Futility Closet - 333-Stranded in the Kimberley

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 11,000 quirky curiosities from corresponding Churchills to an alternative Ozymandias. This is episode 333. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. Crossing the world in 1932, two German airmen ran out of fuel in a remote region of northwestern Australia. With no food and little water, they struggled to find their way to safety,

Starting point is 00:00:40 while rescuers fought to locate them. In today's show, we'll describe the airmen's Ordeal, a dramatic story of perseverance and chance. We'll also survey some escalators and puzzle over a consequential crash. And just a quick programming note, we'll be off next week, so we'll be back with a new episode on March 8th. At midnight on May 15th, 1932, a Junkers JUW-33 seaplane took off from Copang in Dutch Timor and headed southeast toward the Australian continent. Aboard were two German airmen, pilot Hans Bertram and mechanic Adolf Klausmann. The two had departed that February from the Rhine near Cologne on a trip around the world to find markets for the German aviation industry and make goodwill visits to German communities along the way. The flight across

Starting point is 00:01:37 the Timor Sea should have taken five and a half hours. Bertram and Klausmann had hoped to reach land at first light, but within an hour of takeoff, a wall of cloud loomed in front of them, a monsoonal storm. Bertram adjusted his course to avoid it, but like almost all planes in that era, the Atlantis had no radio, so he had to make his own judgment as to the wind's strength and direction. He seems to have misjudged this because at 6 a.m. there was still no sign of land. They were running low on fuel when Clausmann spotted a fringe of land to starboard, and at 7.25 they set down in a small inlet.

Starting point is 00:02:13 There was no sign of human habitation. Bertram wasn't sure whether they had reached the Australian mainland. They had been short on time in Copang and had taken off without food or water, intending to have a good breakfast in Darwin. Exhausted now, they slung up their hammocks in the cabin and went to sleep, expecting to find food and fuel when they learned where they were. Toward noon, they were awakened by a shout from the shore. It was a lone aboriginal man. He waded out to the plain, but they found he spoke no English and they could not communicate by signs. At length, he turned away and disappeared into

Starting point is 00:02:44 the scrub. With no other help at hand, Bertram considered what to do. While they'd been coming into land, he'd made a rough sketch of the coastline and had taken a compass bearing. His best guess was that they hadn't reached the mainland, but had come down instead on Melville Island, north of Darwin. That meant that if they followed this coast west, they should come to Port Cockburn, where they could hope to find food, water, and fuel. They had enough fuel remaining for only about 10 minutes of flying. They took off again and flew west until Bertram found a sheltered inlet that ran well inland.

Starting point is 00:03:19 There he brought the seaplane down and turned her to face the sea. That was a mistake. They would discover later that they weren't on Melville Island. The storm winds had driven them well west of their intended course, and they'd come down almost 400 kilometers to the southwest in a remote region of northwestern Australia, with a sea on one side of them and a limitless desert on the other. Bertram had just used up the last of their fuel while taking them farther from help, and they had filed no detailed flight plan. The two men set out to look for water, but they'd arrived in the dry season, and in several hours searching, they found none. At last, they resorted to drinking the dirty, oily water in the plane's radiator, but even that was

Starting point is 00:03:55 a limited supply. It seemed clear that the aboriginal man they'd seen must have a source of water in order to survive, so they gathered some provisions, filled their canvas water bag from the radiator, and started walking back eastward. But there was no break in their bad luck. On the first day, the bag was torn open against a sharp rock, and they lost their water. Worse was to come. On the third day, in order to cross an inlet, they bundled up their clothing and equipment and waded into the water wearing only their sun helmets. They had begun towing the bundles behind them when two logs floating at the bank opened their eyes. They were saltwater crocodiles. The men thrashed their way back to shore and ran to safety, but in losing the bundles

Starting point is 00:04:35 they'd lost nearly everything they had. Clothing, their chart, matches, fishing gear, and a wallet that held all their money. All that they'd kept were the helmets and scarves they'd been wearing and Bertram's pistol, which he'd put under his helmet to keep dry. Barefoot and naked, they made their way back westward toward the plain, which now had the only source of drinkable water they knew of. On the way, they sighted a kangaroo, but the pistol's report scared it off. At length, Bertram reflected that the pistol wasn't helping them, and he feared they might eventually be tempted to use it to end their misery, so he threw it into the ocean. On May 22nd, they reached the Atlantis again, drank from the radiator, put on fresh clothes and shoes, and planned their next move. Eight days had now passed, and there was no sign that anyone had been near the plane, nor had they seen any sign of a search aircraft.

