Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Monkey. Dan looked
Speaker 1: like any other forty something businessman. It was the day
Speaker 1: before Thanksgiving, and Dan arrived at the Portland Airport dressed
Speaker 1: in a respectable dark suit, white shirt, and black tie.
Speaker 1: Carrying a briefcase. He paid for a ticket in cash
Speaker 1: on Northwest Orient Airlines flight number three oh five, heading
Speaker 1: to Seattle, Washington that November. Dan boarded the plane, found
Speaker 1: seat eighteen C and ordered a bourbon and soda. While
Speaker 1: waiting for the boeing to taxi onto the runway. Shortly
Speaker 1: after three o'clock, flight attendant Florence Shaffner checked on him,
Speaker 1: and he handed her a note. We should received such
Speaker 1: an It's from business men away from home before the
Speaker 1: same old line. They would be in town for a
Speaker 1: day or week and would have a lot of time
Speaker 1: on their hands. Undoubtedly this note would ask if she
Speaker 1: might like to go to a movie or dinner. Unimpressed,
Speaker 1: she pocketed the note unread, but dam caught her attention
Speaker 1: and whispered, miss you had better look at that note.
Speaker 1: I have a bomb. The note was written in neat
Speaker 1: capital letters. The instructions were simple. Sitting down next to him,
Speaker 1: she obliged, and he cracked open his briefcase long enough
Speaker 1: for her to see a jumble of wires, two long
Speaker 1: red cylinders, and a battery. Now that he had her attention,
Speaker 1: he rattled off his demands two hundred thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: American twenty dollar bills, four parachutes to primary and to reserve,
Speaker 1: and a fuel truck waiting for them when they landed
Speaker 1: in Seattle. He told her to relay that message quietly
Speaker 1: to the pilots and then to return to him again.
Speaker 1: She did as she was asked. Pilot WILLIAMS. Scott contacted
Speaker 1: air traffic control in Seattle, who naturally called the authorities
Speaker 1: at PM. The flight landed in Seattle. Dan had the
Speaker 1: attendants closed all the blinds to prevent any assassination attempts,
Speaker 1: and once the money was delivered and the plane was refueled,
Speaker 1: he told Scott and the crew to head from Mexico City,
Speaker 1: and they did. They made another stop in Reno for
Speaker 1: more fuel, and when they took off again to f
Speaker 1: one oh six fighters followed. At eight o'clock, the cockpit
Speaker 1: flashed a warning light that the air stair had been activated.
Speaker 1: Moments later, the tail section jerked upward briefly. Scott called
Speaker 1: back to Dan to ask if everything was okay, but
Speaker 1: received no response. Dan otherwise known as D. B. Cooper,
Speaker 1: had jumped from the plane, taking the cash with him,
Speaker 1: and so began the legend of the only unsolved case
Speaker 1: of air piracy in America. Dramatic shure an oddity hardly
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, hijacking planes happened so frequently that
Speaker 1: people joked about it. I'm Lauren Vogelbon, Welcome to American Shadows.
Speaker 1: It was business as usual. Flight attendants Donna Goldner and
Speaker 1: Lena Anderson pushed their carts through the aisle on a
Speaker 1: National Airlines flight from San Francisco to Miami. Both women
Speaker 1: held back yawns as they served breakfast to the passengers
Speaker 1: at five thirty in the morning on New Year's Eve
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty nine. As Anderson made her way through,
Speaker 1: first class, passenger Alan Sheffield wrapped an arm around her waist,
Speaker 1: pushed the muzzle of a gun into her ribs, and
Speaker 1: told her the plane would be taking a detour to Cuba.
Speaker 1: He forced her into the cockpit, where she repeated his
Speaker 1: message to the pilots. Goldner was still serving passengers. When
Speaker 1: the pilot announced the flight was now headed to Cuba.
Speaker 1: She could only think not again. She had been on
Speaker 1: a hijacked plane before, just earlier that year. There had
Speaker 1: been a hundred and fifty nine hijackings in American airspace
Speaker 1: since May of nineteen sixty one, with the majority happening
Speaker 1: since nineteen sixty eight. Security was lax back then, no
Speaker 1: t s A, no metal detectors, and no one searched
Speaker 1: through bags. One couple had hidden a sawed off shotgun
Speaker 1: in their five month old babies blankets and diverted their
Speaker 1: flight from San Francisco to l a X. Flight crews
Speaker 1: were trained to acquiesce to all hijackers requests to ensure
Speaker 1: the safety of the lives on board. Some hijackers would
Speaker 1: permit the plane to land and release most of the
Speaker 1: passengers and crew, before forcing the rest to travel with
Speaker 1: them as hostages to their final destination. In the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: most passengers and crew felt that the hijackings were more
Speaker 1: of an inconvenience and annoyance than any real danger, Even
Speaker 1: if the hijackers were armed. The most popular nation for
Speaker 1: hijackers was Cuba, including the first on May one of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, and Tulio Ramirez, an electrician from Miami,
Speaker 1: held the pilot at knife point and announced that he
Speaker 1: had been hired to assassinate Fidel Castro, but wanted to
Speaker 1: go to Havannah to warn him instead. Americans, disillusioned with
Speaker 1: the American dream, had a certain romance with Cuba in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. They believed Cuba had created a true
Speaker 1: democracy and all they had to do was get there.
Speaker 1: One hijacker recalled thinking, in a few hours, it would
Speaker 1: be dawn in a new world. I was about to
Speaker 1: enter paradise, a place where everyone was equal, where violence
Speaker 1: against blacks, injustice and racism was a thing of the past.
Speaker 1: As you might imagine, Cuba didn't offer the freedom they thought.
Speaker 1: Hijackers were often whisked off the planes and taken to
Speaker 1: the Spanish Citadel, where they were interrogated to ensure they
Speaker 1: weren't working for the CIA. Others were sent to what
Speaker 1: became known as the Hijacker House, an abysmal dormitory where
Speaker 1: people were kept into sixteen square feet of living space apiece,
Speaker 1: and some were sent to the sugarcane fields to work.
Speaker 1: Due to the media blackout in Cuba, few would be
Speaker 1: hijackers knew what had become of the others, Thinking those
Speaker 1: before them had made it to paradise, More and more
Speaker 1: hijackers demanded to go to Cuba, and so much so
Speaker 1: that in nineteen sixty eight hijackings had reached epidemic levels.
Speaker 1: The hostage passengers, for their part, often wandered around Havana
Speaker 1: for a night, saw the sites, then returned to the
Speaker 1: United States. At times, Castro welcomed the planes to humiliate
Speaker 1: the United States and collected seven thousand dollars per plane
Speaker 1: for their safe return. Hijackings between nineteen sixty eight and
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two averaged one per week. Two in a
Speaker 1: day wasn't unheard of. Passengers would kid the flight crew,
Speaker 1: go on and take me to Cuba. By July of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty the situation warranted a hearing before the Senate.
Speaker 1: The f A A sent representative Irving rip who told
Speaker 1: senators that unless they put in motion a way to
Speaker 1: search every bag and passenger, the hijackings would continue. The
Speaker 1: airlines weren't willing to put such restrictions in place for
Speaker 1: fear people would choose alternate forms of transportation. Two weeks later,
Speaker 1: a man by the name of Oran Richards hijacked a
Speaker 1: Delta Airlines flight. He pulled a gun on the first
Speaker 1: person he saw, Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, who had
Speaker 1: happened to be at that Senate hearing. The crew managed
Speaker 1: to call him Richards down and he's surrendered In Miami,
Speaker 1: a thirty or four year old man hijacked a plane
Speaker 1: back to Cuba because he missed his mother's for Holis
Speaker 1: an air to a New Mexico real estate fortune. Dressed
Speaker 1: as a cowboy and demanded to go to Cuba. A
Speaker 1: college student forced a pilot to take him to Cuba
Speaker 1: so he could study communism, and on one flight from
Speaker 1: Newark to Miami, Allen Funt, the nineteen sixties host of
Speaker 1: Candid Camera, boarded with his wife and daughter. A man
Speaker 1: grabbed one of the flight attendants and put a knife
Speaker 1: to her neck, demanding the pilots fly to Cuba. After
Speaker 1: a few tense moments, another passenger shouted, wait a second,
Speaker 1: we are not being hijacked. It's a Candid Camera stunt.
