CORONA capsule catcher reminisces
- From: thomsona@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 19 Aug 2005 13:57:22 -0700
http://starbulletin.com/2005/08/19/news/story13.html
COURTESY OF U.S. AIR FORCE
The 6594th Test Group at Hickam Air Force Base celebrates today the
45th anniversary of its first successful midair recovery of a spy
capsule.
Spy satellite recovery was plum Air Force job The old Hickam unit
marked its first midair recovery 45 years ago.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Friday, August 19, 2005
By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For nearly eight years, Larry Kimball believed he had one of the most
ideal jobs in the Air Force.
He was part of what was then a highly classified military operation: a
pararescue jumper whose job was to help recover spy satellites in the
Pacific.
"The recovery missions were a high priority in the Pentagon," said
Kimball, 53. "Since it had such a high priority, it was extremely well
funded."
Kimball, then an Air Force sergeant, was a member of the 6594th Test
Group at Hickam Air Force Base, which made its first midair recovery of
a spy capsule 45 years ago today.
Over its 27 years of existence, the 6594th completed 40,000 aerial
operations and retrieved nearly 200 film capsules ranging in cost from
$7 million to $250 million each, said Al Blankenship, who was assigned
to the group from December 1969 until it closed in September 1986.
Besides its military mission, the Hickam unit also worked with the
Coast Guard on rescue missions. Blankenship estimates that more than 60
people were rescued at sea.
The unit's slogan was "Catch a Falling Star," since it used modified
cargo planes to snag spy capsules as they descended into the Pacific
Ocean by parachute.
Kimball, who later was commissioned through the University of Hawaii
Air Force ROTC program, said pararescue jumpers like himself --
nicknamed "PJs" -- were used "in case something went wrong."
"If the capsule overshot its mark and went downrange, as we used to
say," Kimball added, "and landed in a different area before the C-130
Hercules cargo plane could snag it, that's when I would go into the
water."
Kimball said he would have to parachute from a C-130 at about 1,200
feet, swim to the capsule and place a special flotation collar around
it, similar to those used to keep the manned space capsules afloat.
The other method was for him to jump with a parachute anywhere from 10
to 20 feet from a hovering HH-53 Super Jolly Green Giant helicopter.
"It took a lot of timing by the pilot to watch the waves and signal a
jump," Kimball said, "so the jumper would land on a crest of wave
rather than in a trough. If he mistimed it, that could mean a longer
fall, like 20 feet."
"The 6594th Test Group was the only organization to recover de-orbiting
satellite film capsules, and the Hawaiian Islands was the only location
for U.S. satellite film capsule recovery," Blankenship said.
Its first successful midair recovery was accomplished on Aug. 19, 1960,
and involved the Discovery 14 capsule. It used a modified JC-119 Flying
Boxcar cargo plane. Both the capsule and the aircraft are on display at
the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Blankenship estimates that between 1958 to 1972, there were about 145
attempted satellite launches involving 200-pound capsules.
"I think we were able to recover about 120 of them," he said.
Starting in 1972, the capsules were much heavier -- "about 1,110
pounds," Blankenship said. "I think we recovered about 95 percent of
them." Advances in digital video technology ended the 6594th's mission
on Sept. 30, 1986.
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