When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain (13 page)

Moore looked around and took a mental note of everything he saw. The clock on the inner wall had stopped working. There was no fire in the grate and the three beds were empty. A meal had been left uneaten on the table. It was as if the men had been spirited away.

The three keepers had been ferried to the Flannan Isles on 7 December 1900. They had been accompanied by Robert Muirhead, the Superintendent of Lighthouses, who wanted to make a routine inspection of the building and check that the place was well supplied.

This was important, for the Flannan Isles were one of the loneliest spots on earth. They stand some twenty miles to the west of the Outer Hebrides, a place so forlorn that the rotating lighthouse crews were rarely left for more than a few weeks. Longer stays on the island had been known to drive men mad.

Once he was satisfied that all was well, Robert Muirhead had helped the three outgoing keepers onto his ship, wished the new team luck and then bade them farewell. He was the last person to see them alive.

In the week that followed Muirhead's departure, the island was kept under close telescopic observation from the Outer Hebrides. It had long been arranged that if an emergency arose, the keepers were to hoist a large flag. A boat would then be sent to the island to bring help.

It was a system that worked, but imperfectly. The island was often obscured by banks of swirling sea mist, and the distance from the Outer Hebrides was such that it meant accurate observation was almost impossible.

For several days that followed the arrival of James Ducat and his team, the island was enveloped in thick fog and the lighthouse was invisible for much of that time.

The lamp itself was easier to see, especially at night. It was glimpsed on the evening of 7 December, a sign that all was well, but then obscured by bad weather for the next four evenings. It was sighted again on 12 December. After that, it was not seen again.

Three days after the last sighting, a vessel named the SS
Archtor
passed close to the island. Captain Holman looked for the light in the night sky but saw nothing. He was concerned that something was wrong and immediately raised the alarm.

Atrocious weather prevented the SS
Hesperus
from reaching the island until Boxing Day, when Moore and McCormack finally managed to row ashore. When they found the lighthouse to be empty, they searched the rocky island for the three keepers. They were nowhere to be seen.

Moore and McCormack rowed back to the
Hesperus
in order to inform Captain Harvie of the men's mysterious disappearance. The captain, in turn, signalled the mystery to the Northern Lighthouse Board.

‘A dreadful accident has happened at the Flannan,' he wrote. ‘The three keepers, Ducat, Marshall and the Occasional [Macarthur] have disappeared from the island. Poor fellows must have been blown over the cliffs or drowned trying to secure a crane or something like that.'

An investigation was soon under way, led by Superintendent Muirhead. After a detailed search of both the lighthouse and island, he was able to piece together a story of what might have happened to the men. It was one that few were prepared to believe.

Muirhead was confident that everything had been running smoothly until the afternoon of 15 December. The principal lighthouse keeper, James Ducat, had compiled weather reports until the 13th, and had also written draft entries for 14 and 15 December. These revealed that there had been a storm on 14 December, followed by a surprising calm on the next morning. After that, there were no more entries. In the aftermath of that calm, something had gone seriously, fatally wrong.

Muirhead's inspection of the island proved most revealing. He found that the lighthouse and its outbuildings had sustained considerable damage, to the extent that some of these buildings had been structurally weakened. The jetty was badly warped and the iron railings had been strangely contorted, as if a giant fist had wrenched them apart. One of the storehouses, built to withstand winter storms, had been washed clean away.

When Muirheard examined the upper levels of the lighthouse, he found something so bizarre that it was almost impossible to explain. The lighthouse ropes, usually stored at ground level, had become snared on a crane that stood 70 feet above sea level.

Muirhead could only offer two hypotheses as to what might have happened and neither seemed particularly plausible. Either the three men had been blown off the cliffs – a conjecture that did nothing to explain the snared ropes – or they had been swept off the island by what Muirhead referred to as ‘an extra large sea'. What he meant, but declined to say for fear of ridicule, was a gigantic freak wave.