Speaker 1: The passengers burst into laughter. Some asked Fund to autograph
Speaker 1: their airsickness bags. Despite Fund's attempts to convince everyone that
Speaker 1: he had nothing to do with it and it was
Speaker 1: a real hijacking, no one believed him. When the hijacker
Speaker 1: emerged from the cockpit, people applauded, but the joke was
Speaker 1: on them. When the plane landed in Havana, the laughter
Speaker 1: turned to anger, and perhaps oddly, not at the hijacker.
Speaker 1: They berated Fund for tricking them, and by the end
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty nine, eighty six hijackings had taken place
Speaker 1: in the United States, more than any other year in
Speaker 1: aviation history, though not all of them brought laughter and
Speaker 1: jokes to the passengers unharmed, and they weren't all short
Speaker 1: Johns to Cuba. On October thirty one of nineti nine,
Speaker 1: Raphael Minicello arrived at l a X dressed in camouflage.
Speaker 1: He purchased a ticket on trans World Airlines Red Eye
Speaker 1: flight number eighty five, and boarded at one thirty am.
Speaker 1: The plane had started in Baltimore before making the journey
Speaker 1: across the country to Los Angeles. A crew of three
Speaker 1: manned the cockpit and four flight attendants tended to the passengers.
Speaker 1: Most of the attendants were new to the job, having
Speaker 1: only been with the airline for a few months, but
Speaker 1: Charlene Demonico had been there three years, and she had
Speaker 1: swopped shifts with another attendant so she could have Halloween
Speaker 1: night off. Demonico and the other attendants lowered the cabin
Speaker 1: lights to allow the bleary eyed passengers to get some sleep.
Speaker 1: Minicello caught Demonico's eye immediately. His outfit and oddly shaped
Speaker 1: backpack stood out, and though he was polite, she couldn't
Speaker 1: help but notice he seemed nervous. Once the passengers were settled,
Speaker 1: she joined the other attendants in the galley. They also
Speaker 1: thought the passenger and coach seemed odd and debated what
Speaker 1: he might be carrying in that pack. One thought it
Speaker 1: might be a fishing rod. Most of the flight's forty
Speaker 1: passengers soon fell asleep, including the five members of the
Speaker 1: pop band Harper's Bazaar that'd just come off a concert
Speaker 1: in Pasadena. Someone brushed past guitarist Dicks Capitoni, waking him.
Speaker 1: He looked up to see a man dressed in camo
Speaker 1: holding an M one rifle walking toward the galley. He
Speaker 1: woke drummer John Peterson. Was this really happening? Twenty one
Speaker 1: year old flight attendant Tracy Coleman must have thought the
Speaker 1: same thing. She calmly told Minchello, You're not supposed to
Speaker 1: have that. An off duty pilot by the name of
Speaker 1: Jim Finley stood to confront the hijacker, but upon staring
Speaker 1: down the barrel of the m on, he made the
Speaker 1: wise decision to return to his seat. Minnicello handed Coleman
Speaker 1: a rifle bullet to show her and everyone else that
Speaker 1: he was serious. He ordered Demonico to walk with him
Speaker 1: to the cockpit. Once there, Minnchello became agitated. He refused
Speaker 1: to allow the flight attendant to ring the bell, instructing
Speaker 1: her to knock instead. She hoped that the pilot would
Speaker 1: scent something was wrong and not open the door. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the door swung wide open. She informed Captain Donald Cook,
Speaker 1: First Officer Wenzel Williams, and flight engineer Lloyd Holrad that
Speaker 1: a man with a gun was standing right behind her.
