Photo: WikiCommons.

They’re small, secretive, nocturnal, and look creepy hanging upside down in caves. And at one point during World War II, they were recruited as potential killing machines.

Yep, bats as weapons of mass destruction.

“A plan to turn millions of bats into suicide bombers bearing tiny napalm time bombs was the most spectacular of the special projects at Louis Fieser’s Harvard laboratory,” writes Robert M. Neer in his new book, Napalm: An American Biography.

The project was the brainchild of Lytle Adams, a Pennsylvania dentist with a passionate hatred of the misunderstood Chiroptera.

The “lowest form of life is the BAT, associated in history with the underworld and regions of darkness and evil,” Adams wrote in a 1942 memo to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Until now reasons for its creation have remained unexplained. As I vision it the millions of bats that have for ages inhabited our belfries, tunnels and caverns were placed there by God to await this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence, and to frustrate any attempt of those who dare to desecrate our way of life.”

Seems a tad harsh, no?

Oops: The accidental incineration of Carlsbad Auxiliary Army Air Field, New Mexico, by bats armed with napalm bombs. Photo: U.S. Air Force.

The bats were to be loaded with a tiny (17.5 gram) napalm bomb, stuffed into a North American B-25, and flown over Japan. Upon reaching the target, 26,000 angry bats would be tossed out of the aircraft (they had parachutes), and would land upon highly flammable Japanese houses.

A test run over Carlsbad Auxiliary Army Air Field, New Mexico, with bats bearing dummy bombs went surprisingly well.

Fieser and his team, however, wanted to have the test filmed, so a second trial was set, using six bats with armed bombs.

Unexpectedly, the bats took off, and shortly after, the barracks burst into flames. “Flames…jumped from building to building,” writes Neer. “Many structures lay in ashes.”

“Unfortunately,” he writes, “to preserve secrecy…the team had deemed fire equipment unnecessary.” In a masterpiece of understatement, Fieser summed up the experiment: “We made a little mistake out there.”

And that was the end of the bomber bats.

Eight flight attendants pose beside a Boeing Air Transport Boeing Model 80A on the ground; circa 1930. Left to right: Jessie Carter, Cornelia Peterman, Ellen Church, Inez Keller, Alva Johnson, Margaret Arnott, Ellis Crawford, and Harriet Fry. Photograph courtesy NASM.

When the DC-3 arrived six years later, Vantoch writes, passenger miles increased 600 percent between 1931 and 1941. With the DC-3, “the airline industry began to focus on passenger service and the stewardess was catapulted to new importance,” and the number of flight attendants rose from below 400 to 1,000.

American Airline stewardesses pose in front of a Douglas DC-3. Photograph courtesy NASM.

By the mid-1940s, “stewardess candidates had to be twenty-one to twenty-eight years old,” writes Vantoch, “unmarried, 5’3″ to 5’6″ tall, no more than 125 pounds, with good posture and an ‘attractive appearance,’ and preferably with some college education.” (The nursing requirement had been dropped because nurses were required for the war effort and could not be spared for airline service.) “Stewardess training was also arduous,” notes Vantoch, “with strict rules, fifty subjects (including flight physics, emergency procedures, radio navigation, and meteorology), and a series of intense exams.”

A Frontier Airlines stewardess checks her uniform before going on duty. Photograph courtesy NASM.

The transformation of the stewardess from all-American girl next door to a sexier image, was largely the work of the Burnett advertising agency, which won the United account in 1965, and Mary Wells, the advertising director of Braniff Airlines. Leo Burnett’s team realized that young consumers were an emerging market—and appropriating aspects of the 1960s counter-culture “could help market United to older Americans who still wanted to feel young and hip.” At the same time that the Burnett agency was struggling with its campaign, Branniff kicked off its “Air Strip” television ad, in which a stewardess slowly removed pieces of her Pucci uniform during the flight. Shortly after, United’s ads promised consumers that stewardesses would “go all out to please you!” The sexual revolution had infiltrated the airlines, and other carriers soon modified their images as well.

PSA, "The World's Friendliest Airline." Photograph courtesy cruiselinehistory.com.

Crashed B-24 in Papua New Guinea. Photograph by Dietmar Eckell.

German photographer Dietmar Eckell is drawn to abandoned objects: neglected railroad tracks, stranded ships, detritus from past Olympic Games. His latest project, titled Happy End, documents aircraft wreckage—but only from accidents where everyone on board survived.

