Elinor Smith

Early life

Smith was born Elinor Regina Patricia Ward (her actor father changed his name to Tom Smith, in order to avoid being mistaken for another performer, thus she became Elinor Smith) in New York City and grew up in Freeport, Long Island, New York. Her mother had been a professional singer before her marriage; 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 wrote comedy bits for Broadway shows as well.

Aviation career

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 Long Island. She immediately fell in love with flying, and took numerous rides that summer with the same French pilot, Louis Gaubert. At age 10 she began receiving flying lessons from Clyde Pangborn who tied blocks to the rudder pedals so Elinor's feet could reach. 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. Her father bought a Waco 9 and hired "Red" Devereaux as a pilot and flight instructor for both of them. However, during that time her father directed the instructors to not let her take off or land, because he was concerned for her safety. This prohibition was finally lifted by her mother while her father was out of town, and after ten days of intense instruction from Russ Holderman, she soloed for the first time at age 16. She began taking her father's Waco 9 up to higher altitudes than anyone had ever taken such a plane. (She later wrote in her memoir, "I had no business fooling around up there without oxygen—and I knew it.") Word got around, and it was arranged for her to get a Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) license and an FAI-certified barograph. Orville Wright finalized her FAI license, and three months after her first solo, she set an official light plane altitude record of 11,889 feet (3,624 m) in the Waco 9. In September 1927, at 16, she became the youngest U.S.-government-licensed pilot on record.

Stunt flying under New York bridges

To this point, her family had kept publicity to a minimum, to allow her to hone her flying skills without the distraction of public attention. This changed in October 1928; on a dare, she flew a Waco 10 under all four of New York City's East River bridges; according to the Cradle of Aviation Museum, she is the only person to do so. By her own account at the time, she first reconnoitered the route from above the bridges; nonetheless, she had to dodge several ships. 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 on whether 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. 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. A request for Elinor's autograph accompanied the Department's letter of reprimand.

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.

Breaking 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." However, before Smith could finish her 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.

In late January 1929, it became clear that Gentry was ready to have another go at the record. 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. 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 13½ hours. 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 on both her body and that of her aircraft forced her down early. 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 Véry 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."

The next day, Gentry crashed on takeoff while attempting to better Smith's achievement; Gentry was unharmed, but her plane was damaged. Bobbi Trout took back the endurance record with a 17-hour flight on February 10–11, but three months later, in April 1929, Smith smashed that record, soloing 26½ hours in a Bellanca CH monoplane. That flight also made her the first woman ever to pilot such a large and powerful aircraft.

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, 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.

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. In 1934, Smith became the third person—and first woman—to be pictured on a Wheaties box.

Smith married New York State legislator and attorney Patrick H. Sullivan, nephew of Tammany leader Timothy "Big Tim" Sullivan. 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.

Sullivan died in 1956, and Smith returned to the air. Her membership in the Air Force Association allowed her to pilot the Lockheed T-33 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. In 2001, she received the Elder Statesman Award from the National Aeronautic Association.

Smith died on March 19, 2010, in Palo Alto, California.