The story behind the WWI fighter plane that inspired Snoopy's Flying Ace

0:00Support for Here and Now Any Time comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing computing and model based design. MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at MathWorks.com. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Big fan of the comics page, and certainly Snoopy as the Red Baron was always a highlight. Of course, Snoopy having to sneak through the wire after he's brought down behind enemy lines was always a fun part of that story. Happy Thanksgiving on this very American holiday. We take a visit to the Smithsonian and its esteemed exhibit on Snoopy.

0:59It's Thursday, November 27th. This is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WVU are Boston. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, in the spirit of gratitude and being thankful, we're taking some time to remember someone who left the world a better place than they found it. Alice Wong, the founder of the Disability Visibility Project. Wong's friends are thankful not just for her tireless work advocating for people with disabilities, but also for her care packages, her great parties, and her devoted friendship. Alice wrote her own death announcement. And the kicker to that death announcement was, don't let the bastards grind you down.

1:44I think I'm quoting that correctly. And I would say, don't let them grind you down. Before we get to that story, though, we are rediscovering some World War I history via the comic Peanuts. Remember this scene from It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown? By the way, whatever happened to the World War I flying ace? Oh, he's probably getting ready to take off in a Sopwith Camel on the next Dawn Patrol. The Sopwith Camel, it turns out, is a real plane. And one is on display at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in D.C. Scott Tong recently got a tour of the new exhibit. Hi, Roger Connor. I'm curator for the World War I Birth of Military Aviation Gallery here at the National Air and Space Museum.

2:38Roger Connor meets me early before the crowds come to walk me through with some exhibit sound effects in the background. And front and center is this old school biplane with a beautifully restored wood body and propeller and this red, white and blue circle on the side indicating a British warplane. and just in front of the pilot's seat is a hump. When we look at the Camel, we see the machine guns in front of the cockpit, above the engine, and there's a hump that encloses that. And that's what gives the Camel its name. So a commercial jet today, I don't know, does it go like 500 miles per hour or so?

3:14How fast could this guy go? So this guy, the Sopwith Camel, not doing much more than 100 miles an hour. In fact, the Camel is not a particularly fast aircraft, but the Camels still have this great reputation of being the superb, agile dogfighter. This aircraft could outturn pretty much anything. Now pay attention, because he's going to say a couple things that surprise me. One is that the Sopwith Camel created its own particular air sickness. No, not the turbulence. It was the oil for the engines. You also had to lubricate them with castor oil. Wait, wait, time out. Castor oil? So, yeah, so from the castor bean, thousands and thousands of acres of castor beans had to be grown throughout the American South so that they could lubricate their aircraft engines like the camel.

4:02And that castor oil is getting sprayed out at rates of, you know, gallons per flight. Like spitting it out at you, the pilot? So, yeah, some of it might land on you, might land on your goggles, which, of course, you need to wear because you're in an open cockpit, you get a lot of wind in the face. Unfortunately, castor oil, you know, if your tummy's a little, you know, backed up, that's what you take, right? Some of us from a certain era remember the gastrointestinal effects here. Yes, right. So inhaling castor oil is maybe not the most pleasant thing for a long flight. You know, that's the life of an aviator at this time.

4:41So, yeah, insert your own potty joke here. Now, this is what the Sopwith Camel sounds like, according to an exhibit recording.

4:53Which brings us to surprise number two. The Sopwith Camel shot down enemy planes, but most warplanes in World War I had a different job. It was to take pictures, to fly over opposition ground troops and tell the good guys where the bad guys were. The camera is more lethal than the gun, ultimately, for the soldier on the ground. What the soldier is really concerned about is how well that enemy artillery is pointed at them. What's pointing that artillery is these eyes in the sky, the cameras, the radios that are then used to direct the artillery in real time. In real time. So how does the pilot communicate with the soldier on the ground?

5:34There'll be two people on the aircraft. So there's a pilot flying, there's an observer in the back who cruised the guns and then also takes the pictures and also taps out the messages in Morse code. Roger Conner of the Smithsonian says the strategy of this exhibit is to lure you in with the warplane that Snoopy flies in his pretend world, and then explain the reality of war. Kind of what we're doing in this story. Now, a few paces behind the plane is a bunch of Snoopy images. A white beagle atop his doghouse, teeth gritted, goggles, scarf, hands, or I guess paws pretending to steer. So can I ask you, I mean, did it hook you in at all when you were a kid the way it did for me in the 70s?

6:16Absolutely. So, you know, big fan of the comics page. And certainly Snoopy as the Red Baron was always a highlight. Here's the World War I flying ace climbing into the cockpit of a Sopwith camel. Contact, he shouts. As the story goes, he gets into a dogfight, lots of shooting, and Snoopy is shot down.