Starting point is 00:05:24 had been near the plane, nor had they seen any sign of a search aircraft. It appeared they would have to fight their own way to a settlement, and unfortunately Bertram still thought they were on Melville Island and that their best course was to head to the southwest. After more than a week with no food and little water, they couldn't walk far, much less carry equipment. But a boat could carry it for them, and under sail they might cover 20 kilometers a day. Bertram reckoned that this should bring them to Port Cockburn in three days, so they detached the port float of the seaplane and converted it into a makeshift canoe, using a tree for a mast and fashioning paddles and a tiller from pieces of spare metal. Their sail was two bathrobes and a pair of summer trousers.

Starting point is 00:06:01 On May 24th, a storm brought them 12 liters of good fresh water, a hopeful sign. Before they set out, Bertram wrote a note in English and fixed it inside the cabin window of the plane. It said 27-5-32, Australia. Today we left the plane in a float, as a boat, in a westerly direction along the coast. Bertram. 12 days had now passed since they'd gone down, and they had little hope that anyone would find it. They didn't eat anything for twelve days? Practically nothing. They caught one small fish and made fish soup out of it,

Starting point is 00:06:34 and they tried eating leaves and berries, but as often as not, that gave them cramps, and so they stopped trying. It's a very inhospitable country. The aboriginal people know what they're doing and know how to find roots and certain things that would be invisible to a European. So essentially, no, they're eating nothing and drinking almost nothing. And bad luck followed them even at sea. They found that if they stayed close to shore, they had to contend with breakers, reefs, and rocks. But as they sailed

Starting point is 00:06:58 farther out, the currents drew them gradually into Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, where their tiller was smashed by high seas, leaving the little boat practically uncontrollable. In the meanwhile, though they couldn't know it, the search for them had come to an end. It had begun when they'd been missing for 48 hours. The coast from Darwin to Wyndham had been searched twice, but no trace of them had been found, because they were farther west than anyone had guessed, and headed still farther. In the search area, no sign was found that they had reached Australian waters, let alone the mainland. So the government notified Germany that any further search appeared futile. The men must be presumed dead.

Starting point is 00:07:36 At sea in the float, Bertram and Klausmann decided to make their way back to shore. Without a tiller, they couldn't steer under sail, so they had to row, which took three laborious days. In 17 days, they thought they'd accomplished nothing toward saving themselves, but inadvertently they had managed one thing. In an inlet not far from the Creek of the Crocodiles, an aboriginal man went fishing, and on the shore he discovered a handkerchief and a cigarette case. He showed these things to Father Fulgentius Cubero of the Drysdale River Mission farther west along the coast. The cigarette case didn't seem much weathered, and it bore the initials H.B. Drysdale organized some search parties and sent word that a clue had been found. Back in the float, Bertram and Klausmann reached land after days of paddling.

Starting point is 00:08:21 Leaning on each other as they dragged themselves from the beach, they stumbled by blind luck into a pool that was hidden by the vegetation, and there at last could drink their fill. They'd eaten nearly nothing for two and a half weeks, but the water restored them enough to make another plan. Having made no progress trying to escape by sea, they decided walking would be best. Bertram still believed that they were on Melville Island and that help was only a few kilometers to the southwest in Port Cockburn, about four days' walk in their weakened state. They could carry much less on foot than in the float. They took the compass and 25 to 30 liters of water in a carrier they fashioned from a raincoat. This was another heartbreaking error. They trudged southwest for three days, topped what they were sure was the last ridge, and saw only featureless brush extending into the distance. Bertram finally

Starting point is 00:09:09 realized they could not be on Melville Island. They must be on the mainland and in the Kimberley region, an area almost half as large as Germany and practically uninhabited. He could not believe they'd been so far off course. No one would think to look for them here. Much of this area was an aboriginal settlement that Europeans were forbidden to enter without a permit. Every step they'd taken toward Port Cockburn had really taken them farther from their one potential source of help, the town of Wyndham, almost 300 kilometers away. This is a really stressful story. It is. It was stressful even to research it. I'm surprised it's not better known. It's unbelievably dramatic. stressful even to research it. I'm surprised it's not better known. It's unbelievably dramatic.

