A sightseeing flight turned into a nightmare when a C-47 Skytrain crashed in the dense jungles of
New Guinea, inhabited by a primitive tribe rumored to be headhunters and cannibals! 24
men and women stationed in New Guinea had boarded the flight, but only 3 survived the crash, 2 of
them seriously injured, 1 of them a good looking woman ... now at the mercy of an unknown tribe!
Surrounded by mountains, there were no roads for cars, no runway for airplanes,
and no helicopter could safely operate at such high altitudes either.
But how in the absence of a runway, the survivors ended up flying back
47 days later, with the help of a C-47 Skytrain, is Not What You Think, guaranteed!
The date was May 13th, 1945, a few months before the end of WWII when Gremlin Special,
a C-47 military transport airplane crashed at the Shangri-La valley. The B-17 search airplane
that found the wreckage a few days later, reported that there was no place to land,
so follow-up planes dropped medical supplies, field rations, and a walkie-talkie.
“We are all right,” said the 3 survivors in their first message.
Sergeant Kenneth Decker was one of the survivors. The crash had happened on his 34th birthday
and he was seriously injured. Another survivor was the 26 year-old Lieutenant John McCollom,
who was not hurt badly, but his twin brother had died in that same crash. And finally
the 30-year old Corporal Margaret Hastings who had cuts and burns on her legs.
It soon turned out that the Dani tribe who inhabited the valley were indeed primitive,
but not cannibals. They were friendly with the survivors,
which was a relief. But 2 of the survivors were in dire need of a medic onsite.
Filipino-American paratroopers volunteered to parachute into the valley, to provide medical
help and bring the survivors back, but there was a catch: Once the rescue team had been dropped into
the valley, there was no way to get them out. The US Army was still working on a rescue plan.
But if no airplane could land in the valley, how could they possibly pick people up and fly away?
Well, it turns out aircraft not only can do airdrops,
but also air pick-ups, all thanks to a dentist!
Dr. Lytle Adams, was a dentist and part-time inventor. In the early 20th century,
airmail service was restricted almost exclusively to metropolitan centers,
unavailable to the majority of the country's population who lived in rural areas. Although
a system that allowed trains to sntach mail bags without having to stop, already existed.
So in 1928, Adams, with assistance from Boeing engineers, developed an air pick-up apparatus.
In this design, the mail bag was suspended on a rope between two poles.
The aircraft would then swoop down and snatch the rope using a hook attached to a winch,
which would pay out the rope to absorb the shock at the time of pickup.
Adams called his company All American Aviation.
By the way Adams is the same person who invented bat bombs during WWII.
But if this method allowed airplanes to pick up mail without having to land,
it makes you wonder … what else could they pick up?!
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Yeeeeees, that was a sheep … What? You thought they were that crazy to air-pick up humans?
Because they were … apparently they would do anything to get spies in
and out of enemy territory during WWII and after.
Although this method didn’t seem ideal for extracting the 3 survivors
plus another 12 paratroopers one by one. You might say it looked kinda extreme!
But if you thought picking up a human from the ground using a flying airplane was extreme,
think again. Because the engineering arm of All American Aviation, which
later turned into All American Engineering Corporation, pioneered mid-air recovery.
That’s right, snatching people and even space capsules right in the air!
So what happened to All American Aviation? Well, it turned out that mail pickup and
delivery was not profitable, so the company transitioned into a passenger airline,
and was renamed to All American Airways ,which later turned into Allegheny Airlines,
then US Air, later US Airways until it finally merged with American Airlines in 2015.
The technology behind the mail pick-up apparatus has in fact been used extensively in aircraft
carriers to enable arrested landings. They are also used in aerial advertisements! Those airplane
banners are snatched off the ground pretty much in the same way that mail used to be picked up.
But the human pickup system had some limitations. For example, the pickup airplane had to fly quite
low in order to snatch the line, which might not be possible in all terrains. In addition,
much space was needed to clear the horizontal movement of the person being picked up. So in
the early 1950s, an inventor named Robert Edison Fulton Jr. started developing a more advanced
version of the human pickup system for the CIA, which was later featured in a James Bond movie!
