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From: AUGUST@JPLLSI.JPL.NASA.GOV (Richard B. August)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Fixed wing extraction
Message-ID: <1991Feb27.021906.22690@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 27 Feb 91 02:19:06 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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Approved: military@att.att.com



From:    AUGUST@JPLLSI.JPL.NASA.GOV (Richard B. August)
The fixed wing extraction technique was developed during the Vietnam War
by the AirForce (the project manager is an aquaintance of mine).

The method described by Donald R. Newcomb in his posting is somewhat flawed.

The fixed wing aircraft does *not* drag a cable behind it.  The downed
pilot would have to have an extraction kit consisting of:
1) the harness
2) a baloon
3) the cable
4) a tank of helium

The scenario:

get in the harness
attach cable to harness and balloon
fill balloon with helium

aircraft captures cable and reels-in the pilot

Regarding the gentleness of the recovery:  I have been told that the cable
had some elasticity built-in so that the acceleration would not have the
effect of drawing-and-quartering the person being recovered.

This recovery method has been used in a number of movies.

Richard B. August
august@vlsi.jpl.nasa.gov


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