6:45Of course, Snoopy having to sneak through the wire after he's brought down behind enemy lines was always a fun part of that story. So, Snoopy fact-check. His cartoon nemesis was the Red Baron, who was an actual World War I ace, officially known as Manfred von Richthofen. The Red Baron is World War I's leading scoring pilot. So, very... What scoring means? So, scoring, we mean aerial victories. So, whether it's a pilot or a gunner on a plane, if one successfully shoots down in a plane, regardless of whether the enemy pilot lives or dies, that is considered an aerial victory. In the world of Snoopy, we never see the Red Baron.

7:28Now, the creator of Snoopy, of course, was Peanuts comic strip artist Charles Schultz. He first drew Snoopy the flying ace during another war, Vietnam in 1965. He's doing so as a way to gently bring in the idea of military service as the U.S. is ramping up operations in Vietnam. And so because this was the 50th anniversary of the war, there was some nostalgia for World War I, but also that Snoopy versus the Red Baron was a comfortable way of talking about the realities of war using that mythology rather than the real gore and brutality of the war. Now this exhibit does not try to hide the realities of war.

8:11And there's a lot here. How Sopwith Camel planes shot down German zeppelins, those blimps. how planes evolve from World War I to the first airmail planes to commercial jets. Now before I head out, I ask Roger Connor what will make this exhibit a winner. With any of our exhibits, our success really comes in that next step, the conversation that happens. And that might be a discussion on the way home. It might be looking something up on the Internet. The thing that would warm a curator's heart the most would be somebody picking up a book. but it's that further engagement. And are you here to to engage with the folks with the families who come in?

8:53Are you trying to have the conversation with them? As a curator when I you know when we finished our work we want to stand back and observe. You know we do have docents that are trained to engage with the visitors and kind of lead that discussion. Okay. But yeah as a curator my job is now on to the next exhibit. Yeah but you have to want to kind of watch and oh absolutely They spy on what's happening and what they love, right? Yes, and in fact, we do that quite frequently. Now, you can spy on the Sopwith Camel exhibit at the Air and Space Museum in D.C. whenever your spying schedule allows, because it's a permanent exhibit.

9:42Scott Tong reporting. Scott gets around. In addition to the Smithsonian, he was recently in South Florida talking to Venezuelan exiles about the Trump administration's pressure campaign against the Venezuelan government. That dropped yesterday. So check out the previous episode of Here and Now Anytime in this podcast feed if you haven't heard that. Really interesting stuff. But coming up next on today's show, remembering disability activist and author Alice Wong. Stick around. Thank you.

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11:35Alice Wong died earlier this month in San Francisco. She was 51 years old. Wong lived with muscular dystrophy and founded the Disability Visibility Project, which started as a partnership with the nonprofit StoryCorps to collect the oral histories of people with disabilities. In 2016, Wong was on Here and Now. You know, people with disabilities are seen as this kind of vulnerable, you know, oh, we can't bully them, we've got to protect them. And I feel like there's also another aspect that, you know, people with disabilities can speak for themselves, can defend themselves. We just need to kind of listen to them.

12:19That message, we just need to listen to people with disabilities, inspired countless people, including Wong's friend and fellow advocate, Yomi Young. Young joined Alyssa Nadwerny earlier this month to remember her friend. So if someone unfamiliar wants to get to know Alice, where should they start? Alice talked a lot about mixtapes. We're both Gen X, right? So we come from a generation where we made mixtapes for our friends. So there's the mixtape, right? Or the playlist. And then there's the deep cuts. So I think the Alice Wong starter kit, before you get to the deep cut, you should probably get to know Alice.

13:00And I would start with reading her memoir, Year of the Tiger. It is wonderful. It's witty. You get a good sense of Alice's personality and all of the background and the history and the experiences that made her the public figure that she was. Tell me a little bit about your relationship. How did she come into your life? I met Alice in community, meaning we were both involved in Bay Area disability politics, but we became friends and comrades when she interviewed me for StoryCorps. Without a doubt, my friendship with Alice is one of the most life-affirming relationships I've ever experienced. She became a godmother to my daughter and was a central part of our village.

13:56Alice's family shared a quote from her 2022 memoir, Year of the Tiger, on social media, and it really touched me, and I'd love to get your reaction to it. It says, quote, The real gift any person can give is a web of connective tissue. If we love fiercely, our ancestors live among and speak to us through these incandescent filaments, glowing from the warmth of memories. Yomi, what does that quote from Alice mean to you?

