, eh?

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