http://home.st.net.au/~dunn/gremlins.htm
DO YOU BELIEVE IN GREMLINS?
Stories of 10 Squadron RAAF in Townsville
by John Laming
"Gremlins"..n.1..a mischievous invisible being, said by airmen in World War II to cause engine trouble and mechanical difficulties. 2. any source of mischief. (orig. uncert.) The Macquarie Dictionary-2nd Edition
They were first discovered by RAF pilots of the Photographic Reconnaissance Units who flew unarmed Spitfires and Mosquitoes at great heights on photographic missions over enemy territory. Their presence caused great concern, so much so that an alert order was sent to all RAF units. It was in the form of verse which was published in RAF bulletins, and often sung to a familiar tune. It went like this:
This is the tale of the Gremlins
As told by the PRU
At Benson and Wick and St Eval-
And believe me, you slobs, it's true.
When you're seven miles up in the heavens,
(That's a hell of a lonely spot)
And it's fifty degrees below zero,
Which isn't exactly hot.
When you're frozen blue like your Spitfire,
And your scared a Mosquito pink.
When you're thousands of miles from nowhere,
And there's nothing below but the drink.
It's then that you'll see the Gremlins,
Green and gamboge and gold,
Male and female and neuter,
Gremlins both young and old.
It's no good trying to dodge them,
The lessons you learnt on the Link
Won't help you evade a Gremlin,
Though you boost and you dive and you jink.
White one's will wiggle your wing tips,
Male one's will muddle your maps,
Green one's will guzzle your glycol,
Females will flutter your flaps.
Pink one's will perch on your perspex,
And dance pirouettes on your prop,
There's a spherical middle-aged Gremlin,
Who'll spin on your stick like a top.
They'll freeze up your camera shutters,
They'll bite through your aileron wires,
They'll bend and they'll break and they'll batter,
They'll insert toasting forks into your tyres.
And that is the tale of the Gremlins,
As told by the PRU,
(P)retty (R)uddy (U)nlikely to many,
But a fact, none the less, to the few.
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Roald Dahl, then a pilot injured in action with the RAF, was sent to the U.S. as an air attache. His outspoken style made him at once unpopular with his Air chiefs, and a favorite of the cocktail set. He was packed home, recruited by Stephenson, and sent back with a promotion, much to the chagrin of the Air chiefs.
In 1943, Dahl wrote "The Gremlins", a book for children about the hazards of being an RAF pilot. The Gremlins were little havoc-wreaking creatures, the anthropomorphized explanation for any mishaps experienced by pilots and their machines. If a plane experienced a hydraulic failure over the North Sea just as it was being bounced on by Nazi fighters, it was said that it was the work of the Gremlins.
Gremlins weren't quite Dahl's invention though: the name gremlin was first coined during the 1920's. RAF insider jokes blamed gremlins for all the technical malfunctions in airplanes. Douglas Bader tells of a German Lager-Offizier nicknamed "Gremlin George" in early 1942. Gremlin jokes were widely used by the RAF during the World War II and so got into popular culture as well.
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