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Airborne · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
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  Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. No side really wins in a war. As
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  Speaker 1: long as human life is sacrificed, every battle will be
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  Speaker 1: a losing one. But one man tried to change that,
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  Speaker 1: and he almost succeeded. Charles Kettering made cash registers. That
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  Speaker 1: was just his day job, but in his spare time,
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  Speaker 1: he was also an inventor. In the span of five years,
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  Speaker 1: he was awarded twenty three patents. But he didn't limit
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  Speaker 1: his expertise only to cash registers. He also liked to
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  Speaker 1: tinker with cars, Always looking to make things better, Kettering
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  Speaker 1: and a group of engineers would gather in a barn
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  Speaker 1: owned by one of the other members to discuss improvements. Eventually,
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  Speaker 1: their frequent meetings were so productive they decided to incorporate,
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  Speaker 1: and their new company would focus on reducing automobile fatalities. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: Elmer Speary, a former electric company Magnate was working on
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  Speaker 1: making ships and planes safer. His gyroscopic stabilizers helped large
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  Speaker 1: ships balance in rough waters. They soon led to the
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  Speaker 1: invention of small gyro compasses that would allow airplanes to
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  Speaker 1: maintain true north while airborne. Sperry also had something else
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  Speaker 1: up as sleeve, though too. He didn't want to just
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  Speaker 1: make airplanes safer to fly. His goal was to eliminate
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  Speaker 1: the pilots entirely. Sperry and his business partner Peter Hewitt
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  Speaker 1: worked day and night on the first drone, an unmanned
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  Speaker 1: aircraft meant to deliver a payload to a designated target.
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  Speaker 1: The Navy didn't see a need for such a device,
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  Speaker 1: but the Army was intrigued. One man named Edward Deeds
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  Speaker 1: was a colonel in the U. S. Army and led
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  Speaker 1: their aircraft production board. He was also one of the
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  Speaker 1: original members of Charles Kettering's Barn Gang, the group of
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  Speaker 1: engineers who had worked on improving automobiles in their spare time.
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  Speaker 1: Deeds like Speary's drone, and he asked Kettering to come
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  Speaker 1: on board as a supervisor. The operation was called Project
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  Speaker 1: Liberty Eagle, and it was top secret. None of the
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  Speaker 1: contacts listed exactly what would be produced. All components were classified.
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  Speaker 1: It was up to someone named as the account manager
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  Speaker 1: to fill in the Army's higher ups. Verbally. Kettering's idea
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  Speaker 1: for the drone differed from his peers. He didn't think
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  Speaker 1: that it was possible for an unmanned aircraft to drop
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  Speaker 1: a bomb and return to its place of origin. He
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  Speaker 1: wanted to launch the single use playing with an explosive
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  Speaker 1: device attached to it, which could be launched at a
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  Speaker 1: potential target. The Army agreed, and Kettering got to work.
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  Speaker 1: He built his flying bombs out of wood wrapped in
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  Speaker 1: fabric and paper mache, but found the engines to be
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  Speaker 1: too costly. There was also the problem of the aircraft
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  Speaker 1: knowing where to go when no one was controlling it.
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  Speaker 1: Speary took care of that last part, though, inventing a
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  Speaker 1: new kind of barometer to detect changes in air pressure
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  Speaker 1: within a few feet. Those changes were then passed onto
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  Speaker 1: a set of servos, which were used as a programmable
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  Speaker 1: air system. Their first tests of the Kettering Bug, as
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  Speaker 1: it was called, were complete failures. The first one crashed
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  Speaker 1: after flying only three feet. The second bug lasted fifteen
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  Speaker 1: seconds and then hit the dirt. After several rounds of
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  Speaker 1: changes and bug fixes, including an updated engine, the Kettering
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  Speaker 1: Bug successfully performed a targeted flight. Unfortunately, by the time
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  Speaker 1: it was ready, it was too late. The Army had
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  Speaker 1: wanted to use Kettering's flying bombs for the war going
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  Speaker 1: on at the time, not the Gulf War or the
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  Speaker 1: war in Vietnam, mind you. In order to manufacture these
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  Speaker 1: aircraft for the army, a new company was formed by
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  Speaker 1: Edward Deeds and Charles Kettering, who sought help from someone
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  Speaker 1: with extensive experience in the flight industry. You might say
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  Speaker 1: this person was the one who started it all well.
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  Speaker 1: Along with his brother Orville Wright of the Right Brothers fame,
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  Speaker 1: was appointed director of the new Dayton Right Company, which
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  Speaker 1: was commissioned to produce the frames for the Kettering Bugs
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  Speaker 1: during World War One, oh and to get the engines
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  Speaker 1: at a reasonable price. Kettering reached out to the man
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  Speaker 1: who had mastered the art of production efficiency, Henry Ford.
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  Speaker 1: The greatest minds at the time came together to help
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  Speaker 1: save lives during World War One. Although the Kettering Bug
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  Speaker 1: never saw combat, it lives on today in torpedoes and
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  Speaker 1: aerial drones. A promise of the future that wasn't quite
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  Speaker 1: ready to take flight. How we decorate the rooms in
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  Speaker 1: our home can tell a lot about who we are.
