How disabled persons can be rescued from the sea by a blimp was demonstrated in tests conducted by United States navy blimp J-4 ten miles off New Jersey's coast. It was proved that men can be lifted aboard a blimp either from the deck of a boat or from the water’s surface. In performing the “rescue” an inflated rubber life raft, like those carried by seaplanes, served as a stretcher to haul the man safely into the blimp hovering about fifty feet above. To anchor the ship a drogue, a circular metal disk, is dropped by a cable until it sinks twenty-five feet below the surface.