Spiritual kin of the brownies, pixies, and leprechauns, gremlins have been associated with many types of unfortunate occurrences in flying, especially ¡n military aircraft. They tickle the navigator, jam the machine guns, make the pilot believe his instruments are not reading right, fray wires and cables, keep the landing gear from going down (at the same time giving the aircrew the impression that it is), and stop engines at critical times. How some of these tricks are carried off is not always known, for some-times the guns and engines operate perfectly later. Some researchers find a clew to the origin of the gremlin legend in early flying at high altitudes, where oil would foam and bubble in the lines, vapor locks develop in fuel lines, and electrical devices operate improperly due to sparking effects in the rarefied atmosphere.
It is generally supposed that in ages past gremlins were water creatures. How or when they left their watery habitat is not known, but they were first noticed by aviators in the years immediately preceding World War II. Flyers of the British Royal Air Force for noticing them were greatly extended, for they were soon blamed for mishaps in all phases of human life. Modern publicity and advertising techniques exploited their doings to the fullest extent. At the same time a curious thing took place. The gremlins apparently abandoned. the air, the medium where they had first drawn attention. Their activities were still chronicled in the great modern channels of misinformation, but aviators doing everyday flying would go sometimes for months without ever noticing or reporting a gremlin. Thus, gradually, gremlins passed into the great body of aviation folklore and mythology, the realm where the fancy of the human spirit has placed Daedalus and Icarus, the great flying dragons and chariots of the East, the magic carpet of the Scheherazade and the witches of Teutonic legend.