14:27That quote, I think, is illustrative of Alice's belief system. Alice believed that she would become an ancestor, and she believed in ancestral reverence. And Alice believed, as I believe, that we cannot be separated from those we love, not even by death. they live in and through us and with us that what Alice leaves in her wake and in her leaving it transcends really the limits of being human her work will go on those of us who care for her and those of us maybe who've never met her but who were influenced and changed by her will continue her work. And I think this is what she was alluding to.

15:22She was giving us hope in a time of sorrow and grief and instruction for ways that we will carry on and carry her work. And in true Alice fashion, she left very detailed plans of what to do with and for her after her death. Alice Wong brought her advocacy to the nation's capital. She served on the National Council of Disability from 2013 to 2015. What current issues was she most passionate about that she would want you to draw attention to? Alice's magic was in her ability to skillfully use technology and social media to build community and challenge structural oppression. She cared about many, many things.

16:18And I would say most recently, she spoke a lot about her terror of losing Medicare benefits, which is a fear that millions of sick and chronically ill people are dealing with right now. And also, you know, because she was a policy wonk and she understood systems, she was able to connect the dots between the lived disabled experience and all other experiences of oppression. For example, Alice called the situation in Gaza a disability justice issue and organized to raise millions to help Palestinians maintain digital connection to the rest of the world. She spoke up for Palestine at tremendous personal and professional risk.

17:09She did what was right, and she wielded her power and her privilege for the good. And I don't think we will see another like her in my lifetime.

17:24We're going to take a short break before we hear the rest of this conversation, but when we get back, how Alice Wong wanted to be remembered, and what some of her friends loved most about her, her ability to throw a great party. Stick around.

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18:21Let's get back to Alyssa Nadwarni's conversation with Yomi Young, remembering her friend Alice Wong. Alice was known by friends and those of us in the Bay Area for throwing really elegant parties. Like super elegant. Alice lived in a really beautiful apartment in San Francisco. She was able to move out of her family home and live independently for the first time for the last couple of years. And she really flourished socially during that period. so you know it's the elegant dinner parties it's um that you could catch alice um taking in cultural events and just moving about around the bay area in ways that she hadn't done in a number of years of years and this is what i will miss it's not you know alice the luminary alice the macarthur genius whatever that means we kind of teased about that but it's alice the gorgeous generous friend.

19:30It's the red, the signature red Chanel lip. It is her bougie-ness. It is her tenderness. It is the way that she practiced care. It's, you know, the brownies that she brought to my house a few weeks ago so that we could decorate pumpkins with my daughter. it is the unexpected packages you would receive from Alice and it's not just me people all over the country and the world who Alice connected with some who she never met would receive an Alice Wong care package it's just the generosity of spirit of the exchange of ideas Alice was my peer and it feels like many of our generation with disabilities are not seeing old age.

20:30And it's a lonely feeling and it's scary and it's also, for me, it's precious, you know, holding on to these relationships and just having had this friendship with Alice to live in the time of Alice Wong and to have experienced her camaraderie, her trust, her care, and her friendship was truly amazing. How can we honor Alice going forward? I think we can honor Alice by speaking truth to power. For the disabled community specifically, it's to continue to share our stories, to understand that we deserve everything that we desire, that we should take up space, that we should understand that we are very powerful collectively and we should not yield that power.

21:39And to get involved in organizations and causes that you care about because they need our wisdom. They need our experience. If we are to build the world that Alice imagined, a more just and fair world, it will require all of us. And I would say just keep pushing. You know, Alice wrote her own death announcement. And the kicker to that death announcement was don't let the bastards grind you down. I think I'm quoting that correctly. And I would say don't let them grind you down. Yomi Young is a disability and social justice organizer helping us remember activist and author Alice Wong. Yomi, thank you so much for sharing with us.

22:35Thank you so much for remembering Alice.

22:49That's our show for today. Here and now, anytime comes from NPR and WVU in Boston. And you know, I want to say thanks to you for listening. A lot of people help put together our radio show and podcast. I'm going to say some of their names in a minute. And we hope we give you something worth listening to every single day. We're going to keep doing our best to bring you stories and perspectives from around the country. around the world, and I hope you'll keep listening. So, thanks. Ashley Locke produced That Conversation About Alice Wong. Today's stories were edited by Mark Navin, Kat Welch, and Micaela Rodriguez.

23:28Michael Scotto edited the podcast. Technical direction from Caleb Green, Matt Reed, Andre Peralta, and Marcel Damiano. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin, and here at NOW's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks so much for listening. Happy Thanksgiving. We'll be back with you tomorrow.