The story of the Gremlins: legendary goblins invented by the Royal Air Force

(To David Bartoccini)
18/07/16

"Have a fit of the gremlins" was often heard by British pilots during World War II when something was going wrong on an RAF plane. In the instrumentation or in the engine something stopped working, the plane lost altitude and then the pilot was resigned only to warn the comrades on the radio and launch. Was it really the gremlins fault?

Perhaps not everyone knows that the folklore figure of the 'Gremlins', legendary creatures that most of us know for the cult movie produced by Steven Spielberg in the 1984, are actually an invention of the British Royal Air Force pilots, who from the 1920 and for the entire duration of the Second World War they blamed their wickedness on the wicked 'spirits': blaming them for secretly sabotaging their airplanes to play tricks on them. Already in 1920, in fact, many pilots stationed in Malta and in the British possessions of the Middle East had coined this word slang to describe the 'goblins' to which they blamed for every mechanical problem of their equipment.

It was the writer Roald Dahl, pilot of Hurricane in the 80 ° Sqd. stationed in Egypt, to bring this myth out of the aeronautical world by sending a manuscript to the father of the Walt Disney animation. After being involved in an accident in the Libyan desert, which forced him to the ground for some time, Dahl devoted himself to writing a fable entitled 'The Gremlins'. The text, passing through a British intelligence service official in Washington, arrived at Disney in 1942 becoming an animated feature film of the war propaganda vein and at the same time a book illustrated by Random House.

Due to the injuries sustained to his skull that caused momentary attacks of blindness when subjected to sudden changes in the air, Dahl had to give up his pilot's wings, instead continuing his career as a writer. While Roald was on the ground, his gremlins they continued to accompany the pilots allied in folklore, sometimes as 'mascot' brings good luck, sometimes as in their nature, committed to perpetrate spitefulness that caused breakdowns and accidents.

In the 1944 the pilot of a B-25 bomber will swear that he has actually seen an elf shaking his plane during a mission in the European skies.

The idea that 'spirals' wandered among RAF and USAF aircraft was always justified by the excessive stress their crews were subjected to, at the dizzying heights they were often forced to operate, and the temporary lack of oxygen in the masks that could be due to hallucinations. The failures instead were simply pointed out to the wear accumulated by the appliances, subjected to continuous stresses beyond the guaranteed limits.

After the end of the war Roald Dahl continued his career as a writer of fairy tales for children, giving birth to 1964 his greatest literary success: 'La Fabbrica di Cioccolato'.

(photo: web)