You are aware that gremlins were made up out of whole cloth as a propaganda exercise, yes ?
By Roald Dahl.
Actually Dahl wrote the book (thank you Wikipedia), but the stories of gremlins has preceded his writing. By about 18 years, actually. They were part of RAF lore before he wrote it, and inherited into the US Air Force. To this day, there are still believers in it, my uncle being one of them. The story of tricksters messing with aircraft and causing high-altitude failures that were otherwise inexplicable was popular because of the isolation one felt up there.
Patricia Briggs has a good explanation of a gremlin in her Mercedes Thompson books as being just a modern name for a much more ancient metalworking fae who can touch Iron unlike normal fae.