The photograph above, the last image in the series, shows a B-24 that crashed in Papua New Guinea during World War II. “I wanted a warbird in the jungle with a miracle story,” Eckell wrote in an email, “and always loved the stories of the Pacific wrecks, so I started looking in Papua New Guinea.” According to his information, all nine crew members on board survived the crash.

This Douglas C-47 made a forced landing in Canada in 1950 during a rescue mission for a C-54. Photograph by Dietmar Eckell.

The Douglas C-47 above was the first aircraft Eckell documented during the two-year project. “I’ve been there [Yukon Territory, Canada] twice already, and next time I want to go back in February, as the crash happened in February 1950. The pilot walked all the way to the Alaskan Highway to get help.”

Eckell asks local pilots to help pinpoint exact locations and provide story details, and he searches for information in local archives. “I [was originally] inspired by paintings of shipwrecks in the romantic period,” he writes. “But soon I got hooked on these planes and stories, and it was like a pilgrimage to ‘wonders’ around the world.”

Eckell plans to self-publish Happy End in June; read about his crowdfunding efforts at PetaPixel. Or see more images at Eckell’s Web site.

Sorry, China, but pigs have been cruising space since the 1970s, at the helm of the "Swinetrek." From left to right: First Mate Piggy, Captain Link Hogthrob, and Dr. Julius Strangepork. Image from muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Pigs_in_Space.

Looking for a science book to read? Something with eccentric characters, irrational obsessions, and extreme experiments? Try Alex Boese’s book Electrified Sheep: Glass-eating Scientists, Nuking the Moon, and More Bizarre Experiments (Thomas Dunne Books, 2012).

Boese notes that when Pierre and Marie Curie first isolated radium in their lab in 1902, the mysterious metal appeared to produce a limitless amount of energy: “And where there is energy, medical entrepreneurs noted, there must be health! Physicians swung into action, promoting the beneficial effects of ‘radiumizing’ the body to an eager public. Retailers sold radium-treated water, describing the faintly glowing solution as ‘liquid sunshine.’ ” The radium craze persisted well into the 1930s; even Marie Curie insisted on the metal’s health benefits, maintaining this belief right up until 1934, when she died of radiation exposure. Boese writes:

A curious descendant of the invisible energy enthusiasm can even be found in a rather unlikely place—the Chinese space programme. Chinese scientists, from the very start of their space programme, have expressed great interest in the effect of cosmic rays on plants, hoping that such rays might produce Super Veggies to feed their growing population. At first they used high-altitude balloons to fly seeds up to the edge of space. Now seeds are taken aboard the Shenzhou spacecraft. The resulting crops, grown back on earth, are occasionally served in Shanghai restaurants. Space spuds, it’s reported, taste more “glutinous” than terrestrial varieties.

On 12 October 2005 the Shenzhou VI spacecraft blasted off carrying a particularly special cargo—40 grams of pig sperm to be exposed to cosmic rays. Whether or not the experiment generated positive results is unknown, because, after the initial announcement, a shroud of official state secrecy descended upon the mission. But maybe, somewhere on a farm in China, a giant, cosmic-ray-enhanced pig is rolling happily in the mud.

On the flight deck of the USS Valley Forge, January 30, 1960. The Skyhook retrieved artifacts and cargo in addition to people. Photograph: NASM.

An MC-130E sporting a Fulton Skyhook retrieval hook. Photograph: ryangreenburg.com.

A pickup aircraft (note the “horns” on the nose) would then fly directly at the line, aiming at a marker placed at an altitude of 425 feet. As the line was caught on the forks, the balloon would release, and a spring-loaded mechanism would secure the line to the aircraft. The person was then winched up the line.

The first live test of Robert Fulton’s system was done with a pig, notes the CIA’s page on Fulton and Operation Coldfeet. “Lifted off the ground, the pig began to spin as it flew through the air at 125 mph. It arrived on board undamaged but in a disoriented state. Once it recovered, it attacked the crew.” (We aren’t surprised, are we?)

The Fulton "Skyhook" suit, post-conservation. Photograph: NASM.

The National Air and Space Museum is in the process of conserving its Fulton Skyhook suit, which was donated to the Museum in 1972 by the U.S. Air Force. “Skyhook was meant to be universal,” says Steven Pickman, a conservator in the Museum’s Conservation Laboratory. “It fit any size adult, and was suitable for any environment.” When they first inspected the suit, the conservation team was alarmed by a white material on its surface. The haze wasn’t mold or salt efflorescence, and, in fact, wasn’t harmful at all, so the team just added storage supports and left the suit alone.

