The Barnstormers

LXXX

At the end of World War I there were many hundreds of young men who had signed up to fly in combat. Particularly among American veterans many of them had not gotten their fill of flying. Some, like Juan Trippe, found themselves with a highly technical skill that was not in demand. 

A 1917 Curtiss Jenny in military livery

Well, they would create the demand. 

Fortunately for many of them, the U.S. Government had overordered planes, never expecting that the war would end so suddenly. 

Each Curtiss Jenny had cost the Government $5,000.00 in wartime. It sold them in peacetime for $500.00. When there weren’t enough takers, it dropped the price to $200.00. 

Some pilots found sponsors who generally made them advertise product. The Gilmore Oil Company had its pilot fly with a lion cub "Gilmore" as a mascot. Despite the absurd affectations Roscoe Turner is ranked as one of the finest, most accomplished pilots in aviation history

No one ever got rich on a military paycheck (monthly pay for a Private in the Civil War was $11.00; in World War I, almost sixty years later, it had increased to $30.00, a not-quite 300% increase) but with mustering-out pay and a little luck, an Air Corps flier who really had the itch could buy a brand-new Jenny.  For sure, most men who bought one flew it, a least for a while. It was the Jazz Age, and the Age of Bathtub Gin, and there were flappers and flivvers, and radio and movies and all sorts of distractions aside from the basic ones of raising a family and making a living.  How many Jennys, bought with good intentions, sat out on the back forty and turned to rust and dust will never be known, but enough survived to make the plane legendary. 

Some pilots stuck close to home. They opened flying schools, some excellent, some terrible, and made a living introducing flying to others. A few pilots got their licenses after pancaking in after a solo, but most teachers were diligent if not always skillful. 

Bessie Coleman

A surprising number of postwar fliers were women. In a field of endeavor with no history and no traditions and no rules, females found a niche. A few found greatness. In 1906, E. Lillian Todd became the first female aircraft designer and builder. In 1910, Blanche Stuart Scott became the first woman to solo. In 1911, Melli Beese of Germany was the first woman to earn a pilot’s license. In 1921, Bessie Coleman became the first African-American --- of either sex --- to earn a pilot’s license. In 1929, Florence “Pancho” Barnes became the first woman stunt pilot in films. She would later operate “Pancho’s Happy Bottom Riding Club” which counted Chuck Yeager and Scott Crossfield, the first men to break the sound barrier, among her patrons. That same year, 1929, Amelia Earhart crossed the Atlantic, and in 1932, she did so solo. 

Amelia Earhart

With a little fuel and a little more gumption boys and girls from small towns broadened their horizons and the horizons of everyone they met. 

Florence "Pancho" Barnes

They called themselves barnstormers. Right after the war, they were flying vagabonds who came to town, landed in a field, and took the local folks for airplane rides, sometimes thrilling (or terrifying; or less frequently, killing) their fifty-cent-a-ride passengers with dives or barrel rolls. 

For airplanes as for airships, it was “The Soaring Twenties.” It was an era of extremes and excesses. Towns visited by barnstormers quickly designated a patch of empty land an “airport” and soon landing fields were as common as cows --- and about as helpful to a pilot. With no control towers or even a windsock, they were land-at-your-own-risk type places that could end up wrecking a plane as it flipped arse-over-teakettle with its wheels sunk in muck, or it cartwheeled on its wings after hitting a sofa-sized boulder hidden in the grass. Then there’d be a fireball, and . . . 

 

Sometimes pilots coming in to land hit invisible-‘til-that-moment stone walls or cows --- the effect was about the same.  Sometimes the cows, evaded in the landing, came around later and munched on the plane’s fabric. Sometimes farmers, angry at the trespass, shot at the pilot or the plane, or attacked both with a pitchfork.  Pilots soon learned to travel in numbers for safety.

 

A barnstormer's handbill. Imagine a "bomb dropping craft" putting on exhibitions today

A happy crowd turns out in Marion, Illinois for a barnstorming exhibition

The better landing fields had little hangars and gas pumps nearby. The barnstormers soon learned to circle a town dropping leaflets to announce their imminent appearance. After such an announcement and the resulting excitement, it would be a surly farmer indeed who would turn away barnstormers (though they often overcharged for the pilots to use the land).

No matter. A barnstormer could gross hundreds of dollars flying people around for five or ten or fifteen minutes at a time (the rate varied according to the flight time). By splitting the “gate” with the farmer, groups of barnstormers organized into “Flying Circuses” provided the bored minions of small-town America an few hours of exciting aerial daredevilry. Wing-walking, midair switching of pilots, and other stunts were common. 

 

Small airfields dotted the countryside. Most weren't very busy and long outlasted their technical usefulness. This one, in Massapequa, New York, was named Fitzmaurice Field.

Fitzmaurice Field had both a hangar and a windsock. Long Island was a birthplace of aviation, and the residents treated pilots with the requisite respect. The old landing field is now the site of two neighborhood schools, Hawthorn and McKenna

Air races became important public events. Pulitzer even had a prize for the best pilot at one time. What many people didn’t know was that the Government quietly sponsored pilots like Jimmy Doolittle, who were testing new instruments, flying techniques and on-board mechanisms for the Army Air Corps. A pilot like Roscoe Turner (who travelled with a parachute-wearing lion cub named “Gilmore”) was sponsored by the Gilmore Oil and Gas Corporation. “No matter how many newspapers turn you into a superman, an immortal, you’re still a man inside, you don’t quite feel like dying, and you’re generally scared as hell,” Turner said. He broke the transcontinental speed record more times than any one man. 

Accidents happened. A parachutist got caught up on the tail of her plane, forcing the pilot to crawl along the fuselage to save her. He did, and miraculously, the plane, unpiloted but for a quickly-improvised string and wire “autopilot,” flew straight and true the whole time. Other times, there were crashes, some fatal. 

Barnstormers risked their lives. They were, to a man --- or a woman --- what people would today call adrenaline junkies. Most times it was all OK. Sometimes things went wrong. (Above)  A plane hits a carousel. Accidents --- often fatal ones --- happened, fortunately infrequently enough to let the public forget them. The days of barnstorming were days of almost no regulation

Most accidents happened away from crowds, during practice runs for new routines. Nobody liked to think about death in the air, and the subject certainly wasn’t one the pilots shared with the public.

Famous companies were born --- Fairchild Aircraft, Sperry, and Grumman were born on Long Island, a hotbed of early aviation, while Curtiss and Boeing --- both founded in 1916 --- expanded exponentially. 

Every day, a new flying record was happily set or joyfully broken. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh, well-respected amongst his peers, became the first true celebrity of the Twentieth Century when, leaving from Roosevelt Field, New York,   he crossed the Atlantic Ocean solo in a Ryan monoplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, and landed in Paris after a 33 hour and 30 minute flight. 

 

Lindbergh and his ground crew shortly before he left Roosevelt Field. The young man on the right wearing jodhpurs is Nathan Quinn. Quinn received his pilot's license from Orville Wright in 1926 when he was only 16. He went on to barnstorm, to smuggle emeralds in the Colombian-Peruvian War of 1932-33, was a double ace in the Pacific War, and worked for Fairchild, Republic and Grumman on Long Island as an aircraft surveyor

 

"Lucky Lindy" is mobbed as he lands in Paris to fame, fortune and fate