Why Did WWI Pilots Think Monsters Were Sabotaging Their Planes? | Monstrum

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You think you know Gremlins—but their story is far deeper than just the 1984 movie. Originally mischievous sprites blamed for aircraft malfunctions during WWI, they evolved into pop culture icons.

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Bibliography
Brady, Thomas F. “From out of the West: Walt Disney Animates the War in the Air—Thar’s Gold in Them Rustics.” New York Times, 18 October, 1942.

Cross, Gary S. The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children’s Culture. Oxford University Press, 2004.

Dean, Jay B. “The Lighter Side of Aviation Medicine during World War 2: Aviation Gremlins.” The FASEB Journal, vol. 36, no. S1, 2022.

Harder, Robert O. “GREMLINS!” MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History, vol. 32, no. 1, Oct. 2019, pp. 70–76.

McFadzean, Angus. "The suburban fantastic: A semantic and syntactic grouping in contemporary Hollywood cinema." Science Fiction Film and Television, vol. 10 no. 1, 2017, p. 1-25.