Fulton manual, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. "After the pickup is made, the pilot allows approximately 15 seconds for the load to stabilize, then pulls the nose of the airplane up." Illustration: slugsite.com.

The Fulton manual notes that “The effect of the induced acceleration forces on the human body due to the aerial pickup by this system has been carefully evaluated. The recorded accelerations, from numerous tests, have ranged from 4.5 Gs to 10.2 Gs with a mean value of 5.5 Gs.” While the system was capable—in theory—of rescuing three 200-pound men at one time, the manual points out that “Since the feasibility of multiple pickups has only been proven with animals at this time, it is judged that multiple pickups of human beings will not normally be used until thoroughly tested.”

"Burnt cork, charcoal, lampblack, mud, camouflage stick, berry stains, carbon paper, and green vegetation can all be used as toning materials." Photograph: DoD/U.S. Air Force/Staff Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III.

It’s one of those days—probably a Monday—where everything goes wrong. The alarm clock doesn’t go off. You oversleep. You have to crash land into enemy territory. It’s a good thing you remembered your U.S. Air Force Pocket Survival Handbook.

The handbook (republished this month) outlines the mission: As soon as you eject, bailout, or crash, your new assignment is to “return to friendly control without giving aid or comfort to the enemy, to return early and in good physical and mental condition.”

Those are some pockets: The book measures 8 by 5 inches.

Let’s get down to the business of survival: Got a sucking chest wound? See page 60. You might need a stitch or two, although sometimes an airtight dressing will suffice. Perhaps you bailed out over a snow- or icebound area; page 92 explains how to make a suitable pair of shoes from moose hocks. (Skip ahead to chapter 14 for tips on how to kill animals both large and small. “Be sure the animal is dead, not just wounded [or] unconscious…. Poke all ‘dead’ animals in the eye with a long sharp stick before approaching them.”)

Now that you’ve survived that simple task, you can set to work building a para-snowhouse out of ice, your parachute, and urine (page 119).

The handbook explains how to build a variety of shelters, how to find and cook edible plants, and how to hunt, dress, and cook animals—everything from “fish tickling” to dressing a rabbit by flinging it between your legs.

We say this is $12.95 well spent.

The job we all dream of: Crashing a Boeing 727 in the name of science. Photograph courtesy the Discovery Channel.

The odds of you being killed in an airplane crash, dear reader, are a million to one. But that didn’t stop the Discovery Channel from loading a 727 with a dazzling array of sensors and crashing it into the Mexican desert, all in the name of science. The results of the experiment will be aired this Sunday, October 7, as the season premiere of “Curiosity.”

Among other things, the filmmakers wanted to determine if there was anything a passenger could do to improve his or her odds of surviving. Where should you sit? Does bracing help, or is that an old wives’ tale? Crash-test dummies (which cost $150,000 each and provide 32 different types of data) were placed throughout the aircraft. Some were set in the brace position, while others were seated upright. “Low-tech dummies” were also used, either buckled into their seats, or seated without restraints.

A masterpiece of understatement: "It was not exactly the impact that was hoped for," reads NASA's caption of its Boeing 720 fireball. Photograph courtesy NASA.

An experiment on this scale, notes the film, has been tried only once before. In 1984, NASA spent millions crashing a Boeing 720 into Rogers Dry Lake in the California desert. But the aircraft lost control on the final approach and burst into flames after crashing—not good for collecting data. (The experiment was part of a joint research project between NASA and the FAA to test the effectiveness of a fire-suppressing fuel additive.)

Watch a clip from the show, below:

Ernest Hemingway in Milan, 1918. Photograph: National Archives and Records Administration, 192668.

After recovering from wounds he received as an ambulance corps volunteer during World War I, Ernest Hemingway married Hadley Richardson in 1921. The following year the couple moved to Paris, where Ernest was the foreign correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star. The newspaper ran the following piece on September 9, 1922. (Reprinted in Into the Blue: American Writing on Aviation and Spaceflight, edited by Joseph J. Corn, 2011).

Strasburg, France, Aug. 23. — We were sitting in the cheapest of all the cheap restaurants that cheapen that very cheap and noisy street, the Rue des Petits Champs in Paris.