Speaker 1: Minnicello shoved past, pointing the m one at Cook. With
Speaker 1: the hijacker up at the front of the plane, thinly
Speaker 1: searched the man's bags. He found more ammunition but no
Speaker 1: other weapons. He determined from the hijacker's hair, attire and
Speaker 1: weaponry that he must be military. More passengers awoke, perhaps
Speaker 1: sensing something was wrong. The captain's voice came over the speakers.
Speaker 1: We have a very nervous young man up here, and
Speaker 1: we are going to take him wherever he wants to go.
Speaker 1: People began to murmur about going to Cuba. A few
Speaker 1: thought about how dangerous the man holding the cockpit crew
Speaker 1: at gunpoint could be. The diversion would mean a delay
Speaker 1: in getting to their destination, nothing more. Then the captain
Speaker 1: came back on the inter calm. If you've made any
Speaker 1: plans in San Francisco, don't plan on keeping them, because
Speaker 1: you're going to New York. The band members began to
Speaker 1: speculate among themselves new York, where would they go from there?
Speaker 1: One mentioned Hong Kong, thinking that would be fun. But
Speaker 1: up front, Minicello had presented the crew with a problem.
Speaker 1: New York wasn't where he really wanted to go. He
Speaker 1: wanted to take the plane to Rome. The plane didn't
Speaker 1: have enough fuel for New York, much less Rome. Further,
Speaker 1: none of the cockpit crew was qualified to fly internationally.
Speaker 1: Minicello allowed the plane to stop up in Denver for fuel.
Speaker 1: Cook alerted air traffic control in Denver of the situation,
Speaker 1: and they cleared the plane to land. Minchello let the
Speaker 1: passengers leave, and they did quickly where the FBI awaited them.
Speaker 1: He kept the entire crew aboard, though on the three
Speaker 1: hour flight to New York, Minchello poured himself a few
Speaker 1: strange cocktails of gin and Canadian Club whiskey. Once they
Speaker 1: landed at JFK, he ordered Cook to park the plane
Speaker 1: as far from the terminal as possible. FBI agents knew
Speaker 1: the hijacker planned to force the captain to fly to Rome,
Speaker 1: and they attempted to approach while the ground crew refueled.
Speaker 1: The Cook warned the agents that Minnichello was highly agitated
Speaker 1: and to stay clear, and that's when a shot rang out.
Speaker 1: The crew was terrified. Fortunately no one was hurt. Minnicello,
Speaker 1: by this point, extremely agitated, reminded them that their lives
Speaker 1: were at stake. Cook again told the hijacker that they
Speaker 1: didn't have the proper training to fly internationally. Minnicello issued
Speaker 1: a new demand qualified pilots. He held the crew hostage
Speaker 1: while the new pilots boarded irritated, he then demanded that
Speaker 1: the refueling stopped and the plane take off immediately. New pilots,
Speaker 1: Billy Williams and Richard Hastings did his hold, but got
Speaker 1: through to him that there was no way they had
Speaker 1: enough fuel to make the flight, and so once again,
Speaker 1: the plane landed, this time in Bangor, Maine. While the
Speaker 1: fueling was underway, Cook tried to convince Minchello to let
Speaker 1: the original crew go, but the hijacker refused. The plane
Speaker 1: took off again, and the crew tried to keep the
Speaker 1: situation as calm as possible. Each opened up about their
Speaker 1: private lives and an attempt to gain some rapport. Minnicello
Speaker 1: asked if everyone on board was married. Cook quickly responded
Speaker 1: that yes. They were thinking that the lie might make
Speaker 1: Minicello sympathetic. Flight attendant Tracy Coleman got him to open
Speaker 1: up the most. Minicello taught her a new card game.
Speaker 1: As they passed the time, he told her more about himself.
