{"id":617,"date":"2011-06-23T19:40:36","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T00:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fiveforks.com\/ted\/2011\/06\/glider_snatch\/"},"modified":"2011-06-23T19:40:36","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T00:40:36","slug":"glider_snatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/2011\/06\/glider_snatch\/","title":{"rendered":"Glider Snatch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was watching last night&#8217;s Daily Show today and the guest, Mitchell Zuckoff, was promoting his book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0061988340\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=tedsbatterpac-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399373&amp;creativeASIN=0061988340\">Lost in Shangri-La<\/a>, about the rescue of some plane crash survivors in New Guinea during World War II. Some airborne soldiers parachuted in first and cleared off a patch so some gliders could land. Eventually they flew everyone out on gliders, which Zuckoff said was done with rubber bands, so I envisioned them building a giant slingshot and shooting the gliders into the air. I knew gliders were used on D Day, towed behind airplanes from England, but it was a one-way mission to land troops and equipment together in fields rather than spread out like paratroops would be. I didn&#8217;t think they could take off again especially since there was no runway, just a clearing. I found an <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.thedropzone.org\/pacific\/walters.htm\">interview with the commander of the rescue mission<\/A> where he said they snatched the gliders up and everyone got out okay. Then I had to look up exactly how you snatch a glider up. It turns out they would tie an elastic tow rope up on some poles and a plane would fly in very, very low with a hook lowered that would catch the tow line and yank the glider up into the air. There&#8217;s even a YouTube video:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was watching last night&#8217;s Daily Show today and the guest, Mitchell Zuckoff, was promoting his book, Lost in Shangri-La, about the rescue of some plane crash survivors in New Guinea during World War II. Some airborne soldiers parachuted in first and cleared off a patch so some gliders could land. Eventually they flew everyone &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/2011\/06\/glider_snatch\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Glider Snatch&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}