MAN PICKUP: A Secret World War II Pilot Rescue Manual, page 1

During World War II, a dedicated bunch of engineers and aviators developed a
means of rescuing pilots downed in enemy territory.

This rescue device used a "trapeze" system invented in the 1930s to allow airplanes to snatch gliders off the ground, which itself was based on a system invented by a Pennsylvania dentist in the 1920s as a way to pick up parcels from the ground with an airplane. The dentist went on to start a company called All-American Aviation which won contracts to service mail stations along dangerous mountain routes using this method.

The first "volunteers" to test the device were sheep, picked up in July 1943. After a number of sheep trials were successfully completed, the first manned pickup occurred on September 5, 1943, when Lt. Alexis Doster was retrieved near Wright Field near Dayton, Ohio.

According to Harry C. Conway, an engineer on the project and the third man to be picked up from the ground, the system was used in China and Burma toward the end of World War II, and later in Korea. (An air-droppable version of the system was also used by the British to extract operatives from occupied Europe during World War II.)

MAN PICKIP MANUAL pdf

www.thememoryhole.org...

I knew they used these techinques in Vietnam to extract the various Special Ops teams, but I didn't know they were using it in the mid 40's.