How Did a Cat Make Aviation History?

The first attempt at a transatlantic flight didn't go as planned -- perhaps especially for its feline crew member. Learn the story of Kiddo the cat in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/animal-facts/kiddo-the-cat.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Rain Stuff. Lauren Bogbaum. Here in nineteen sustained safe manned
flight was still a tantalizing dream, just off our fingertips,
notion that promised freedom and glory and the kind of
casting off of our earthly shackles that had lured in

(00:24):
romantics for ages. And so it was in October of
that year that the entire world, or at least a
good portion of the eastern United States, looked heavenward toward
the latest fantastical attempt at real sustained flight. All odds
were pointing toward New Jersey. Not exactly heavenward, granted, but

(00:45):
you get the idea where the airship America and its
crew aimed to be the first manned flight to cross
the Atlantic. For the article this episode is based on
how Stuff Works. Spoke with Thomas a museum specialist at
the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He said, in
the early nine hundreds, there's this mystique about aviation. It's futuristic.

(01:07):
It's this incredible thing. You have the first powered heavier
than air aircraft with the Wright Brothers in nineteen o three.
Aviation is thrilling, and that excitement is building. And now
I've been saying manned, because flight in nineteen ten was
still mostly the provenance of men, and as it turned out,

(01:28):
with the airship America one unruly tabbycat in nineteen ten,
there were those who thought that if long distance multi
passenger flight were to become a reality, if those longing
eyes on the ground in New Jersey were to have
a real chance to fly to Europe, it would be
on lighter than air Airships like the America or the

(01:50):
rigid framed German Zeppelins. Both got their lift from either
hydrogen or helium. Both had small engines to propel the crafts.
The difference was that the Zeppelin had a large frame
that held up the fabric that surrounded it. The America,
in contrast, was basically a big balloon, some two hundred
feet that's sixty long. First built in France in an

(02:12):
attempt to reach the North Pole. Its owner was American
newspaper publisher Walter Wellman, a self defined explorer and ario
knot a. Wellman's try for the North Pole failed miserably,
but undaunted, he brought his ship to the US, built
it bigger, and set his sights on the Atlantic. Wellman
and his crew took off from Atlantic City a small

(02:35):
passenger cabin and a wooden lifeboat attached to the bottom.
Among those on board were Wellman, engineer Melvin Vannomen, navigator F.
Murray Simon, and a radio operator, Jack Irwin. The flight
struggled from the start, fighting bad weather and bulky engines
that apparently had been infected with sand from the New
Jersey shore off of New England. The engines failed and

(02:59):
the ship began to drift southward. The trip seemed doomed
at that point. Even before then, though, the crew had
to deal with that darned cat. This is the story
of Kiddo. How Stuff Works also spoke by email with
Alan Janis, a museum specialist in the Archives department at
the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He said, I'm

(03:21):
not sure whose cat Kiddo was. He may have been Astray,
who was adopted by America's crew, though Wellman said he
was the pet of one of the crew. Whatever the case,
it's unclear why Kiddo as he later became known, was
included on the flight, but he was definitely not initially
thrilled to be part of the historic voyage. Later, the

(03:44):
navigator Simon gave this account to The New York Times quote,
all the time we have been told to see, I
am chiefly worried by our cat, which is rushing around
the airship like a squirrel in a cage. I was
at the wheel, and jack Erwin, the wireless man, who
was seated in the lifeboats spended from the car of
the airship, cried out to me, this cat is raising hell.
I believe it's going mad. Kitto, notably, was the subject

(04:08):
of the first wireless transmission from an aircraft. Either Irwin
or Vanamin wired and said, I quote Roy, come and
get this damn cat. The crew was so distressed by
the cat's antics early in the flight that they thought
to relieve Kiddo of his duties. He was put in
a bag and lowered toward a trailing boat of newspaperman

(04:30):
as the America was being towed to see. The handoff
couldn't be completed, though, and Kiddo was brought back on board.
The cat eventually settled down as the hours passed and
the ship drifted from its target. Some seventy two hours later,
after a thousand and eight miles that's one thousand, six
d and twenty two kilometers in the air. The America

(04:53):
was abandoned at sea near Bermuda. The ship was never
to be seen again, and its crew was rescued by
a pass steamship. The wooden lifeboat is now among the
artifacts at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. I'm
back in New York. The crew was welcomed as heroes.
Photos were snapped for The Times, with Kiddo front and center,

(05:14):
and Janice said for a time he was displayed at
Gimbal's department store in a gilded cage. Afterward, he retired
from aviation and lived with Wellman's daughter in Washington, d c.
The last flight of the airship America was not technically
a successful one, but no airship had ever traveled so far,

(05:35):
albeit in the wrong direction. The America brought the dream
of flight, of crossing oceans and a human made flying
machine closer to reality than it ever had been. Simon
wrote after the voyage, we sacrificed our airship, but we
saved our lives. And above all, as Mr Wellman and
Mr Vanamon will show when they write their technical reports,

(05:56):
we have gathered a vast amount of useful knowledge which
will help largely in the solution of big problems relating
to the navigation of the air and we also saved
the cat As an epilogue, the first successful transatlantic airship
voyage was completed about nine years after the America was
lost in July by the British airship Are thirty four.

(06:20):
The ship, over three times the size of the America,
carried a stowaway kitten named whoop See. Today's episode is
based on the article how a Frisky Feline made aviation
history on how stuff works dot Com, written by John Donovan.
Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio and

(06:40):
partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, and is produced
by Tyler Clay. Four more podcasts to my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.