Elinor Smith

Born Elinor Regina Patricia Ward

August 17, 1911
New York City
Died March 19, 2010 (aged 98)
Palo Alto, California
Occupation Aviator
Smith (right) with Helen Hicks
around 1928-1930 in Farmingdale,
New York
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elinor Smith (August 17, 1911 March 19, 2010) was a
pioneering American aviator,
[1]
once known as "The Flying
Flapper of Freeport".
[2]
She was the first woman test pilot for
both Fairchild and Bellanca (now AviaBellanca).
[3]
She was
the youngest licensed pilot in the world at 16.
[4]
1 Early life
2 Aviation career
2.1 Early flying experience
2.2 Stunt flying under New York bridges
2.3 Breaking records
2.3.1 Endurance records
2.3.2 Speed record
2.3.3 Endurance with mid-air refueling
2.3.4 Altitude record
2.4 Later years
3 References
4 Bibliography
Smith was born Elinor Regina Patricia Ward (her actor father changed
his name to Tom Smith, thus she became Elinor Smith) in New York
City and grew up in Freeport, Long Island, New York.
[3][5][6][7]
Her
mother had been a professional singer, but had retired from performing
when she got married. Her father was a comedian, singer and dancer. He
toured extensively (including to Great Britain and France) in the role of
the Scarecrow in a stage production of The Wizard of Oz and was a star
of the Orpheum Circuit. He wrote his own material for his vaudeville
act, and in the 1920s would go on to write comedy bits for Broadway
shows as well.
[8]
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Early flying experience
In 1918, at the age of six, along with her brother Joe, she took her first plane ride in a Farman pusher that took
off from a potato patch near Hicksville on her native Long Island. She immediately fell in love with flying, and
took numerous rides that summer with the same French pilot, Louis Gaubert.
[1][9]
At the age of 10, she began
receiving flying lessons from Clyde Pangborn who tied blocks to the rudder pedals so Elinors feet could reach.
[10][11]
She received further lessons from Frederick Melvin Lund, who piloted her father around the country on
the vaudeville circuit and was teaching him to fly as well, and from Bert Acosta.
[12]
Her father bought a Waco 9
and hired "Red" Devereaux as a pilot and as a flight instructor for the two of them.
[13]
Through all of this
period, though, on her father's orders to her instructors, she was never given the opportunity to take off or land,
because he was concerned for her safety.
[14]
This prohibition was finally lifted by her mother while her father
was out of town,
[15]
and after ten days of intense instruction by Russ Holderman, she soloed for the first time at
age 16.
[16]
She began taking her father's Waco 9 up to higher altitudes than anyone had ever taken such a plane.
(She would later write in her memoir, "I had no business fooling around up there without oxygenand I knew
it.") Word got around, and it was arranged for her to get a Fdration Aronautique Internationale (FAI) license
and an FAI-certified barograph.
[1][17]
Orville Wright finalized her FAI license,
[1]
and three months after she
first soloed, she set an official light plane altitude record of 11,889 feet (3,624 m) in the Waco 9.
[1][18]
In
September 1927, at 16, she became the youngest U.S.-government-licensed pilot on record.
[1]
Stunt flying under New York bridges
Up to this point, she and her family had deliberately kept publicity to a minimum, in order to allow her to hone
her flying skills without the distraction of public attention.
[19]
This would soon change. In mid-October 1928,
on a dare, she flew a Waco 10
[10]
under all four of New York City's East River bridges; according to the Cradle
of Aviation Museum, she is the only person ever to do so.
[1][3][20]
By her own account at the time, she first
reconnoitered the route from above the bridges; nonetheless, she had to dodge several ships.
[5][21]
Although she
did not know it in advance, newsreel crews were there to film her at each bridge: the Curtiss Field regulars had
been betting heavily on whether or not she could really do it, and those who were betting on her side had alerted
the media so that there would be clear evidence on film that it was, indeed, her at the controls of the plane.
[22]