Speaker 1: His family had moved from Italy to Seattle in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two. He had been bullied in high school due
Speaker 1: to his accent and ended up dropping out, ending his
Speaker 1: lifelong dream of becoming a commercial pilot had left home
Speaker 1: shortly afterward at seventeen, moving to San Diego, where he
Speaker 1: had joined the military. After boot camp, he was sent
Speaker 1: to Vietnam. He talked about how he and his platoon
Speaker 1: had been dropped off in the jungle. The conditions were
Speaker 1: horrible and the mission was short and ended in a
Speaker 1: lot of deaths on both sides. He had made friends
Speaker 1: in his platoon and watched many of them die. After
Speaker 1: the mission, he was awarded the Cross of Gallantry and
Speaker 1: sent to Camp Pendleton. The nightmares were relentless. He and
Speaker 1: the other surviving members of his platoon were diagnosed with
Speaker 1: p t s D. Now all he wanted was to
Speaker 1: go home, back to Italy. He turned twenty in the
Speaker 1: air before the plane circled Rome's Fimchino Airport the morning
Speaker 1: of November first, No one celebrated. T w A flight
Speaker 1: number eighty five was now eighteen and a half hours
Speaker 1: into the hijacking, and Minnicello made one more demand that
Speaker 1: they parked the plane at the far end of the
Speaker 1: terminal and be met by an unarmed policeman, and before
Speaker 1: the flight landed, he offered to drive the crew to
Speaker 1: a hotel. They all declined. Once the unarmed officer boarded,
Speaker 1: Minnicello bid a polite farewell to the crew and apologized
Speaker 1: for any inconvenience. Officer Petro Goulli became his new hostage
Speaker 1: and was ordered to drive him to Naples. Four police
Speaker 1: cars followed. Goulli drove into a dead end alley and
Speaker 1: Minnicello umped out and fled on foot. Five hours later,
Speaker 1: a priest found him trying to blend in at a
Speaker 1: mass but camouflage at a church didn't work very well.
Speaker 1: Word of the hijacker in his capture spread across the globe.
Speaker 1: Members of his platoon were shocked. The media reported on
Speaker 1: his mental state, along with new information about the events
Speaker 1: leading up to the hijacking. He had been putting money
Speaker 1: into a marine savings account and had planned to send
Speaker 1: it to his terminally ill father, who had recently returned
Speaker 1: to Italy, but when he had checked the account, Manchello
Speaker 1: found less money in it than he thought should be there.
Speaker 1: He had complained to his superiors, but they ignored him.
Speaker 1: The feeling betrayed, he had broken into the store on
Speaker 1: base and stolen around two hundred dollars worth of goods.
Speaker 1: He had stopped to drink beer in the shop and
Speaker 1: fell asleep, which is where a military police found him
Speaker 1: the next morning. He was scheduled to appear in court
Speaker 1: on November one, and fearing prison, he led with the
Speaker 1: M one rifle he had brought back from Vietnam registered
Speaker 1: as a trophy. That was when he made his plan
Speaker 1: to hijack a plane back to Italy, deciding on the
Speaker 1: t W A flight. In Italy, he was seen as
Speaker 1: a sort of underdog hero, a troubled and scared young
Speaker 1: man who would do anything to get back to his
Speaker 1: hometown and his dying father. The Italian news glossed over
Speaker 1: his threats to the crew aboard the flight. The media
Speaker 1: there betrayed him as a victim of a foreign country's
Speaker 1: war machine. Minnchello was tried in Italy instead of being
Speaker 1: extradited to the United States. He was convicted, but released
Speaker 1: just a couple of years later. On May one of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, he turned twenty one during his sentence.
Speaker 1: On the day of his release from the Queen of
Speaker 1: Heaven Prison near Vatican City, he wore a suit. Photographers
Speaker 1: and reporters crowded around him, and civilians showed up as well.
Speaker 1: Making him a little unsure of how to handle all
Speaker 1: the attention. He alternated between on certainty in being rather cocky.
