The story in the Sun takes me back to a time in the mid-1980’s, when I worked with a small group of officers and NCOs who coordinated with other organizations on high-priority national missions. One of the men in the office served as a real mentor for most of us. He was a Chief Master Sargent, but everyone called him “Duke.” He has passed away now, but there is a briefing room named to honor him in the Headquarters of Air Force Special Operations Command.
Duke used to tell the story of when he was a younger enlisted man assigned to a unit that was developing a personnel recovery system known as “The Surface to Air Recovery System (or STARS) for short, although most of us referred to by its inventor’s name when we talked about it. For most of us, it was just the “Fulton Recovery System.” You can see an early prototype of the device in the fourth James Bond movie “Thunderball,” and the actual system as installed on a specialized C-130 in the John Wayne movie “The Green Berets”
The system was designed to pick up one or two people or about 500 pounds of equipment.
During its development, there came a time they wanted to put some live weight on the end of the line but were not yet ready to risk human life. To test the weight bearing capability they chose a 500-pound sow as the test subject. The plan called for the pig to be tranquilized so it would be docile when it arrived at the aircraft. Duke said the testing was done out of Pope AFB, NC which was surrounded by the many drop zones and gun ranges of Fort Bragg (home of the 82nd Airborne Division).
Duke had us in stitches as he talked about that test. When the pig arrived at the aircraft they could tell it was no longer fully tranquilized and was one mad-pig. As they got it onboard the aircraft and tried to guide it into its cage the pig broke loose and went squealing and shitting all over the cargo compartment until it, unfortunately, ran off the ramp and for a short while became a flying pig.
Details of the accident remain sketchy, but I can only assume it led to the expression “I’ll believe that when pigs fly.”
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