We were Mrs. Hemingway, William E. Nash, Mr. Nash’s little brother, and myself. Mr. Nash announced, somewhere between the lobster and the fried sole, that he was going to Munich the next day and was planning to fly from Paris to Strasburg. Mrs. Hemingway pondered this until the appearance of the rognons sautés aux champignons, when she asked, “Why don’t we ever fly anywhere? Why is everybody else always flying and we always staying home?”

That being one of those questions that cannot be answered by words, I went with Mr. Nash to the office of the Franco-Rumanian Aero Company and bought two tickets, half price for journalists, for 120 francs, good for one flight from Paris to Strasburg. The trip is ten hours and a half by best express train, and takes two hours and a half by plane.

My natural gloom at the prospect of flying, having flown once, was deepened when I learned that we flew over the Vosges mountains and would have to be at the offices of the company, just off the Avenue de l’Opera, at five o’clock in the morning….

The Nashes were waiting at the office for us…. The four of us rode out to Le Bourget, the ugliest ride in Paris, in a big limousine and had some more coffee in a shed there outside the flying field. A Frenchman in an oily jumper took our tickets, tore them in two and told us we were going in two different planes. Out of the window of the shed we could see them standing, small, silver-painted, taut and shining in the early morning sun in front of the airdrome. We were the only passengers.

Our suitcase was stowed aboard under a seat beside the pilot’s place. We climbed up a couple of steps into a stuffy little cabin and the mechanic handed us some cotton for our ears and locked the door. The pilot climbed into his seat back of the enclosed cock-pit where we sat, a mechanic pulled down on the propeller and the engine began to roar. I looked around at the pilot. He was a short little man, his cap backwards on his head, wearing an oil stained sheep-skin coat and big gloves. Then the plane began to move along the ground, bumping like a motorcycle, and then slowly rose into the air.

We headed almost straight east of Paris, rising in the air as though we were sitting inside a boat that was being lifted slowly by some giant, and the ground began to flatten out beneath us. It looked cut into brown squares, yellow squares, green squares and big flat blotches of green where there was a forest. I began to understand cubist painting.

Sometimes we came down quite low and could see bicyclists on the road looking like pennies rolling along a narrow, white strip…. We went over great forests that looked as soft as velvet, passed over Bar le Duc and Nancy, gray red-roofed towns, over St. Mihiel and the front and in an open field I could see the old trenches zig-zagging through a field pocked with shell holes. I shouted to Mrs. Hemingway to look but she didn’t hear me. Her chin was sunk forward into the collar of her new fur coat that she had wanted to christen with a plane trip. She was sound asleep.

You can read more about Hemingway’s aviation adventures in “Who Was Fatty Pearson?” in our October/November issue (on newsstands and posted to this site next week).

George Orwell wrote for the BBC from August 18, 1941 to November 24, 1943. His broadcasts were heard in India, Malaya, and Indonesia. Photograph from canyoncountryzephyr.com.

In the new book,  George Orwell: Diaries (Liveright Publishing), editor Peter Davison writes that following Germany’s invasion of Poland in September, 1939, Orwell offered his services to aid the war effort. (Orwell had fought in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and 1937, where he was wounded by a sniper. He returned to England in July 1937.) Orwell was refused a position in the Home Service Battalions due to his health, which dismayed him. “What is appalling is the unimaginativeness of a system which can find no use for a man who is below the average level of fitness but at least is not an invalid,” Orwell wrote in June 1940. “Any army needs an immense amount of clerical work, most of which is done by people who are perfectly healthy and only half-literate.” Case in point: When Orwell went to the recruiting station, his information was taken by “an old soldier with medals of the last war, who could barely write. In writing capital letters he more than once actually wrote them upside down.”

During the war, Orwell kept a detailed journal; in this excerpt he describes what air raid warnings were like for Londoners in the summer of 1940, before the worst days of the Blitz:

6/25/40

Last night an air raid warning about 1 a.m. It was a false alarm as regards London, but evidently there was a real raid somewhere. We got up and dressed, but did not go into the shelter. This is what everyone did, i.e. got up and then simply stood about talking, which seems very foolish. But it seems natural to get up when one hears the siren, and then in the absence of gunfire or other excitement one is ashamed to go to the shelter.

6/27/40

It appears that the night before last, during the air-raid alarm, many people all over London were woken by the All Clear signal, took that for the warning and went to the shelters and stayed there till morning, waiting for the All Clear. This after ten months of war and God knows how many explanations of air-raid precautions.