Speaker 1: One reporter asked if he was sorry for the hijacking,
Speaker 1: why should I be? He said it wouldn't be until
Speaker 1: he turned thirty one that his attitude about his actions changed.
Speaker 1: After a friend talked him out of a violent attack
Speaker 1: against a medical facility. Minnichello planned the attack after his
Speaker 1: wife of a few years lost their second child. It
Speaker 1: was then that Minichello promised to devote his life to God.
Speaker 1: After learning that he no longer had any outstanding warrants
Speaker 1: against him in the United States, he decided to return.
Speaker 1: There was the matter of the court martial, though, and
Speaker 1: it's no surprise that he was dishonorably discharged. With the
Speaker 1: help of his fellow platoon members, Minchello tracked down the
Speaker 1: crew of t w A Flight eighty five so that
Speaker 1: he could apologize. He gave them each a copy of
Speaker 1: the New Testament with a note inside thanking them for
Speaker 1: their time and forgiveness for his actions. He apologized for
Speaker 1: putting them in harm's way and referenced the book Fluke
Speaker 1: chapter twenty three, Verse thirty four. Father forgive them, for
Speaker 1: they do not know what they are doing. A lot
Speaker 1: of things have changed since the nineteen sixties. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: but in terms of flying, since nine eleven, no one
Speaker 1: jokes about getting a lift to Cuba. Today we have
Speaker 1: metal detectors, physical screenings, and X ray and other imaging devices,
Speaker 1: among a whole host of other checks and balances. In retrospect,
Speaker 1: it may sound like the sixties was of free for
Speaker 1: all when it came to hijacking planes, but it's not
Speaker 1: that nothing was being done. In eight the FAA's Anti
Speaker 1: Hijacking Task Force explored several deterrents. They invited the airlines
Speaker 1: and even the general public to make suggestions to keep planes,
Speaker 1: crew and passengers safe. Airlines put in force those orders
Speaker 1: that all crew members must agree to a hijackers to
Speaker 1: and hopefully preventing any harm to themselves and their passengers.
Speaker 1: The airlines also suggested building a fake airport in South
Speaker 1: Florida to resemble Havanna's airport. When a hijacker would disembark,
Speaker 1: that'd be greeted by US authorities. The plan was never implemented,
Speaker 1: not because it was ridiculous, but because of the expense
Speaker 1: and as suggestions went that wasn't even the most bizarre.
Speaker 1: Someone floated an idea for an ejector seat to launch
Speaker 1: would be hijackers out of the plane. Another person filed
Speaker 1: a patent for seats that would deliver an injection through
Speaker 1: the cushions, capable of sedating or killing the person sitting
Speaker 1: in it. Then there was the offer of free one
Speaker 1: way flights to Cuba for would be hijackers, as long
Speaker 1: as they promised to never return. As you might imagine,
Speaker 1: Castro refused to accept those flights. That left another potential solution,
Speaker 1: training ticket agents to spot suspicious behavior. While it may
Speaker 1: have helped here and there, far too many hijackers just
Speaker 1: didn't act suspiciously. The airlines were forced to consider a
Speaker 1: solution that had already been suggested, but one they didn't
Speaker 1: consider optimal and basically it was the worst option on
Speaker 1: the table and yet very familiar to us today metal detectors,
Speaker 1: luggage screening, and extra security. There's more to this story.