Starting point is 00:09:50 They were desolated at this realization, but summoned the will at last to retrace their steps to the float and the waterhole as they'd run out of water again. But when they reached the sea, they didn't recognize the spot. They staggered west along the coast for a day and a half, realized this must be the wrong direction, turned around and headed east. Eventually, Klausmann gave out. He couldn't even crawl along the beach. Bertram went on without him and on June 10th found the float a short distance east of the spot where they'd emerged from the scrub. It was in good condition and seemed secure. He revived himself at the pool and brought water to Klausmann, but when they returned to the float, they found it had been carried into the sea and suffered a

Starting point is 00:10:24 hole in the bow compartments. They spent the night cutting off those compartments with a hacksaw and, on June 13th, put to sea, hoping to paddle to Wyndham in the after section. But after about two and a half kilometers, they rounded Cape Bernier and met mountainous seas. It was impossible to travel farther in the float, so they fought their way ashore and dragged it up the beach. This was the end. They had found that they couldn't advance by sea or by land, and they couldn't even walk the few kilometers back to the pool. Help would have to come to them. At this realization, the high tide washed over the float and contaminated their small supply of fresh water. On June 13th, word reached Wyndham of the items that had been found on the beach. This suggested a new area to search, but it had now been 30 days since the plane had been lost, and no one could recall

Starting point is 00:11:09 the case of a European surviving in that area for that length of time without native help or a planned supply of food and water. Still, there was some hope. The seaplane was spotted from the air on June 15th, and from the air the searchers could see that the port float had been removed, and even that a note had been left in the cabin window, but there was nowhere to set down a land plane so they couldn't retrieve it. The searchers dropped several tins of meat in case the men returned, searched the coast and inland for a radius of 15 kilometers, and dispatched a boat to retrieve the note. The boat reached the Atlantis on June 17th. The note told them that Bertram and Klausmann had

Starting point is 00:11:45 headed west in the float, and a launch was sent in that direction. But again, bad luck intervened. The missing men had crawled into a cave to seek shelter from the weather, and as it passed their location, the launch was contending with heavy weather, reefs, and engine trouble, so it failed to find them. Convinced that the float could not have gone farther west in such heavy seas, the searchers returned to the seaplane. The actual finding of the airmen fell to an aboriginal man who happened to pass the cave on June 22nd and heard someone call out to him. He discovered the men and gave them a fish he had just caught, the first real food they had had in 40 days. They could communicate with him only by gestures, but he summoned help and presently three more indigenous people arrived with four tins of meat and some flour. Even from that point, it would be another

Starting point is 00:12:29 week before any European rescuers could reach them, but the aboriginal people showed themselves incredibly capable and generous in rehabilitating the fallen men, even chewing kangaroo meat for them and beating a smooth pathway back to the original waterhole. To bring word to the Forest River mission, two of them ran 250 kilometers in 55 hours, a feat that's remembered as Hector's Marathon. Bertram wrote later, When I tell you how the Samaritans of the wilds tended and cared for us, you'll understand that I wish to bear witness to the greatest and noblest virtue of the human soul, charity. The writer Barbara Winter said if it hadn't been for them,

Starting point is 00:13:03 the men would have been dead before any of the European searchers reached them. It's almost unbelievable that they survived in any case. Yeah, if you look at the whole story from a high vantage point, they had at this point traveled, tried traveling from the plain east, west, south, and north. And for good reasons in each case, it's just they had limited information and a lot of bad luck and so didn't manage to get or find help in any of those cases. The general advice you get, I'm told, in this region or in bad regions in general is to stay with your vehicle because it's larger than you are and easier to spot. It gives you shelter and water and a signaling mirror. There are a lot of reasons to stay there.

