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Project Cold Feet, the Skyhook extraction. You're standing on a colossal sheet of ice in the Arctic. It's cracking and slowly disintegrating beneath your boots. In this environment, there is no rescue team just waiting around the corner. Instead, your only hope is to inflate a bright, wobbling balloon that's fighting against the freezing wind. Attached to it is a 500-ft nylon line, and somewhere high above the clouds, a World War II bomber is lining up to fly directly into it. If the maneuver works, you'll be ripped into the sky at over 100 mph. If it fails, you'll be left entirely alone at the top of the world.
This wasn't a stunt or a mere test. This was a real CIA extraction conducted in 1962. At the time, it was the only viable way to retrieve personnel and intelligence from the deep Arctic without a functional runway. The device, commonly known as the Skyhook, was officially called the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system, or STARS. But, unofficially, it had a nickname that really conveyed the experience of using it. It was known as madness with approval stamps. The concept relied on a specialized harness and a helium balloon to lift a long nylon line high into the air. A modified bomber would then approach head-on, its nose equipped with two prominent V-shaped steel horns designed to catch the line.
Once the line snapped into the nose-mounted clamp, the person was yanked off the ground and winched through a hatch in the belly of the aircraft. The entire operation relied on a single high-velocity connection that left no room for error or second thoughts. Before its first real mission, the Skyhook only had been tested with crash dummies and animals, specifically pigs. This pig choice was driven by biology rather than cruelty. Robert Edison Fulton, Jr., the system's inventor, argued that pigs possessed nervous systems and internal structures close enough to humans in ways that it mattered most for high-impact physics. His theory suggested that if a pig could survive being ripped into the sky at 125 mph, a human likely could, too.
The initial animal trials provided essential data, but the results were often chaotic. In the first live animal test, the pig was lifted cleanly and the line held firm. Yet, the flight itself was traumatic. As the animal was being winched towards the hatch, it began spinning end over end at high speeds. By the time the crew hauled it inside, the pig was technically intact, but physically disoriented. Upon being released from the harness, the animal recovered just long enough to charge the crew in a fury, forcing them to scatter in a panic.
Despite the hurdles, though, the tests were logged as successful. Following further refinements with human volunteers, the CIA determined the system was ready for its most significant challenge yet. To understand why this kind of radical mission was approved, you have to look at the Cold War map of the early 1960s. Military planners had noted that the shortest route between the Soviet Union and the United States ran straight over the North Pole, turning the once-empty Arctic into a strategic focal point. The US and Canada had built the distant early warning, or DEW Line, which consisted of a string of 63 radar stations stretching 3,000 mi across the Arctic Circle from Alaska to Greenland, designed to detect incoming Soviet
bombers during the Cold War. In 1958, the very nature of the threat was changing. The USS Nautilus, the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine, famously completed the first submerged transit of the North Pole in August of 1958, proving that submarines could operate under the Arctic ice cap. This event fundamentally changed naval strategy by opening a new, undetectable route for potential attack. Because missile-carrying submarines survive by being quiet, the Arctic became a critical theater for acoustic surveillance. The Soviets recognized this early on, operating a series of drifting Arctic stations. While officially described as scientific outposts for meteorology and oceanography, they actually functioned
as listening posts. These bases utilized hydrophones, or underwater microphones, to detect the unique acoustic signatures of American submarine engines and propellers moving beneath the ice. By 1961, US intelligence feared that Soviet under-ice listening capability was far more advanced than their own. Physical proof arrived unexpectedly when an American patrol plane spotted NP-9, a Soviet ice station that had been abandoned as the ice flow it sat on began to break apart. To most analysts, the destroyed runway and shifting ice rendered the site unreachable. However, Leonard LeSchack, a Navy geophysicist, believed the hasty evacuation meant valuable intelligence
had likely been left behind. He proposed a daring plan to parachute onto the ice, conduct a thorough search, and extract using the experimental Skyhook system. By the time the mission was ready to launch, NP-9 had drifted too far away into a region that was difficult to reach. Fortunately for the US team, the Soviets abandoned another station, NP-8. On May 28th, 1962, Major James Smith, an Arctic expert and linguist, and Leonard LeSchack, jumped from a B-17 onto the drifting flow. They found a frozen ghost town. The Soviet evacuation had been so hurried that meals remained frozen in skillets and beds were left unmade.
For 3 days, the pair worked nonstop photographing documents and stripping hardware from the site. The most important discovery involved the station's generators, which were found mounted on rubber tires. This was clear evidence of vibration dampening, a technique used specifically to prevent noise interference with sensitive listening equipment. This confirmed that the Soviets were perfecting high-level under-ice surveillance. The Soviets never anticipated that Western intelligence could reach the site. With the runway gone, Moscow believed the base was lost to the elements rather than compromised. The station commander had even left a polite note listing the evacuation date and a
forwarding address in Leningrad. This sense of security allowed Smith and LeSchack to gather over 150 lb of equipment and intelligence. However, leaving the ice proved far more dangerous than arriving. As heavy fog and high winds moved in, the B-17 struggled to locate the pair while the ice continued to crack beneath them. On June 2nd, LeSchack was the first to go. The wind grabbed the balloon, dragging him across the ice before the hooks finally caught. He was snatched into the sky backwards at 125 mph. For 6 and 1/2 minutes, he dangled behind the aircraft, fighting to breathe while using his arms to stabilize his body
against the wind. By the time he was winched aboard, he was barely conscious. Major Smith followed shortly after, being successfully retrieved on the second pass. Project Cold Feet achieved complete success. It confirmed the existence of the clandestine under-ice conflict and validated the Skyhook as a practical, albeit terrifying, method of extraction. They say that pigs might fly only when the impossible happens. Well, in 1962, the CIA proved that pigs and Navy geophysicists could not only fly, but they could do it backwards at 100 mph, all while dangling from a nylon line.
But, here's the ultimate Cold War irony. This top-secret extraction tool became famous in a James Bond movie. In 1965's Thunderball, 007 is plucked from the ocean using a Skyhook. And, in a perfect spy twist, the film crew used the exact same CIA-owned B-17, the very plane that had snatched the Cold Feet agents from the ice, to film the scene.