Few people countenanced such an idea at the time of the disaster. Freak waves were believed to exist only in novels, poems and sailors' fertile imaginations. It was deemed impossible that Muirhead's ‘extra large sea' could have swept the men to their deaths.

But it is now known that freak waves (not to be confused with tsunami or tidal waves) do exist and can be immensely destructive. In 2001, the expedition ship
Caledonian Star
was hit by a 90-foot wall of water that seemed to arise from nowhere. It struck the ship with such force that the bridge windows were shattered and the ship's electricity wiped out. The crews of other vessels have described similarly destructive waves. They are caused by the conjunction of high winds and strong currents that produce an underwater surge. Given the right atmospheric conditions, this can be forced upwards to create a truly violent natural phenomenon.

It will never be known for certain what happened to the unfortunate men on the Flannan Isles. But it seems likely that they were swept off their rocky home by a huge wave – at least 70 feet in height – that then sucked them into the undertow and carried them to a watery grave.

 

5

Japan's Deadly Balloon Bomb

Pastor Archie Mitchell had promised his wife, Elsie, a treat. Both of them were tired of reading newspaper articles about the war in the Far East. On Saturday 5 May 1945, Archie suggested a day of escapism, driving up into the mountains of southern Oregon and having a picnic.

Elsie was delighted by the prospect and even happier when Archie offered to bring along five children from their local church. Elsie was heavily pregnant and the idea of taking the youngsters on a special outing had a particular appeal.

They set off by car in late morning and were soon winding through spectacular mountain scenery. The children were restless in the crowded car and wanted to hike across the hills. Archie suggested that Elsie lead them on foot to Leonard Creek, a well-known beauty spot, while he drove round in the car. It would enable him to start preparing the lunch.

The children were delighted and waved their goodbyes before setting off into the forest. Archie meanwhile drove to Leonard Creek and began installing the picnic.

It was while he was unpacking the sandwiches that he heard shouts from a couple of the children. Breathless with excitement, they said they had found a strange balloon lying on the ground just a short distance away.

Archie warned them not to touch it in case it was dangerous. He promised to come and inspect the balloon just as soon as he had finished preparing the picnic.

As he was setting off to see what they had found, the ground beneath him was suddenly rocked by a tremendous explosion. A series of shockwaves ripped through the undergrowth, filling the air with dust. A plume of black smoke could be seen rising above the trees.

Archie rushed to the scene, only to find the trees shredded and charred. But worse, far worse, was the fact that twenty-six-year-old Elsie, together with the five children, Dick Patzke, fourteen, Jay Gifford, Edward Engen and Joan Patzke, all thirteen, and Sherman Shoemaker, eleven, were sprawled on the ground and covered in blood. On closer inspection – and to his absolute horror – he saw that all of them were dead.

He had no idea what had happened and could only assume that the ‘strange balloon' had somehow exploded. Only later did he discover that Elsie and the children had been the victims of a balloon bomb, a devastating new weapon that the Japanese were intending to drop on North America in massive quantities.

This Japanese bomb represented a terrible new threat. Unpredictable and highly explosive, it also had the potential to disperse biological agents across the length and breath of the country.

It was the brainchild of Major General Sueyoshi Kusaba, head of the Japanese Army's secret Number Nine Research Laboratory. The technical work was supervised by a gifted scientist by the name of Major Taiji Takada.

Their idea was strikingly simple: to use the winter jet stream to carry bomb-laden balloons from Japan to North America, where they would land and explode, causing widespread destruction. Better still, from the Japanese point of view, they would instil fear into the American population at large.

Research revealed that the jet stream could carry a large balloon at high altitude across the 5,000 miles of Pacific Ocean in about three days. But there were some technical hurdles to be overcome if the balloons were to be successful.

The most pressing problem was the fact that they were filled with hydrogen, which expanded in the warmth of the sunshine and contracted in the cool of night. To prevent this from happening, the balloon had to be fitted with special altimeters programmed to jettison ballast if the balloon descended too low. Once the prototypes had been successfully tested, the balloon project got under way in earnest.