By her own account, the only sanction she received for the unauthorized stunt was a 10-day "grounding" by the
city of New York, with Mayor James J. Walker interceding on her behalf to prevent any actual suspension of her
license by the United States Department of Commerce.
[23]
A request for Elinors autograph accompanied the
Departments letter of reprimand.
[10]
Tom D. Crouch writes that she had her license suspended for 15 days. In
any case, the stunt and her devil-may-care attitude made her a celebrity and helped to win her the "Flying
Flapper" nickname.
[24]
Breaking records
Endurance records
Numerous other feats followed close on. Until late 1928, there was no established women's flying endurance
record; Smith decided to establish one, but was beaten to it. On December 20, Viola Gentry flew for eight
hours, six minutes. As far as Smith was concerned, all that did was to establish a tangible target, one that Red
Devereaux said Smith could break "standing on [her] head."
[25]
However, before Smith could finish her
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preparations, on January 2, 1929, Evelyn "Bobbi" Trout, flying in California, upped the record to 12 hours.
Under FAI rules, endurance records had to be broken by a full hour.
[26]
In late January 1929, it became clear that Gentry was ready to have another go at the record.
[27]
In the depths of
a rough New York winter, Smith judged that Roosevelt Field was in no state for a heavily loaded takeoff. With
some difficulty, she obtained permission to use the military's nearby Mitchel Field.
[28]
On January 30, flying an
open cockpit Bruner Winkle biplane on a day when the temperature was 0 F (18 C), Smith set a women's
solo endurance record of 13 hours.
[1]
Her plan was to fly through the night and land in daylight: unbeknownst
to those around her, although she had often landed at dusk she had never done a true night landing before.
However, the effect of the cold and on both her body and that of her aircraft forced her down. By her own
account, she managed to land with a heavy remaining load of fuel only due to the good fortune of being able to
follow in Jimmy Doolittle, who had seen her fire her Vry pistol. No one on the ground had seen the flare, so
the runway lights had not been turned on. Upon landing she promised herself "never again to display this blend
of incompetence and arrogance."
[29]
The next day, Gentry crashed on takeoff while attempting to better Smith's achievement; Gentry was unharmed,
but her plane was damaged.
[7]
Bobbi Trout took back the endurance record with a 17-hour flight on February
1011,
[30]
but three months later, in April 1929, Smith smashed that record, soloing 26 hours in a Bellanca
CH monoplane. That flight also made her the first woman ever to pilot such a large and powerful aircraft.
[1]
Speed record
The following month she set a woman's world speed record of 190.8 miles per hour (307.1 km/h) in a Curtiss
military aircraft. In June 1929 the parachute-maker Irving Parachute Company, hired her to tour the United
States, flying a Bellanca Pacemaker on a 6,000-mile (9,700 km) tour of the United States, making the
18-year-old Smith the first female Executive Pilot. On this tour, at the air races in Cleveland, Ohio, she was the
pilot for an unprecedented seven-man parachute drop.
[1]
Endurance with mid-air refueling
Also in 1929, flying out of Metropolitan Airport (now Van Nuys Airport) in Los Angeles, she and Bobbi Trout
(who functioned as co-pilot) set the first official women's record for endurance with mid-air refueling. They
were aloft 42 hours in a Sunbeam biplane powered by a 300-horsepower J-6 Wright engine. Smith did the
contact flying while Trout handled the fueling hoses.
[1][31][32]
Their refueling craft, a Curtiss Pigeon with a
Liberty L-12 engine, was piloted by Paul Whittier with Pete Reinhart handling the hose.
[33]
Smith and Trout
were hoping for a record of at least 100 hours, and shooting for 164 hours (a week),
[34]
but this was not to be.
The two craft were not terribly well suited to the task at hand. The Pigeon was chosen for its large cargo
capacity to carry fuel, but it was an outdated aircraft with a temperamental engine for which spare parts were
not easily obtained. In refueling position, the Pigeon's pilot could not see the Sunbeam at all, so there was no
way to signal about any engine problems that would mean sudden loss of altitude. The Sunbeam was not a
notably stable aircraft: in Smith's words, "it had to be flown every single minute with the concentration of a test
flight." Furthermore, the two craft were terribly mismatched in terms of velocity: whenever they were refueling,
the Pigeon had to fly near its top speed while the Sunbeam slowed down to just above its stalling speed.
[35]
The first attempt at the record nearly ended in disaster around the 12-hour mark. During refueling near Catalina
Island, sudden turbulence wrested the hose from Trout's hands, covering her in airplane fuel, while at the other
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Elinor Smith at Langley open house
in 2001
end of the hose Reinhart was left bleeding from cuts. Both planes made it successfully back to Metropolitan
Airport, and no one was seriously hurt.
[36]
A series of additional attempts lasted between 10 and 18 hours; the
weak link each time was keeping the Pigeon's engine running. Finally, in late November 1929, with the rainy
season approaching, enough of the right factors fell into place to allow them to set a meaningful record, albeit a
more modest one than they had originally intended. For completely unexplained reasons, the Sunbeam flew
better than usual; the Pigeon's Liberty engine made it through 36 hours, although when it did fail it was
dramatic, and forced the refueling craft into an emergency landing with its hose trailing. Smith and Trout flew
the Sunbeam nearly dry, stretching their flight out to exactly 42 hours.
[37]
Altitude record
In March 1930 she added almost 1 mile (1.6 km) to the world altitude record, flying to a height of 27,419 feet
(8,357 m).
[1]
Her articulate performance in an NBC broadcast interview shortly after that flight won her a
position as a broadcaster covering the world of aviation, including live broadcasts from air shows and
interviews with other prominent aviators.
[38]
In May 1930, still before her 19th birthday, she became the
youngest pilot ever granted a Transport License by the U.S. Department of Commerce. In October 1930 a poll
of licensed pilots selected her as the "Best Woman Pilot in America".
[1]
In March 1931, flying out of Roosevelt Field on Long Island, she attempted to set the world altitude record,
again flying a 6-seater Bellanca. Her altitude of 32,576 feet (9,929 m) gave her back the women's record, and
demonstrated the over-the-weather capability of the Bellanca, but fell just short of the overall world record.
[1]
The flight nearly ended in calamity. Somewhere over 30,000 feet (9,100 m) she lost consciousness, the fuel line
froze, and the engine stalled out. The plane went into a glide. Smith regained consciousness at about 27,000 feet
(8,200 m), and managed to guide the plane in with an only intermittently useful engine.
[39]
Later years
The Great Depression scrubbed her hopes of a non-stop solo trans-
Atlantic flight in a Lockheed Vega, though she continued for several
years to be a prominent stunt flyer, performing numerous fund-raisers
for the homeless and needy.
[1]
In 1934, Smith became the third
personand first womanto be pictured on a Wheaties box.
[40]
She met and married New York State legislator and attorney Patrick H.
Sullivan,
[1][6]
nephew of Tammany leader Timothy "Big Tim"
Sullivan.
[6]
She kept flying for a while after their 1933 marriage, but
once she had a child she retired from flying and spent over 20 years as a
suburban housewife, ultimately bearing and raising four children.
[1]
Patrick Sullivan died in 1956, and Elinor Smith returned to the air. Her membership in the Air Force
Association allowed her to pilot the T-33 Shooting Star Jet Trainer and to take up C-119s for paratroop
maneuvers. In March 2000 at the Ames Research Center, Moffett Federal Airfield, California, as the pilot with
an all-woman crew, she took on NASA's Space Shuttle vertical motion simulator, and became the oldest pilot to
succeed in a simulated shuttle landing. In April 2001, at the age of 89, she flew an experimental C33 Raytheon
AGATE, Beech Bonanza at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia.
[1]
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Smith died on March 19, 2010, in Palo Alto, California.
[4]
^
a