Speaker 1: Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all
Speaker 1: about it. Since that historic day in December when the
Speaker 1: Right Brothers first took to the sky, air travel has
Speaker 1: been a big part of American history, from planes and
Speaker 1: jets to liquid fueled rockets. There are plenty of fascinating stories,
Speaker 1: both of ingenuity and triumph, of the dark and tragic,
Speaker 1: and of the downright bazaar. One of the strangest involves
Speaker 1: fruit fly you see. In nineteen forty seven, they were
Speaker 1: the first animal American scientists ever sent into space. The
Speaker 1: goal was to measure the impact of cosmic radiation on
Speaker 1: living creatures, so the insects were placed inside a recovered
Speaker 1: not C V two missile and launched sixty seven miles
Speaker 1: or a hundred nine kilometers up, just past the altitude
Speaker 1: recognized as the border where space begins. The capsule then
Speaker 1: returned parachuting down into New Mexico, where scientists waited. To
Speaker 1: their delight, the flies were still alive and had suffered
Speaker 1: no ill effects from radiation. Monkeys and apes also served
Speaker 1: as proto astronauts. Albert the second was the first in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine, but due to a parachute failure, he
Speaker 1: sadly didn't survive. The Soviet Union sent a stray dog
Speaker 1: from Moscow named Lyca into orbit in nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: though it was a one way trip, and the French
Speaker 1: sent a tuxedo cat named Felisette up in sixty three,
Speaker 1: and she returned alive and well. But competition between the
Speaker 1: United States and the uss ARE over the space race
Speaker 1: and all the scientific, technological, and military domination that went
Speaker 1: with it, heated up. The testing impact and radiation on
Speaker 1: animals wasn't the same as testing on humans. To make
Speaker 1: newer jet planes and rockets safe, American scientists had to
Speaker 1: get creative. At first, they used human cadavers. Turns out
Speaker 1: the public didn't care much for using the dead in
Speaker 1: such a way. Even a handful of scientists had difficulty
Speaker 1: with the moral and ethical use of human bodies. Enter
Speaker 1: Sierra Sam, the first crash test dummy invented in Sam
Speaker 1: tested aircraft seats, commercial and military, along with ejection seats,
Speaker 1: aviation helmets, and pilot restraint harnesses. Sam became so popular
Speaker 1: that he was mass produced for automotive companies as well.
Speaker 1: Despite the use of crash test dummies, the US Air
Speaker 1: Force still used animals into the nineteen fifties. During the
Speaker 1: Cold War arms race had come up with the B
Speaker 1: fifty Hustler, equipped to carry nuclear bombs, capable of mock
Speaker 1: to flight, and able to detect fifty different kinds of
Speaker 1: electronic failures. The plane proved difficult to control and maintain.
Speaker 1: That didn't mean the military planned to give up on it, though,
Speaker 1: It just needed a few tweaks, namely a way to
Speaker 1: eject safely. After designing a new system, it needed extensive testing.
Speaker 1: While human volunteers were used to test the device while
Speaker 1: it was on the ground, the Air Force decided not
Speaker 1: to use people living or deceased when it came to
Speaker 1: testing in flight. They chose to forego even crash dummies. No,
Speaker 1: they used bears, American black bears and Himilean brown bears
Speaker 1: to be more precise. The animals were sedated, strapped into
Speaker 1: the test capsules, and dejected from planes at a variety
Speaker 1: of speeds. The capsules would parachute to Earth, where they
Speaker 1: were collected. It isn't clear why the bears were used
Speaker 1: instead of crashed dummies. All the bears survived the landing,
Speaker 1: though many suffered broken bones and internal injuries. The most
Speaker 1: famous was Yogi, a two year old black bear that
Speaker 1: was ejected from a US Air Force B fifty eight,
Speaker 1: going eight hundred and seventy miles an hour at thirty
Speaker 1: five thousand feet. The parachute deployed, and for almost eight minutes,
Speaker 1: the unconscious young bear drifted to earth. The Air Force
Speaker 1: thought recording the event would be good for public support.
Speaker 1: They were careful to tell the public that Yogi and
Speaker 1: the other bears got a good meal afterward, while awaiting
Speaker 1: a complete and thorough medical examination. Of course, unfortunately they
Speaker 1: left out one important detail that the bears, both healthy
Speaker 1: and injured alike, were euthanized and then autopsied. There was
Speaker 1: decades before the records of their true fate finally surfaced,
Speaker 1: but by then the B fifty eight hustler was retired
Speaker 1: and the project had been brought to an end. Yeah
Speaker 1: American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced
Speaker 1: by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
Speaker 1: visit Grim and Mild dot com. From more podcasts from
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.