8/16/40

For the first 15 seconds [after an air-raid alarm] there is great alarm, blowing of whistles and shouts to children to go indoors, then people begin to congregate on the streets and gaze expectantly at the sky.

8/23/40

This morning an air-raid warning about 3 a.m. Got up, looked at the time, then felt unable to do anything and promptly went to sleep again…. The fact that at present the alarm sounds all over a wide area when the German planes are only operating in one part of it, means not only that people are unnecessarily woken up or taken away from work, but that an impression is spread that an air-raid alarm will always be false, which is obviously dangerous.

9/15/40

This morning, for the first time, saw an aeroplane shot down. It fell slowly out of the clouds, nose foremost, just like a snipe that has been shot high overhead. Terrific jubilation among the people watching, punctuated every now and then by the question, “Are you sure it’s a German?” So puzzling are the directions given, and so many the types of aeroplane, that no one even knows which are German planes and which are our own. My only test is that if a bomber is seen over London it must be a German, whereas a fighter is likelier to be ours.

Phyllis Diller arrives at Korat Air Base, Thailand, with the Bob Hope Christmas show, 1966. Photograph: DoD.

Comedian Phyllis Diller died today, at age 95.  In the 1960s, she was one of the entertainers who joined Bob Hope on his USO tours, complex operations that required a significant amount of support from various parts of the U.S. military flying services. In a feature we published about that support a few years ago,  we included a story about Diller’s 1966 visit to the USS Bennington, and we’d like to share the story about that occasion, as told by the carrier’s commanding officer, Captain Richard Graffy:

[After the show,] Phyllis Diller was invited to the bridge of the ship to view nighttime aircraft catapult and recovery operations. She asked about the array of telephone handsets surrounding the captain’s chair on the bridge that connected directly to some of the more important stations on the ship. She singled out the one that connected to the captain’s plot where the surface navigation was maintained, and was manned 24/7. It was suggested that she call and ask for the correct time, which she did. She was told it was 22:45:52, to which she replied, “Dammit son, I asked for the time, not my physical measurements!,” followed by her signature cackling laugh.

In our 1992 story about B-24s manufactured at Henry Ford’s Willow Run plant, Diller cleared up some confusion about her work during World War II. An excerpt from that feature:

It has long been rumored that a young Phyllis Diller was a riveter at Willow Run. When queried about her involvement, she wrote to correct the record: “I never worked at the Willow Run Bomber plant. It was my husband Sherwood Diller who worked as an inspector of all systems, electrical, hydraulic, etc. He started out there working on the cowling. We lived in Yipsilanti from 1940-42 and then transferred to the Alameda Naval Air Station in California.”

View of Carl Myers' "Balloon Farm," circa 1892. Courtesy NASM.

In 1871, Mary Breed Hawley married “aerial navigator” Carl Myers, an inventor of balloon fabric.

As she watched her husband ascend in his balloons day after day, Mary decided she’d like to fly too. She adopted the moniker Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut (Myers was dubbed “the Professor”), and in July 1880, in Little Falls, New York, she made her first ascent, as a crowd of 15,000 gathered to watch.

The following account of a September 1880 flight is from Aerial Adventures of Carlotta; or, Sky-Larking in Cloudland (1883), and is included in the Library of America’s wonderful book Into the Blue: American Writing on Aviation and Spaceflight (reviewed in our August 2012 issue).

Detail of studio shot of Mary Myers, circa 1890. Courtesy NASM.

[After entering a storm,] “I became anxious about the safety of the balloon, which during this unchecked upward flight must be rapidly expanding and in need of attention….

“Finally…I arose above the snow-white mountains of cloud-land. Sailing above and occasionally through these topmost peaks was chilly sport, which soon ended in my attempting to ‘slide down hill,’ by letting out gas…. [T]he earth suddenly jumped up at me, and I found myself swiftly diving at a few feet elevation over a woods…. [A] gust of rain rendered the balloon too heavy to rise, and it bounded rapidly across the tree-tops…. I cast anchor immediately…

“By and by a hunter came shouting through the woods, attracted by my calls, and looking everywhere except high enough. He laughed at my situation and asked me why I hadn’t found a taller tree to land in. His companions, a man and a boy, soon joined him. They ‘didn’t see how I could be got down.’ It was twenty feet from the balloon to the trunk of the tree, eighty feet to the ground, and two and a-half miles to the nearest house, and I began to think the basket might have to be my hammock for the night which was approaching, but I resolved to escape before if possible.”