Starting point is 00:13:47 And in fact, in this case, the plane was found before the men were. But in here, there's a huge irony. If they hadn't ventured east and encountered the crocodiles and dropped their cigarette case, nobody would have been looking for them in this region at all. So it's hard to know what the moral is. Yeah, so if they had stayed with the plane, that might not have worked out for them in any case. It seems safe to guess that they wouldn't have survived if that hadn't happened. There's just an awful lot of really tenuous coincidences that help this work at all. The ordeal had been so grievous that both men were near a breaking point. Klaus Mann was screaming in the night and had to be restrained with a chain.

Starting point is 00:14:22 On July 5th, 12 days after the indigenous people had found the missing men, a launch of European rescuers reached them and word broke in the press that they'd been found alive. Both men convalesced in Wyndham. Klausmann eventually returned to Germany but entered a mental hospital. He never fully recovered from the ordeal. Bertram recovered the plane and toured Australia for some months giving lectures. Of the indigenous people who had helped him, he said, they gave me my life. They are my best friends. They are wonderful people. Thanks to evolving technology, this would be the last great search of its type in Australia. Within the space of a few years, aircraft movements came to be monitored more closely, missions and cattle stations in the outback were provided with emergency landing fields, and reliable radio communications were instituted in this sparsely populated region and

Starting point is 00:15:10 the aircraft that crossed it. That last measure would have obviated the long journeys by foot and sea that had been necessary to coordinate the search for the German airmen. Barbara Winter writes, if Bertram had had a radio in Atlantis and Wyndham its new radio station, the drama could have been over in a few hours. One of the puzzles in episode 325, spoiler alert, was about how you could tell that someone was from out of town because they were standing on the wrong side of the escalator, as different places have different norms about which side you should stand on to let walkers get past you. Aletheia wrote, Hello, Greg and Sharon. I was listening to episode 325 in which one of the lateral thinking puzzles involved escalator etiquette. As you mentioned in the episode, each country has their own etiquette, but did you know

Starting point is 00:16:09 that in Japan it's different depending on where you are? In Kanto, the Tokyo area, they stand on the left and walk on the right, while in Kansai, the Osaka area, it's the other way around. Here's an article with more detail. I always found this very funny, especially when I took the bullet train from one city to the other. Most people who regularly take that train are aware of this and know on which side to stand. But you can always find tourists, Japanese or otherwise, that don't know or forget and look very confused, me among them. The first time I went to Osaka after half a year of getting used to doing it the Tokyo way, it completely threw me off and it was hard to change back. Thank you as always for all the effort you put into the show.

Starting point is 00:16:49 And Frey from Victoria, Australia wrote, Dear Greg and Sharon, Warmest greetings from Melbourne. Thank you for the lateral thinking puzzle in episode 325, involving the out-of-towner who was identified as foreign by queuing on the wrong side of the escalator. You mentioned that in the UK, they queue on the right on escalators and overtake on the left. I have found this truly puzzling for a long time.

Starting point is 00:17:12 In both Hong Kong and England, where cars drive on the left side of the road, slower cars, or cars which pull up to stationary, will stick to the left. So overtaking happens on the right, reckless drivers accepted. However, on escalators and walkways, people will stand or walk slowly on the right, with overtaking happening on the left. Here in Australia, we also drive on the left, and it's the same for pedestrians, who will stand or walk slowly on the left of an escalator or walkway. This seems to me to be much more logical,

Starting point is 00:17:41 rather than flipping the rules around for cars versus for pedestrians. But then I would say that, wouldn't I? I'm an Aussie. As Hong Kong had a strong British influence at the time when roads and cars were becoming common, I guess they could have just copied the British system. Possibly not, though. I'd love to understand more about this if anyone has more information. But as for why they do this in the UK, no one I've talked to seems to know or to have any ideas. It's just the way it's done. Anyway, thank you for your wonderful podcast. Sending you and your listeners very best wishes for a safe and better 2021.

