Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Max, mascot of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1942. USAF 23079 AC

Images of Animals from the National Air and Space Museum Archives

Among the million-plus images in the Museum's Archives Division are a surprising number of pictures of animals in, on, and around aircraft and spacecraft of all sorts. Animals were used as test pilots even before people flew. They were proposed, more or less seriously, as a power source for manned flight. But most often animals have served as mascots, the companions of the men and women who take to the skies.

Here is a selection of images from the exhibit on view at the Museum through January, 1997.

Kiddo, the first cat to attempt to cross the Atlantic by airship, and Melvin Vaniman, engineer of the airship America. Kiddo initially had a rough time of it, howling piteously as America took off from Atlantic City, New Jersey, on October 15, 1910. But he quickly regained his nerve, as navigator J. Murray Simon later wrote: "You must never cross the Atlantic in an airship without a cat. We have found our cat more useful than a barometer.... Two or three times when we thought we were `in' he gave most decided indications that he knew we would shortly be getting it in the neck!" America came down in the Atlantic 760 kilometers (475 miles) east of the Maryland coast after 71 hours in the air - breaking all powered aircraft duration records. Cat and crew were rescued by the steamer Trent and returned to New York City for a heroes' welcome. Kiddo was displayed in full glory in Gimbel's department store on a plush cushion in a gilded cage.

SI 96 15130

"Cher Ami," once displayed in the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Museum, was a hero of World War I. Wounded by shellfire, he brought back a message from a trapped infantry unit. Pigeons were once such a vital means of battlefield communication that in 1941 the U.S. Army Signal Corps trained falcons to intercept enemy pigeons.

SI A 25367 A

Frank, mascot to a bomb group of the Fifteenth Air Force, gazes at the nose of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator "Howling Wolf, 1944.

U.S. Air Force CollectionAF 52722 AC

Betty Rand and the Hamm Brothers and their horse pose by the Farman Goliath that brought them from London to Paris in the mid-1920s.

NASM 1A 44295

Glenn Curtiss and friend go through their pre-flight checklist in a Curtiss pusher, circa 1912.

SI 85 18299

Capt. Clark Gable, Lt. R. Dieckerhoff, and a rowdy friend in a pub, somewhere in England, 1943. Gable served as a gunner in a B-17 crew.

U.S. Air Force CollectionUSAF 92530 AC

Didier Masson, pilot of the Lafayette Escadrille, with his arms full of spaniels. One of the dogs was named "Carranza the Comedian," recalling Masson's earlier career as Chief (and sole pilot) of the Mexican air service.

Robert Soubiran CollectionNASM 2A 48022

Revised, September 15, 1998