Spooky Skies
Just in time for Halloween, a collection of aviation mysteries.
- By Rebecca Maksel
- Air & Space magazine, October 2012
Louise Bourgeouis sculpture outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Photograph courtesy Brian Colson
Have a spooky aviation story of your own? Leave us a comment, below.
Spiders at 30,000 Feet
On February 27, 1920, test pilot Rudolph W. “Shorty” Schroeder of the Army's McCook Field in Ohio set a new world altitude record, taking his LePere biplane fitted with a General Electric turbo-supercharger to 33,114 feet. He almost didn't make it back. During the flight, writes Edith Dodd Culver in Talespins: A Story of Early Aviation Days, Schroeder’s oxygen supply failed, he passed out, and his eyelids froze to his eyeballs. As his aircraft plummeted toward Earth, Schroeder regained consciousness in time to land safely. And once on the ground, he had a strange tale to tell.
“He flew through an area more than seven miles [sic] above the earth where there was a cloud bank of tiny creatures, each about the size of the point of a pencil," writes Culver. "They clung to the wings and crawled into the cockpit, and even squirmed in behind the instrument panel. These creatures, which looked like spiders, were still alive when he landed, so he sent some of them to the zoology department at Yale University. The professors there said yes, there are spiders in the sky…. Perhaps these were the same creatures described by some early aviators as cloud worms, which they sometimes found on the wings and in the cockpit as well as in their hair and ears.”
We contacted Yale University to see if arachnids actually swarm the skies. Professor Oswald Schmitz replied to us by email, “This is a case of baby spiders ballooning—basically they let out a strand of spider silk, and that catches in the wind and carries them away from their birth site. It is a common dispersal strategy. Depending on air currents and wind speeds, they can travel quite high in the atmosphere and very long distances. So it is not an incredible event at all.”
Maybe not incredible to you, Dr. Schmitz. Culver reports that Schroeder “suffered from the effects of this harrowing flight into the stratosphere for the rest of his life.”
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Comments (6)
Great story! I knew that some spiders use a strand of their silk to travel on the wind but I had no idea that they could travel to such heights.
Posted by Jim Johnson on October 26,2012 | 07:17 PM
I would bet that there are more true stories out there about aviation unit mascots. Would this be an idea for a future article?
Posted by Jim Johnson on October 26,2012 | 07:49 PM
Interesting stories! I hope that veryone has a great and safe weekend!
Posted by Mike on October 26,2012 | 08:55 PM
Catching the “spirit” of your Halloween article, as newly certified Private Pilots, eager to go...anywhere, my friend Tony and I signed out a 172 at Texas A&M Flying Club for a day trip all the way non-stop from College Station to Waco. Met up with friends from Baylor U and had enjoyable time socializing, dinner, etc. Departing an airport you are unfamiliar with after 10PM was less expectant of any challenges in that pre 9-11 world of 1987, so we flashlighted ourselves along a pitch dark ramp to our little bird for pre flight. Night flight for low timers, single engined and cross country could be thrill-inspiring enough, but when you are accustomed to crickets, distant truck-on-the-highway noise and sometimes a killdeer’s lonely cry that nocturnal airfield symphony can turn from tranquil to terror when suddenly you hear: ROAR! No, not like jet exhaust or big round engine roar. Big cat from Africa eats pilots on late night ramp, ROAR! It caught me off guard, still holding my plastic fuel sample cup. “Tony, did you just hear a…” As I turned, Tony was not to be found. I spied him in the airplane, taking cover behind the tall instrument panel. “Let’s get in the air, now!” was all he said. A succession of more ROAR followed, and each with crescendos of enthusiasm. Within moments, we were start…taxi…intentions declared…take off. We climbed into night sky, giving thanks for altitude, distance, Lycoming, not being appetizers. Later we learned that prior to the Cameron Park Zoo downtown, the Central Texas Zoological Park had exotic beasts housed off out in the middle of nowhere, near Waco Regional. It brought new meaning to Fight or Flight, for us!
Posted by Maj Hyral B (Buddy) Walker Jr, USAF on October 27,2012 | 10:05 AM
I am surprised they omitted the Ghost of Flight 401! A famous aviation ghost story of the haunting of aircraft with part salvaged from the crash of flight 401 in the Florida Everglades. Maybe next year!
Posted by Bill Greenleaf on October 31,2012 | 05:17 PM
Flight 19; there was a theory that a large quantity of gas escaped up from the ocean floor and when it mixed with the air displaced the oxygen, causing the aircrews to lose conscious and the recips to shut down. What with the shallow shale gas discoveries nowadays, that sounds plausible.
Posted by Bob Olson USAF Ret. on November 15,2012 | 05:50 PM