Robert Fulton was a Harvard graduate and had traveled the world on his motorcycle
when he was 23 years old. The idea for his human recovery system was
inspired by studying the way trains picked up mail bags in Great Britain.
The Fulton aerial retrieval system, or "Skyhook" was made up of a harness,
attached to a 500-ft line of high-strength nylon, and a dirigible-shaped balloon inflated by a
helium bottle. All this equipment was airdropped in a package for the person on the ground,
so they could get ready for pickup. The helium-filled balloon would raise the line
high up in the sky. Then an airplane equipped with two
30-ft long steel "horns" attached to its nose would come in for pickup.
The aircraft would aim for the line, and upon contact, a spring-loaded trigger mechanism
would secure the line and release the balloon. Finally, the rope was reeled into the airplane.
The beauty of this design was that the person was initially pulled straight up before being pulled
forward. This would enable pickup in locations with limited horizontal clearance and was easier
on the body. The balloon eliminated the need for the aircraft to dive down close to the ground.
This procedure was also less complicated, because the pick-up was done in front of the aircraft,
where the pilot had visual, as opposed to a hook in the back, underneath the aircraft.
Despite the apparent high-risk nature of the Fulton aerial retrieval system,
only one fatal accident occurred in 17 years of use.
But back to our survivors in Shangri-La valley. They seem to be doing quite well,
recovering from their injuries and socializing with the Dani tribe. Those paratroopers though
were busy preparing the area, where the final pickup was going to happen.
And lucky for our survivors, they were not going to be picked up like this.
They were going to leave on an airplane, but not a typical one, because this airplane had no engines.
During WWII, the US Army Air Forces had developed a strategy to not only deliver paratroopers,
but also jeeps, artillery, machine guns and so on, to remote areas that could not accommodate
landing for large cargo airplanes. There were no transport helicopters around yet,
so the solution was to load the equipment into gliders,
like Waco CG-4, which was extensively used during WWII. Then using a powerful aircraft, they would
tug each glider into the sky. The gliders would then disconnect the tether, and continue flying.
A big advantage of the gliders was that they didn’t need a perfect runway to land on.
A relatively small and unobstructed area was sufficient for their landing.
But a big disadvantage of gliders was that they were only capable of doing one-way trips,
because no tug airplane could land in those areas to tow the gliders again into the sky.
Even though some gliders would get damaged during landing, most of them were in good shape to fly
again. If the US Army Air Force could figure out a way to pick up gliders from those remote areas,
they could load them with wounded soldiers and bring them back … kinda similar to picking up mail
from remote areas, which All American Aviation had figured out how to do 15 years earlier.
The snatch method for gliders was developed using a similar principle,
it was just that the tug airplane was more powerful, typically a C-47 Skytrain,
and the rope, the hook and the rest of the pickup system were a lot more heavy duty.
4 weeks after the landing of paratroopers in Shangri-La, an area suitable for the operation
of a glider had been prepared. On the day of the rescue, the cleared-out area was marked with white
chutes so the pilot of the incoming Waco CG-4 glider could easily spot his landing.
They wasted no time raising the poles and setting up the line in preparation for pickup.
With the help of the local tribe, the glider was pushed around into position and finally,
the tow line was hooked onto the glider. A Douglas C-47 Skytrain, the same type of
aircraft that had crashed and stranded the survivors in the valley, flew in,
this time to snatch the line, and within a few seconds, the glider was airborne.
They needed to gain 12,000 feet in order to leave the valley.
Once above the base in Holandia the glider pilot released the tow line and made a safe
landing on the runway, 3 times! because due to the elevation and thinness of the air in Shangri-La,
the glider could only carry 5 people at a time,
so 3 separate extractions were needed to transport the survivors and the paratroopers.
Everyone was greeted upon landing, Although Margaret Hastings became a media sensation,
the other two survivors not so much.
In 1959, 14 years after the crash, the bodies of the other victims were
recovered from the crash site and brought back to be buried in the United States.