Starting point is 00:18:14 So Wikipedia actually has an article on escalator etiquette, which confirms that in many places there is a convention that people should stand on a particular side to allow other people to walk on the other side. Standing on the right is the most common convention following early escalator design in London. An article in the Times of London reports that the world's first escalator was installed in Coney Island, New York in 1896, and that the first one installed in Britain was in the Harrods Department Store in 1898. But this and several other articles that I looked at mentioned the first successful escalator installed in the London Underground at Earls Court Station in 1911, and I got the impression that that one may have been rather influential or trend-setting. And incidentally, the Times said that after the

Starting point is 00:19:02 escalator was installed at the station, a one-legged man known as Bumper Harris was hired to ride on it and show how safe it was. Apparently, these new moving staircases seemed potentially rather hazardous when they were first introduced. An article in Londonist says that when the escalator first debuted at Harrods, they had staff at the top offering brandy and smelling salts to shaken customers who had ridden it up. I can understand why people, if you just used a regular stationary stairs, it would look really scary. They had staff at the top offering brandy and smelling salts to shaken customers who had ridden it up. I can understand why people, if you just used a regular stationary stairs, it would look really scary. It could seem pretty scary, yeah. The Times also reports that there was so much excitement about the new escalator at Earls Court Station

Starting point is 00:19:38 that commuters would get off at that station just to go up one escalator and then down the other before catching another train to finish their journey. The Wikipedia article does mention Hong Kong as one of the places that followed the escalator norms that London had set, but I wasn't able to find anything to specifically confirm this myself. As for the Japanese escalator conventions, the article that Aletheia sent from Kotaku says that there are some different explanations about why the conventions differ between Tokyo and Osaka, including that when escalators were first installed in Tokyo in 1914, they followed the driving rule of passing on the right,

Starting point is 00:20:17 but that when escalators were first installed in Osaka in 1967, they instructed commuters to leave the left side open for people to use to pass, possibly because the rail operators there were using the London transportation system as a model. The Times article notes that while in most countries the escalator conventions mirror the driving ones, the London Underground is one of the exceptions, but that there actually seems to be a rather specific reason for that. The 2009 article explains that a silent film from the 1920s titled Underground had been recently restored for a film festival, and its extensive footage of the tube showed the design of the early escalator, which

Starting point is 00:20:58 unlike today's escalators ended at a diagonal. This meant that the escalator ended sooner on the right than on the left, with the idea apparently being that people would step off of it with their right foot. The Times says that the passengers who chose not to walk on the escalator were told to stand to the right so that walkers could take advantage of the extra section of moving stairway at the end. Underground used this peculiarity of design for a visual gag that has a soldier on the escalator looking concerned as he reads a sign that says, Step off, right foot first. He looks over at his commanding officer, who would expect soldiers to begin marching with their left foot, and while confusedly dithering, he is thrown forward.

Starting point is 00:21:39 The article quotes Simon Murphy, a curator at the London Transport Museum, as saying that historians had assumed that asking passengers to stand to the right was simply an arbitrary decision, but that the footage from the film suggests otherwise. He says, it's a good theory and it's probably true. It's all down to whether or not you think someone thought through all of this, but most of the time they did think things through in detail. They made scale models of stations, so they thought hard about passenger flows. When the early escalator designs were replaced with the style we're more familiar with today, the Times says, the rule stayed in place and continued to mystify foreigners who expect British people to overtake on the right as we do on roads. Besides potentially confusing out-of-towners, escalator norms of having people stand on one side and walk on the other have several disadvantages.

Starting point is 00:22:29 The practice may be challenging to people with different needs, for example, those who might have difficulty holding onto the railing using one particular hand and arm. There are also concerns about safety, with an increased chance of accidents when some people are stationary while others are moving. A 2015 article in the Washington Post said that Japan's Consumer Affairs Agency reported that 3,865 people just in Tokyo alone had needed treatment at a hospital for escalator accidents between 2011 and 2013. So yes, they can be dangerous. And another reason to have everyone just stand is that studies have found that it's more efficient for moving more people in the same amount of time. As many as 30% more people can get transported up an escalator when they are standing on both sides. So while the time for the trip will be a little longer for those who have to stand rather than walk, the average time to get to the top of the escalator will be shorter for everyone overall,

Starting point is 00:23:24 as people won't have to wait as long at the bottom to get onto the escalator. But while it might be safer and save time for everyone in the long run, efforts over the years in several cities, such as London, Washington DC, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, to get everyone to simply stand on both sides of the escalators have always proved unsuccessful. Not only does it go against a long-established custom, but some people just seem to very much want to save those few extra seconds for themselves. The Washington Post article quotes former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as saying, I don't have anything in common with people who stand on escalators. I always walk around them. Why waste time? You have eternity to rest when you die.

