STUNT FLYING

also called Barnstorming, the performance while in or on an airplane of difficult feats requiring great skill or daring. The antecedents of stunt flying lie in death-defying performances of balloonists, such as those of the Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos Dumont in the 1890s and the parachute jumping of Tiny Broadwick (ne Georgia Ann Thompson) in the United States (190814). The preeminent early stunt flyer was Lincoln Beachey (18871915), who started in balloons and switched to planes. Working to get publicity for the aviation inventor Glenn Curtiss, Beachey barnstormed throughout the United States. Before 150,000 watchers he dived his plane into the gorge at Niagara Falls and flew under the International Bridge. He also set early altitude and distance records and added the newly developed loop to his repertory. He died when he failed to pull out of a dive over Oakland Bay, Calif. World War I aerial dogfighting provided the training ground for later stunt fliers. The maneuver known as the Immelmann turn was first flown by a German ace. After the war, particularly in the United States, a surplus of planes and a shortage of jobs provided the impetus for stunt-flying operations, sometimes so elaborate as to be called flying circuses. In addition to airplane maneuvers and parachute jumping, wing walking was performed. (Charles A. Lindbergh barnstormed early in his career and did wing walking as well as flying.) The stunts, like the earlier carnival parachute jumps of Tiny Broadwick and others, were done to attract crowds. The economic base of the operation was the fares charged passengers for short sight-seeing flights. Any city with bridges, particularly bridges in a row, as in London and New York City, was vulnerable to impromptu stunt flying. After World War II, barnstorming as such died, its place being taken by the Experimental Aircraft Association (founded 1953), whose members at its annual conventions in Oshkosh, Wis., perform, in old civilian and converted military planes, the old maneuvers, as well as aerobatics and precision flying. The latter is also done by military teams of various countries. See also aerobatics.