Six smaller trees below the balloon had to be felled before Carlotta’s balloon could be safely lowered.

“I found myself on the ground after hanging up there nearly two hours. We were all much fatigued, and glad to shake hands together, as we felt quite like old friends. The men said they never knew a woman could engineer a job so well before, but I guess that may be because they never before caught one ‘up a tree!’”

Air Force Staff Sgt. Tony Rivera and Senior Airmen Jason Bauer and Darryll Morley (all with the 332nd Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron) provide security for a C-130 Hercules at Balad Air Base, Iraq, January 2006. Photo: USAF Master Sgt. Lance Cheung

U.S. Air Force officer Brian Castner spent three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them leading a bomb disposal unit in Iraq. In his superb memoir The Long Walk (Doubleday, 2012) he describes hitching a ride to a forward operating base on a Marine Corps C-130 Hercules:

On approach and landing one night at a postage stamp of an airfield, we started to take incoming fire. This is less obvious than one might think. With no windows or flight plan for reference, the cargo hold becomes a timeless vibrating barrel. The only indication of landing is an odd gravitational sensation as the pilot edges the nose down, banks to the left, points a wing tip toward the airfield below, and begins the corkscrew descent. The shaking increases alarmingly as your back presses into your seat and your heart rises into your throat. The engineers in the tail grab their night-vision goggles and take their positions in the sling seats at the two porthole-like back windows, hands around the flare-ejection triggers, looking for the hot-motor flashes of incoming heat-seeking missiles. Blinding-white flares are the only defense a wallowing C-130 has against smart and agile surface-to-air missiles.

I only knew we were taking missile fire because the engineers began to thumb their buttons furiously, and suddenly daylight shone through their windows, lighting up the entire back of the aircraft. Seconds later we slammed onto the runway, jolted up and forward, and the engines screamed in reverse to bring the bird to an almost immediate stop. The ramp went down, in the middle of the runway where we had come to a halt, and the engineers screamed for everyone to get off.

I grabbed my pack and rifle and ran off the plane into the waiting hot night oven. Down the ramp and onto the runway, where the engineers were already ahead of us, not waiting to see if the disoriented passengers could find their way. The airfield was completely blacked out, so as not to provide a tempting target for rocket attacks, but incongruously there was light all over the runway: the flares and flare canisters kicked out of the plane by the engineers as we were only a few feet off the ground had ricocheted, angrily skipping down the tarmac, burning all over the infield. I ran across the concrete and turned to look back at the aircraft, expecting to see engines on fire.

Instead, the pilot threw the emergency engine stop at that moment. The emergency cutoff kills all engine activity immediately, and everything flammable is jettisoned out the back. Like jet fuel. Four Allison AE2100D3 turboprop engines’ worth of jet fuel came showering back, drenching me in liquid soot. I could taste the distinctive nauseating odor of JP-8 on my lips, in my eyes, in my ears. It soaked my uniform and oozed down my rifle like chocolate syrup. I stood on that runway as human tar paper, among the still-burning flares, in the desert night.

C-130 Hercules deploying flares. Photograph: TidusTia.

Two days into the expedition, the "Eagle" crashed on an ice floe. Photograph by Nils Strindberg, member of the expedition. The expedition's fate (and the photo) were discovered 33 years later.

One hundred fifteen years ago today, on July 11, 1897, engineers S.A. Andrée and Knut Fraenkel and photographer Nils Strindberg set off to reach the North Pole by balloon. They were never seen again. As Alec Wilkinson writes in The Ice Balloon (Knopf, 2012):

Before the twentieth century, more than a thousand people tried to reach the North Pole, and according to an accounting made by an English journalist in the 1930s, at least 751 of them died. Only [S.A.] Andrée used a balloon. He had left on a blustery afternoon [in July 1897] from Dane’s Island, in the Spitsbergen archipelago, six hundred miles from the pole. It took an hour for the balloon, which was a hundred feet tall, to disappear from the view of the people who were watching from the shore—carpenters, technicians, members of the Swedish navy who had assisted in the weeks leading up to the launch.