Starting point is 00:24:03 It's funny how sticky these conventions are. It sounds like when they're established, it's relatively arbitrary, but then they can hold on for a hundred years. Yeah, nobody can change them even when they try. We recently received a fair amount of follow-up on the Dyatlov Pass incident that Greg covered in episode 55, in which nine hikers died in very strange circumstances while on a skiing trip in the North Ural Mountains in 1959.

Starting point is 00:24:27 There were many odd aspects of this incident, including the extensive or unusual injuries to some of the hikers, such as skull fractures and that one's tongue was missing, and that many of them were very underdressed for the sub-zero weather conditions, to the extent that some of them were only wearing underwear, so that the actual cause of death for at least of them, appears to have been hypothermia. The original official investigation determined that the cause of the incident was a forceful natural event, though that didn't seem to explain many of the odder facets of the case. In 2019, the investigative committee of the Russian Federation concluded that an avalanche was the most probable cause

Starting point is 00:25:04 of the event, after which the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation concluded that an avalanche was the most probable cause of the event, after which the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation began their own investigation and in 2020 reached the same conclusion. However, critics of the avalanche theory raised some specific concerns, that the search team in 1959 hadn't seen any signs of an avalanche, that the slope angle above the hiker's tent wasn't steep enough for an avalanche, that the supposed avalanche would have had to have occurred at least nine hours after the hikers had cut into the slope to set up their tent, and that the chest and skull injuries found on the hikers weren't typical for avalanche victims. An article published on January 28th in Communications, Earth, and Environment supports the idea that an

Starting point is 00:25:45 unusually small and delayed avalanche could have occurred on that night in 1959, and it addresses the four main criticisms I outlined. The article's authors used computer simulations that were actually modified from the snow animation coding used in the 2013 Disney movie Frozen, and combined that with data from impact tests run by General Motors in the 1970s, where GM studied the effects of hitting cadavers in the chest with different amounts of weight and at different velocities to model what might occur during car crashes. The researchers' models demonstrated that a small slab avalanche, possibly only 16 feet long or about the size of an SUV, could, under particular conditions,

Starting point is 00:26:26 cause broken ribs and fractured skulls to people sleeping on rigid beds, as the Dyatlov Pass hikers were, and that such injuries would be severe but not immediately fatal, as was found on autopsy of the hikers. Some have been touting this article as solving the Dyatlov Pass mystery. For example, new scientists tweeted, The Dyatlov Pass incident, which saw nine Russian mountaineers die in mysterious circumstances in 1959, has been the subject of many conspiracy theories. Now researchers say an unusual avalanche was to blame. But that's not exactly what the study's authors themselves say. that's not exactly what the study's authors themselves say. This research used analytical models and computer simulations in order to support the plausibility of the avalanche hypothesis,

Starting point is 00:27:10 but the authors are not claiming that they can state that an avalanche did occur that night. The authors themselves say, solving the Dyatlov Pass mystery is an enormous task, which is far beyond the scope of this paper. Our work shows the plausibility of a rather rare type of snow slab instabilities that could possibly explain the Dyatlov Pass incident. Yet we do not explain nor address other controversial elements surrounding the investigation, such as traces of radioactivity found on the victim's garments, the behavior of the hikers after leaving the tent, locations and states of the bodies, etc. While possible explanations are given in multiple published sources, as well as by both the investigative committee and the prosecutor general of the Russian Federation, we believe that this