There was enormous potential for destruction. Each balloon carried a massive incendiary bomb as well as high-explosive devices that could target cities and (in the dry heat of midsummer) forests.

In the first week of November 1944 the first wave of bombs was launched. Chief scientist Takada was there for the lift-off. ‘The figure of the balloon was visible only for several minutes following its release,' he later recalled, ‘until it faded away as a spot in the blue sky like a daytime star.'

The initial wave of balloons landed and exploded in no fewer than seventeen states, as far apart as Alaska, Texas, Michigan and California.

General Kusaba was hoping that 10 per cent of his balloons would reach their target destination: with more than 9,000 on the production line, this represented a significant threat to the United States.

America soon awoke to the dangers of this devastating new weapon, which struck at random and without warning. Fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the balloons but they met with little success. Japan's wonder-weapon flew extremely high and fast and fewer than twenty were shot down from the sky.

Balloons soon started landing and exploding right across America. News of their existence was kept secret: the Office of Censorship ordered newspapers not to mention the bombings lest they create widespread panic.

Japan was meanwhile reporting massive damage to American property. One article claimed as many as 10,000 casualties in a single raid.

In truth, the balloons proved less effective than the Japanese had hoped. Nor were they particularly accurate: the vast majority landed on farmland or in the sea.

Japan's scientists worked tirelessly to increase the accuracy of the bombs and they also developed biological and chemical weapons that could be attached to the balloons and dropped onto American cities.

Given time, they might well have proved successful. But all the major technological breakthroughs came too late. The war was almost at an end and Japan was itself about to be the target of a devastating new weapon. The only known fatalities of the Japanese balloon bombings were Elsie Mitchell and her picnic party of five schoolchildren.

Archie's life was ruined by what had happened: he had lost his wife, his unborn baby and his young parishioners. But his woes were not yet at an end. In 1960, while serving as a missionary in Vietnam, he was captured by the Viet Cong.

He disappeared without trace and was never seen again.

 

6

Never Go to Sea

On a sparkling winter's day in 1826, a young Englishwoman named Ann Saunders boarded a vessel that was sailing from New Brunswick in Canada to Liverpool.

She was looking forward to the Atlantic voyage: the outward journey had been a delight and the return seemed set to be the same. ‘We set sail', she later wrote, ‘with a favourable wind and the prospect and joyful expectations of an expeditious passage.'

There were twenty-one people on board, including Ann's close friend Mrs Kendall, the wife of the captain.

The
Francis Mary
had been at sea for almost three weeks when, on the first day of February, she was hit by a ferocious storm. ‘About noon, our vessel was struck by a tremendous sea, which swept from her decks almost every moveable object.' Ann watched on helpless as one of the mariners was washed overboard. He was extremely fortunate to be saved from the water by his comrades.

Worse was to come. As the storm increased in intensity, it lashed at the timbers and pitched the vessel from peak to trough. Ann watched in terror as a monstrous wave emerged from nowhere, slamming against the side of the vessel and striking with such force that it ripped away a part of the hull.

Water gushed into the hold, flooding the storage areas and threatening to drag the ship down. The
Francis Mary
was already listing heavily when another huge wave struck the vessel and flipped her upwards through forty-five degrees. Everyone on board clung to the rigging and slowly pulled themselves up towards the forecastle, the only part of the ship that remained above the waterline.

Still she didn't sink. Indeed, she had stabilized at an erratic angle in the water, heaving up and down in the heavy swell.

Several of the crew now made a desperate attempt to descend into the waterlogged interior and rescue whatever provisions they could. At great risk to their lives they clambered below decks and managed to drag out 50 pounds of bread and biscuit, along with a few pounds of cheese. It was precious little sustenance for everyone on board, especially as they were exposed to the full fury of an Atlantic winter.