Can Anyone Confirm, Deny These Two Aviation Myths?

Did use cheap vodka in the washer bottle of my car while in Germany – worked a treat!

Turned out to be????

John,
please talk us through your deductions with regard to your final appraisal of the foreign matter on the rear seats? Were you seated on those seats or were you looking for a more comfortable position at the back end?
I take it you were not flying crabair as it does not rhyme!!

Happy landings we hope you will come again.

I was travelling on an airline that rhymes with BryanAir, when I discovered lots of what turned out to be pubic hair on one of the seats at the back of the a/c. I don’t know how it got there.

John Green

I think that you mean Ryanhair…

I was travelling on an airline that rhymes with BryanAir, when I discovered lots of what turned out to be pubic hair on one of the seats at the back of the a/c. I don’t know how it got there.

John Green

Maybe they ordered the Brazillian.

Human hair is awfully fine, you’d need a mountain of the stuff for one seat.

Oh, they had a lot of it, alright. That room in Auschwitz stinks. Very sad. Made some in our group burst into tears.

Human hair is awfully fine, you’d need a mountain of the stuff for one seat.

I know the Nazis used human hair for something, I have no idea what (and I’m not sure I want to know).

Hair was gathered at Auschwitz in huge quantities and used for many industrial purposes. When visiting there recently, we saw a whole room still full of it and the audio tour mentioned that it was used for lining boots, stuffing cushions, and blankets for german bombed out families.

I was travelling on an airline that rhymes with BryanAir, when I discovered lots of what turned out to be pubic hair on one of the seats at the back of the a/c. I don’t know how it got there.

John Green

I hope you didn’t mention it or they would have charged you for it.

The Cold War Ruskies used to have a alcohol based brake fluid.. they used to snag the brakes and drain and distill it down and drink it… It used to send them blind and worse..

To add weight to what CeBro posted above, in part one of their excellent two issue article “Testing the Enemy’s Arrow” [Aeroplane, March 2002] Phillippe Ricco and Phillippe Couderchon do indeed make mention that when testing the ejector seat mechanism in the Do335M-14, when the seat itself was reinstalled, the team involved found that the leather cloth headrest was not only stuffed with horse hair but with human hair too. As a result, the padding was replaced.

Cheers
Peter D Evans
LEMB Administrator

I read in an article somewhere that human hair was used in the manufacture of cold weather inner boots for German U-boat crews. May have been for high altitude aircraft crews as well but I don’t remember exactly.

I read that the French who tested the Dornier Pfeil postwar in France discovered that the head cushion was stuffed with human hair.

The seat cushion in my Halifax seat is stuffed with horse hair, the cushion is dated 1944 and British, the drawings for the Halifax cushions state that they need to be stuffed with horse hair.

Cees

I once restored a 1943 German BMW R75 motorcycle combination a few years ago and to my horror discovered that the air filter contained human hair which kind of put me off the project a tad.

I was travelling on an airline that rhymes with BryanAir, when I discovered lots of what turned out to be pubic hair on one of the seats at the back of the a/c. I don’t know how it got there.

John Green

I agree with stepwilk, horsehair was far more probable.
It was found in many pre-war cars. so I can’t image planes would be different.
Human hair is awfully fine, you’d need a mountain of the stuff for one seat.
Based on my neighbor’s horses currently residing in my back pasture, I know horsehair is very similar to the non-organic stuff I see in many older cars.

I know the Nazis used human hair for something, I have no idea what (and I’m not sure I want to know).

Many compasses use alcohol, but the poisonous, foul-tasting, industrial type; I suspect that someone is letting their fantasies take hold. For one thing, the compass would be more difficult to read, if it contained a brown, rather than clear, liquid.

Only *aged in oak barrels* whiskey is brown. The stuff I drink is as clear as water 🙂 If they were making whiskey for use in compasses they wouldn’t bother aging it.

Human hair in Luftwaffer aircraft seat backrests or cusions.

Horsehair (from their tails and manes) was the standard padding in Prewar Mercedes-Benz seats, I know. My acquaintance Paul Russell, probably the finest Mercedes and Bugatti restorer in the world–he does all of Ralph Lauren’s cars–traveled to Germany to find the horse farm that used to supply that hair to Mercedes, so he could use the hair from the descendant horses in one of Ralphie’s cars.

But human hair, I dunno.

Yuuk..

As an experienced Police officer, I can tell you that lots of street drinkers drink industrial alcohol even today! The current trend is to take hand gel from hospitals and drink it. 😮

They clearly aren’t paying you enough…! :p

Anyone for a Gin & To North (Ish) Card?
Resmoroh

As an experienced Police officer, I can tell you that lots of street drinkers drink industrial alcohol even today! The current trend is to take hand gel from hospitals and drink it. 😮

Many compasses use alcohol, but the poisonous, foul-tasting, industrial type; I suspect that someone is letting their fantasies take hold. For one thing, the compass would be more difficult to read, if it contained a brown, rather than clear, liquid.

The idea seems to be if the alcohol evaporates or is lost the pilot would top up the gauge with Whiskey presumably from his hip flask. I’ve heard this from various people. But never actually had someone say they did it or found some in a gauge. I think this might be the aviation equivalent of the tarantulas in bannanas myth.

Many compasses use alcohol, but the poisonous, foul-tasting, industrial type; I suspect that someone is letting their fantasies take hold. For one thing, the compass would be more difficult to read, if it contained a brown, rather than clear, liquid.