Starting point is 00:27:54 will always remain an intrinsic part of the Dyatlov Pass mystery. Yeah, so of all the stories we've covered on this show, that's the most utterly baffling. It's hard even to imagine now an explanation that could cover everything that was found. And since there were no witnesses that lived through it, I don't know what they could uncover at this late date that would sort of prove everything. Yeah, it's more than 60 years ago now. And we really appreciate everyone who sent us an update on this topic, and I appreciated all the links that people sent. I wouldn't have seen this if people hadn't sent it. So if everyone assumes that someone else will have told us about something,

Starting point is 00:28:30 then we might not hear about it at all. So thank you to everyone who took the time to write about that, and to everyone who writes to us in general. We learn so many fascinating things from our listeners. So if you have anything you want to share with us, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle.

Starting point is 00:28:53 I'm going to give him a strange sounding situation, and he's going to see if he can figure out what's going on asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Alex Baumans. This puzzle comes from Alex Baumans. The crash of a Russian fighter jet at a 1999 Paris air show greatly enhanced the reputation of one Russian aeronautical firm. How? Enhanced? Enhanced. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:17 Did they make the plane that crashed? No. Did they make another plane that was at the show? Not that I'm aware of. Oh, so it's not that they, I don't know, rescued them or something. Okay, so a plane crashed was at the show? Not that I'm aware of. Oh, so it's not that they, I don't know, rescued them or something. Okay, so a plane crashed at an air show. Yes. You said enhance the reputation.

Starting point is 00:29:39 Was it that that wouldn't do it? It's not like if there were only two aircraft manufacturers in the world and one of them crashes a plane, that doesn't enhance the reputation of the other one right this specifically enhanced the reputation of one russian aeronautical firm was it because they had foregone using some bad part or something that had led to the crash in the other company no something like that it that. Not exactly, no. The crash reflected on their wisdom somehow, would you say? I don't think so.

Starting point is 00:30:09 Not in the way I think you're intending. That's not what you're looking for? That's not what I'm looking for, I don't think. Okay. If I understand you correctly. Okay, well then, so were they connected in any way with the plane that crashed?

Starting point is 00:30:19 I guess you'd say yes. But they didn't make it. I don't think they made the plane. Does this have something to do with people? I mean, I'm thinking of technology. No. Like the pilot or something. No.

Starting point is 00:30:31 Okay. Do I need to know more about specifically what caused the plane to crash? No. A plane crashed. A plane crashed. Or do I need to know were there casualties? Does that even matter? There weren't casualties

Starting point is 00:30:45 oh your little eyebrows went up okay so that's actually significant that there weren't casualties so the pilot escaped yes the pilot and the co-pilot both escaped successfully like with parachutes for instance for instance did this other did did the Russian company make the parachutes, which performed unusually well? Ah, that's very close, but not quite parachutes, exactly. So they made some, like the ejection seats? Ejection seats, that's exactly it. The pilot and co-pilot's lives were saved by the impressive performance of the jet's ejection seats, manufactured by the Russian company Zvezda.

Starting point is 00:31:21 During a maneuver, the tail of the fighter had hit the ground, and although the pilot was able to pull the fighter back up, it was badly damaged and one of the engines burst into flames. Both crew members were able to successfully eject themselves out of the jet and land safely with the seat's parachutes right before the jet hit the ground and exploded. That's dramatic. It was very dramatic. And Alex actually sent a link to a YouTube video of the event if anyone wants to see the crash and the very impressive functioning of the ejection seats. Wow. So thanks to Alex for that amazingly non-fatal puzzle.

Starting point is 00:31:50 And if anyone else has a puzzle for us to try, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Just a reminder that we'll be off next week. Reminder that we'll be off next week. In the meantime, if you'd like to become one of the awesome supporters of our show and check out some bonus content like outtakes, extra lateral thinking puzzles, more discussions on some of the stories, and peeks behind the scenes, please see our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset

Starting point is 00:32:18 or the supporters section of the website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also graze through Greg's collection of over 11,000 quirky curiosities. Browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any comments or feedback for us,

Starting point is 00:32:38 you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by Greg's incredible brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back in two weeks.

Futility Closet - 333-Stranded in the Kimberley

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