b

c

d

e

f

g

h

i

j

k

l

m

n

o

p

q

r
Phyllis R. Moses, The Amazing Aviatrix Elinor Smith (http://womanpilot.com/?p=49),
Woman Pilot, March 30, 2008. Accessed online 15 December 2008.
1.
^ Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, Amelia: A Life of the Aviation Legend, Potomac Books (1999), ISBN
1-57488-199-X. p. 99.
2.
^
a

b

c
Elinor Smith (http://www.cradleofaviation.org/history/people/smith.html), Cradle of Aviation Museum.
Accessed online 15 December 2008.
3.
^
a

b
Patricia Sullivan (March 24, 2010). "Pioneering pilot Elinor Smith Sullivan dies at 98"
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/23/AR2010032303758.html). Washington Post.
Retrieved 2011-01-03. "Elinor Smith Sullivan, 98, a record-setting aviatrix who was named by fellow fliers the 1930
female pilot of the year over Amelia Earhart, died of kidney failure March 19 at a nursing home in Palo Alto, Calif."
4.
^
a

b
"Says She Flew Under East River Bridges; Elinor Smith, 17, Reports Feat at Curtiss Field--Tells of Dodging
Ships", The New York Times, October 22, 1928. p. 3.
5.
^
a

b

c
Miss Elinor Smith Wed Quietly in July; Aviatrix Became Wife of P.H. Sullivan, Nephew of Late Tammany
Leader", The New York Times, November 10, 1933, p. 8.
6.
^
a

b
"Girl Flier Crashes at Roosevelt Field; Miss Gentry Smashes Plane in Ditch Where Fonck Craft Fell Three Years
Ago. Was Taking Off with Load Preparing for Duration Attempt-- Elinor Smith Rests After Setting Record for
Women", The New York Times, February 1, 1929. p. 2.
7.
^ Smith 1981, pp. 2223, 37, 39, 54 8.
^ Smith 1981, p. 32 9.
^
a

b

c
Tami Lewis Brown, Soar, Elinor!, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (2010), ISBN 978-0-374-37115-9. 10.
^ Smith 1981, p. 41 11.
^ Smith 1981, pp. 4344 12.
^ Smith 1981, p. 47 et. seq. 13.
^ Smith 1981, p. 43 14.
^ Smith 1981, p. 49 15.
^ Smith 1981, pp. 4951 16.
^ Smith 1981, p. 60 17.
^ Smith 1981, pp. 5960 18.
^ Smith 1981, p. 58 19.
^ Phyllis R. Moses (op. cit.) says she was the first person to do so. The October 22, 1928 New York Times report
describes her only as the first woman to do so, but does not name any man who might have done this previously. The
page about her on the web site of the Cradle of Aviation Museum says she is the only person ever to do this. In her
own memoir (Smith 1981, pp. 319) she accounts herself the only person ever to do this in a land plane, but indicates
that it was reasonably routine for seaplanes to go under the bridges.
20.
^ Smith 1981, pp. 319 21.
^ Smith 1981, p. 16 22.
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^ Smith 1981, p. 19 23.
^ Tom D. Crouch, Wings: A History of Aviation from Kites to the Space Age, W.W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-05767-4, p.
282.
24.
^ Smith 1981, p. 78 25.
^ Smith 1981, p. 79 26.
^ "Girl Flier, 17, Sets Woman's Duration Mark; Remains in the Air 13 Hours 17 Minutes", The New York Times,
January 31, 1929. p. 1.
27.
^ Smith 1981, p. 80 28.
^ Smith 1981, pp. 8086; the "incompetence and arrogance" quotation is on p. 84. 29.
^ "Miss Trout Sets Mark With 17-Hour Flight; Recaptures Record Miss Smith Took From Her", The New York Times,
February 12, 1929. p. 1.
30.
^ Douglas Martin, "Evelyn Trout, Record-Setting Flier, Dies at 97" (obituary), The New York Times, February 2,
2003, p. 1.42.
31.
^ Smith 1981, p. 180 et. seq.; p. 194 for this being the first establishment of such a record. 32.
^ Smith 1981, p. 181 33.
^ Smith 1981, pp. 190, 194 34.
^ Smith 1981, p. 180 et. seq.. The "concentration of a test flight" quotation is on p. 182. 35.
^ Smith 1981, p. 183 36.
^ Smith 1981, pp. 192194 37.
^ Smith 1981 passim. 38.
^ "Miss Smith in Faint Sets Altitude Mark; Girl Flier Loses Consciousness When More Than 30,000 Feet Up, a
Record for Women. Her Motor Fails at Peak; Fuel Line Frozen, Plane Drops Mile Before She Recovers to Make
Difficult Landing. The New York Times, March 11, 1930. p. 1.
39.
^ Doyle, Jack (March 29, 2010). "Wheaties & Sport, 1930s" (http://www.pophistorydig.com/?p=5951). Sports,
Advertising & Marketing. The Pop History Dig.
40.
Brown, Tami Lewis. Soar, Elinor! Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010. ISBN 978-0-374-37115-9.
Crouch, Tom D. Wings: A History of Aviation from Kites to the Space Age. W.W. Norton, 2004. ISBN
0-393-05767-4.
Goldstein, Donald M. and Katherine V. Dillon. Amelia: A Life of the Aviation Legend. Potomac Books,
1999. ISBN 1-57488-199-X.
Smith, Elinor (1981). Aviatrix. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-110372-0.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elinor_Smith&oldid=590061426"
Categories: 1911 births 2010 deaths Female aviators American aviators Aviators from New York
People from Freeport, New York
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