Two years of planning had led Andrée to predict that he would arrive at the pole in about forty-three hours. Having crossed it, he would land, maybe six days later, in Asia or Alaska, depending on the winds, and walk to civilization if he had to. Ideally, he said, and perhaps disingenuously, he would descend in San Francisco. To meet the dignitaries who would be waiting for him, he brought a tuxedo.

Every newspaper of substance in Europe and North America carried word of his leaving. The headline on the front page of the New York Times said, “Andrée Off for the Pole.” A British military officer called the voyage ‘The most original and remarkable attempt ever made in Arctic exploration.’ For novelty and daring, the figure to whom he was most often compared was Columbus.

Then, having crossed the horizon, he vanished, the first person to disappear into the air.

The three men struggled towards Franz Josef Land. (Photo source: http://www.zwoje-scrolls.com/zwoje41/text08p.htm)

Andrée believed he could “sail” the balloon using a drag-rope technique; while most historians feel the technique wouldn’t have worked, it’s a moot point: the drag-ropes were pulled from the balloon just minutes after launching. Two days later, clouds and fog forced the balloon down to the ice pack; the men were grounded. They set out—shivering in their wool coats and carrying crates of champagne and cans of sausages—across the ice, toward a cache of food at Cape Flora in Franz Josef Land.

They never made it. By October all three were dead, probably from hypothermia and dehydration. It wasn’t until 33 years later, in August 1930, that the men of the Bratvaag Expedition (studying the glaciers of the Svalbard archipelago) found the remains of the Andrée expedition. Escorted by five destroyers and five airplanes, the men’s bodies were returned to Stockholm on October 5, 1930.

Main entrance of the Tower of London. The Yeoman Warder Ravenmaster (who cares for the resident birds) lives in an apartment within the Tower walls. Photograph by dynamosquito.

Historian Boria Sax says his interest in the Tower of London’s famous ravens started with a brochure published in 1997. “For many centuries,” according to A Guide to the Tower Ravens, “ravens have guarded the Tower of London and, since they are said to hold the power of the Crown, it is believed that the Crown and the Tower will fall, if ever the ravens should leave. Fortunately, these respected residents, since the reign of King Charles II [1660-1685], have been protected by royal decree.”

Why the heck would Charles II deign to recognize some squawking birds? According to legend, the king and his royal astronomer were looking through a telescope when ravens flew overhead, befouling both man and telescope. The outraged king decided to kill the ravens, but after the royal astronomer reminded him of the legend, Charles II contented himself with moving the observatory to Greenwich, and leaving the ravens at the Tower.

Ravens live about 25 years. The Tower's oldest raven lived to age 44. Detail of a photograph by A. Norppa.

The anecdote, says Sax, is absurd. In his new book, City of Ravens (The Overlook Press, 2012), he explains that ravens are diurnal, so they wouldn’t have interfered with nighttime observations. And moving the observatory to Greenwich wouldn’t have solved anything, since the area had the same birds as London.

Intrigued, Sax tried to find a copy of the royal decree. None existed, and Sax found no mention of ravens in any of the scholarly biographies of Charles II. After poring over books from the Renaissance, as well as works of ornithology, folklore, and history, Sax was unable to find any references to the Tower ravens that predated the close of the 19th century. “It is inconceivable that the authors of these books and other visitors to the Tower of London could have failed to mention the ravens if these had been present for centuries,” writes Sax. “After all, it is not everywhere that one sees huge black birds with trimmed wings bustling about and croaking loudly.”

The earliest mention of ravens in the Tower dates to 1883, most likely the year they were introduced. But the legend dates from World War II, specifically the London Blitz. The Tower, closed to visitors during World War II, was hit by 15 bombs, 3 missiles, and numerous incendiaries. Twenty-three people and two ravens were killed during these attacks. “It was during this time,” writes Sax, “that the legend that Britain would fall if the ravens left the Tower began.”

Jackie, the “lucky” raven, lodged at the nearby Watney’s Stag Brewery, may be one possible origin of the legend. Jackie engaged in a bit of airplane spotting, using his distinctive caw to warn brewery workers of approaching bombers. The legend of Jackie may have been conflated with an existing legend of Tower ravens serving as a warning system should anyone try and steal the Crown Jewels.

Who do you want to see hovering overhead after you crash? That's right, an Apache AH Mk1. Photograph courtesy AgustaWestland.