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  Speaker 1: We might have had posters in our childhood bedroom of
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  Speaker 1: our favorite bands and movie. As we get older and
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  Speaker 1: our taste change, hopefully they mature, we might have paintings
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  Speaker 1: adorning our walls now, or interesting works of art. Sophie, however,
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  Speaker 1: turned entire rooms into a work of art. Sophie Charlotte,
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  Speaker 1: the second wife of King Frederick of Prussia, wanted a
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  Speaker 1: space to call her own within the walls of the
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  Speaker 1: Berlin City Palace. Architect Andrea Schleuder designed for her a
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  Speaker 1: series of ornate panels to cover one large room. The
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  Speaker 1: panels were then built by master craftsman Gottfried Wolfram with
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  Speaker 1: the assistance of two other men, who all helped give
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  Speaker 1: the room its name. After all, they knew their way
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  Speaker 1: around high end materials, specifically amber. Together the men used
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  Speaker 1: tons of it, along with a heavy amount of gold
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  Speaker 1: leaf to cover the elaborate crafted panels. The result was
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  Speaker 1: a gilded masterpiece of royal decadence. Mosaics of amber were
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  Speaker 1: juxtaposed against golden flowers and cherubic statues along the walls.
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  Speaker 1: It was anything but subtle. The Amber room didn't stay
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  Speaker 1: at the palace for long, though Russians are Peter the
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  Speaker 1: Great came to see the room for himself in seventeen sixteen,
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  Speaker 1: and soon after King Frederick gifted every last panel of
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  Speaker 1: it to him. Seeking an alliance against Sweden, Empress Elizabeth,
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  Speaker 1: Peter's daughter, had the room reinstalled at Katherine Palace, the
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  Speaker 1: family's summer home. She made some changes and incorporated even
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  Speaker 1: more amber and gold over the course of a decade.
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  Speaker 1: By the time it was finished, over six tons of
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  Speaker 1: amber covered almost six hundred square feet of wall space
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  Speaker 1: in the palace. The room lived there for decades until
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  Speaker 1: the start of World War Two. As German forces moved
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  Speaker 1: through Europe and Russia, they were stealing arts and other
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  Speaker 1: valuable items for themselves. The Amber room would have been
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  Speaker 1: a treasure trove over the Nazis, so Russian experts tried
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  Speaker 1: to disassemble it and move it out of the palace.
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  Speaker 1: Their efforts, though, failed. Before they even began, the amber
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  Speaker 1: in the walls had become brittle, any effort to remove
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  Speaker 1: it would destroy it. Instead, wallpaper was put up to
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  Speaker 1: try and hide it from prying eyes. But hiding six
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  Speaker 1: tons of amber and gold from dedicated art thieves with
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  Speaker 1: simple wallpaper was never going to work. In nineteen forty one,
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  Speaker 1: the Nazis had raided the palace. They dismantled the room
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  Speaker 1: piece by piece in under two days, taking everything to
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  Speaker 1: Konigsberg Castle in East Prussia, where it was reassembled as
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  Speaker 1: a kind of trophy room. It stayed there for three
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  Speaker 1: years until nine Allied troops were advancing on Konigsberg and
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  Speaker 1: the British Royal Air Force reigned fire on the town,
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  Speaker 1: turning buildings to ash. The Germans held their ground for
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  Speaker 1: five months until Hitler ordered every piece of art, including
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  Speaker 1: the Amber Room, moved away from the town to safer ground.
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  Speaker 1: Now here's where things get tricky. The man in charge
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  Speaker 1: of that move, Eric Cooke, was supposed to oversee the
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  Speaker 1: amber rooms transport, but he escaped Khonsberg and left his
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  Speaker 1: subordinate in charge. The Russians arrived to occupy the town,
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  Speaker 1: destroying even more of it in the process, and as
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  Speaker 1: far as anyone knew, the Amber Room had not survived.
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  Speaker 1: After the war, a recreation was erected within Katherine Palace
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  Speaker 1: in Russia. It took twenty four years to complete it,
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  Speaker 1: probably because all they had to reference were black and
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  Speaker 1: white photos and sketches from the original room. All the
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  Speaker 1: remaining amber craftsmen in the country were brought into fabricate
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  Speaker 1: panels as close to the originals as possible. But what
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  Speaker 1: of the once great room that had traveled from Berlin
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  Speaker 1: to Russia and finally to Konigsberg. Was it destroyed by
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  Speaker 1: Allied bombing? Well, yes and no. While it's unlikely that
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  Speaker 1: the entire room was saved at the end of the war,
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  Speaker 1: rumors have circulated about its survival. According to some who
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  Speaker 1: were actually there, the panels had been loaded onto a
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  Speaker 1: German military ship on January thirty ninety five, a ship
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  Speaker 1: that was sunk by a Soviet submarine a short while later.
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  Speaker 1: Treasure hunters naturally searched the wreck for years looking for
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  Speaker 1: the panels, but they found nothing. In the late nineteen nineties,
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  Speaker 1: researchers claimed to have found the Amber Room in two
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  Speaker 1: different places. A group of German experts said it was
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  Speaker 1: hidden in a over mine. A Lithuanian team, on the
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  Speaker 1: other hand, said it was at the bottom of a lagoon.
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  Speaker 1: Both teams. That turns out we're wrong. Unfortunately, modern assessments
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  Speaker 1: have declared the Amber Rooms recovery a lost cause. It
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  Speaker 1: was almost certainly destroyed in the Koenigsberg bombings at the
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  Speaker 1: end of the war, but those who want to get
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  Speaker 1: an idea of its opulence can still visit Catherine Palace
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  Speaker 1: near St. Petersburg. It's as close as anyone will get
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  Speaker 1: to what was once described as a true eighth wonder
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  Speaker 1: of the world. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
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  Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. M