Fearless
Flyer: Elinor Smith's Daring Dive Under the Bridges of New York
by Carol Simon Levin
by Carol Simon Levin
 |
| Elinor Smith Photo from AvStop.com |
Elinor Smith got her first taste of flying when she was just six
years old. A French pilot was
advertising flights above a potato field on Long Island and she begged her
father to go up for a ride. From the
first moment in the air, she was hooked.
She started taking flying lessons at age ten, soloed and set a world
light plane altitude record at age fifteen, and got her pilot's license at sixteen -- becoming the youngest licensed pilot, male
or female, in the United States. Her
license was signed by Orville Wright.
But the press and other pilots doubted her abilities. Newspapers called her the "Flying
Flapper." A stunt pilot who had crashed his own plane bet "that kid
with freckles who they let fly around every day" couldn't fly under a New York
City East River bridge... she replied she'd fly under all four!
No one had ever done that before -- for good reason. It was dangerous – gusts of winds could hurl a
small plane into bridge pillars. It was also illegal – Elinor could lose her
newly acquired pilot’s license. But
Elinor carefully inspected the route,
studying the tides, the
construction of the bridges, and calculating speed, distance & weight. She joked, "I hung by my heels from all
those bridges." She also practiced
weaving between sailboats on Long Island Sound.
On a bright Sunday Oct.
21, 1928, as she prepared to take off in her father’s Waco 9 airplane, she felt
a tap on her cockpit. Charles Lindbergh grinned at her, “Good luck, kid, keep
your nose down in the turns.”
Despite her preparation, she encountered surprises -- wooden
blocks dangling below Queensboro bridge deck forced her to fly just above the
water's surface. She glided uneventfully
under Williamsburg Bridge, then dipped under the Manhattan Bridge, where she
saw a huge crowd of spectators and newsreel reporters (so the government would have proof of her illegal flight).
Finally all that was left was the Brooklyn Bridge – but as she
flew under the bridge, she saw that both a tanker and a navy destroyer were heading right toward her! Elinor tipped her plane on its side and just
managed to squeeze through!
Heady with success, Elinor circled the Statue of Liberty before
landing in Roosevelt Field to cheers from family and friends. She had succeeded
-- but what about her license?
Eight days later, New
York City Mayor Jimmy Walker summoned
Elinor to his office. He announced, "You're suspended....” but continued,
“from flying for ten days, retroactive
to the day of your flight." The Department
of Commerce also sent her a letter demanding that she stop flying under bridges
– but included a note asking for autograph!
Elinor continued flying and setting speed, altitude, and
duration records. At age nineteen, she
was voted the "best female pilot of the year" (besting Amelia
Earhart) -- but her own dream of flying solo across the Atlantic was thwarted
when the Depression forced her airplane sponsor to pull out.
When Elinor was eighty-nine years old, she was invited to fly
NASA’s Challenger simulator at the Ames Research Center. She remarked “It’s a spectacular ride.
Everything about it is thrilling, but perhaps the most gratifying is that the
entire support crew was made up of females. My instructor, the operator and the
assistant were all women.”
For more information:
The
Amazing Aviatrix Elinor Smith http://womanpilot.com/?p=49 (article
from the online magazine "Woman Pilot.")
Soar
Elinor Soar! by Tami Lewis Brown (inspirational picture book biography,
includes interview quotes with Elinor in the back matter.)
Aviatrix by Elinor
Smith (her autobiography written in 1981)
Additional sources listed in her wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Smith
A bibliography of other pioneering female aviators can be found
at: http://nobodyownsthesky.wordpress.com/bibliography/
Telling Herstories: Fascinating Women History Forgot by Carol Simon Levin
© Carol Simon Levin 2014 www.tellingherstories.wordpress.com
About Carol Simon Levin:
Carol Simon
Levin is a librarian at the Somerset County Library and a member of the New Jersey
Storyteller’s Network. She impersonates Elinor Smith and other forgotten women
in presentations at libraries, senior centers, and other venues. For more information, visit http://nobodyownsthesky.wordpress.com/ and http://tellingherstories.wordpress.com/