Captain Charlotte Madison (a pseudonym) was the first female Apache pilot in the British Army Air Corps. She completed two tours in Afghanistan, which she details in her 2010 book Dressed to Kill. In the excerpt below, Madison and her copilot, stationed in Kandahar, await clearance to perform an air test.

As we sit waiting for clearance on to the runway, ATC [Air Traffic Control] is busy and I can’t get a word in edgeways. I drum my fingers on the cockpit dashboard and Darwin whistles tunelessly. Seconds tick by, and the radios buzz with voices.

“Mayday Mayday Mayday, this is Death 23 Death 23 Death 23.”

An American man’s voice booms over the radio, and the first three words make everyone listening freeze.

Mayday is a call only made when the aircraft or the crew is in immediate peril, and everything stops to ensure the safety of the stricken crew. To have a Mayday emergency in a hostile environment is a crew’s worst nightmare.

“Shit,” we say together, reaching in tandem for our radio volume dials so that we can hear every word. I can practically feel every aircraft within a ten-mile radius listening in.

“Death 23, this is Kandahar Air Traffic, your Mayday call is acknowledged. Send your position and type of emergency,” the calm voice of the girl in ATC replies immediately.

Darwin and I hold our breath for the details. My heart beats against my harness straps, imagining if I was one of the crew inside Death.

“Roger, stand by.” Death’s voice is clear and slow—he doesn’t sound as stressed as I’d be.

“He sounds chilled out, doesn’t he?” Darwin notices.

“Well, it’s all recorded, isn’t it? You don’t want to sound like a Wiener when they listen to the tape at the Board of Inquiry, do you?” I stick up for Death. We used to sit around on bad-weather days on the pilots course bragging about the radio call we’d make if we were ever speeding towards the ground in a flameball. There was a famous tale of a fast-jet pilot who’d fatally crashed into a cliff, and just before impact he radioed his base with: “Better cancel the hot lunches.” It was legend with all baby-pilots.

“What kind of aircraft is Death anyway?” I ask Darwin.

“Beats me.” He’s distracted, waiting for details.

“Kandahar traffic, this is Death 23. We have suffered an engine failure after take-off. We are currently 500 yards east of the 27 threshold. We are on the ground, repeat: on the ground.”

“Roger,” ATC responds. “Can you confirm that you are still inside the wire?” If the aircraft is inside the safety of the barbed-wire fence around the Kandahar base, then it’s not as bad as it sounds, I think. If not, it’s the worst news imaginable.

“Death is outside the wire,” the voice drawls back.

“Why the hell is he so relaxed about it then?” Darwin says loudly. “Shall we?”

“I know,” I say, as the idea comes simultaneously to me. “I’ll offer to go into overwatch.”

We are armed and scary-looking; we can hover over the scene of the accident as a deterrent until some ground troops can recover the wreck and the crew. It works overhead Kajaki, so there’s no reason we can’t prevent an enemy attack here too.

“Kandahar, this is Ugly Five Four,” I transmit.

“Stand by,” ATC cuts in.

She’s not happy with my interruption. She radios Death and urgently asks for his coordinates; he tells her to wait. He’s clearly in no rush, whereas she is now starting to sound worried.

“Kandahar, Ugly Five Four can lift immediately and cover the accident. We are armed.” I transmit this in one long sentence so she can’t cut me out.

“Roger,” she responds, then swiftly relays our offer to Death.

There is a pause, and then, unbelievably, he declines.

“That won’t be necessary,” he calmly tells ATC.

For some minutes, we repeat this exchange with increasing levels of urgency. Death is outside the wire, unprotected. At least the crew seem to be fine. I keep telling ATC that we can be overhead in less than a minute; she keeps suggesting it to Death, Death keeps refusing. My mouth is dry and my heart is beating so hard it’s as if something is kicking me from inside. Sweat starts to form in beads on my back and shoulders but I feel strangely cold.

ATC is getting into the swing of things now and asks Death whether they have any injuries on board.

“Negative. No pilots or crew onboard,” Death replies.

“Ha! No wonder he crashed, with no pilot,” shouts Darwin.

I’m confused. What the…?

ATC is confused too.

“Confirm NO crew?” she repeats.

“Affirm, ma’am. Death is an unmanned aerial vehicle. I’m talking to you from my office.”

I can’t believe I wasted heartbeats on him. I look at Darwin in the mirror. He looks back, shaking his head. Nothing needs to be said, and I can hear him chuckling into his microphone.

Thanks to reader Mark Mallari for directing us to this book.