It was in the early autumn, when the chestnuts were ripening and the apples were beginning to drop off the trees—it was then that the first gremlins were seen by the Royal Air Force.
The gremlins that are being discussed here are not of the kind that turn psychotic and feral when they get wet or feed after midnight. Preceding those famous gremlins were the real ones—fictionally speaking—that were blamed for airplanes going haywire and causing unexplained engine malfunctions during World War II. The early autumn setting refers to the Battle of Britain, when the tide of the war against Germany turned.
IT WAS A VERY FAMOUS WORD.
Indeed, throughout Britain’s Royal Air Force, “gremlin” was a very famous word to describe the inexplicable problems caused to planes. According to the book—written by an author who was crashed his plane and received extensive injuries, including a fractured skull, before he could actually fly his first mission—the term “gremlin” was coined “on a straight strip of the Dover-London road” and quickly spread from there to North Africa then to India and beyond. Thanks to the popularity of the book, it also became famous outside of the RAF.
"Widgets are the young of gremlins and fifinellas. No one knows until they grow up whether they are going to turn into males or females, but it's usually males; in each nest of twelve widgets only one will eventually turn into a fifinella.”
Jamface is a pilot who is excited because he has just located his first “nest of widgets.” Stuffy is a comrade-in-arms who as the book begins has just seen his first gremlin and is completely ignorant of their backstory and particulars. The excited Jamface tries to clear things up for his friend with this explanation of the peculiar aspects of their young, but Stuffy is somewhat resistant to the whole concept and says so. He is summarily punished by two of the young widgets with a cigarette used as a battering ram against his ankle. A “fifinella” by the way—though the context should make it clear—is a female gremlin.
“And so, with the help of the gremlins, and because he had great faith and determination, a pilot was able to return to his flying.”
The actual “plot” of the story—which is for the most part subjugated to the conceptualization of the title characters—revolves around Gremlin Gus helping his namesake pilot avoid being grounded after flying with a bad case of the flu and “landing” several hundred yards short of the runway. The gremlins help Gus falsify his medical records and assist in getting him quickly reinstated as a pilot. This plot can be interpreted to a certain extent to wish-fulfillment on the part of the author. Like Gus, Dahl’s crash resulted in time off from duty and the need to be re-certified as fit to fly. Unlike Gus, however, Dahl’s flying bravery was not in the heat of the Battle of Britain, but first in Africa and then Greece, where he did fly missions during the Battle of Athens.
