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 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 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.
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, 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 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
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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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, 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, 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, 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.
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 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.