Early Aircraft Repair

Gladys Ingle was a famous barnstorming aerialist who gained quite a following in the 1920's performing a stunt known as wingwalking, which is demonstrated in the video below showing Ms. Ingle boarding an airplane and then repairing its landing gear, while the plane is in flight:

The United States Army Air Corps used windwalkers on occasion to perform aircraft in-flight refueling.

Comments

[duff, man]

The lady was amazing. Wingwalkers became standard airshow stuff later on.

In 1974 I took photos of a California gym teacher and gymnast named Gordon McCollum, who was a wingwalker on top of a Super Stearman piloted by Joe Hughes, at an airshow in Iowa.

I entered one of my photos in a contest for college students called the Nikon Nutshell contest and received Honorable Mention, the only photo award I would ever receive.

About the same time I got word about the contest, Gordon McCollom was wingwalking in Reno on the airplane, inverted, doing a ribbon cut with his arms/body. The ribbon gets elevated between two poles, so it was possibly around 40-50 feet above the runway or the ground, max. The air is strange in Reno, the plane lost lift, and Gordon was scraped in half on the runway. The pilot somehow righted the plane, with half of his wingwalker still strapped on, and landed. I was working at a newspaper and saw a (stock) photo of Gordon on top of the Super Stearman, along with the account of his death, as it came across the wire. It made me sick.

I don't go to airshows very often anymore, but I still get pissed when they do stuff too close to the ground or otherwise take too many risks. I love the planes and the skilled flying, but I love the flying just as much a hundred feet higher than they do stuff.

Some info here: