Barnstorming and Air Shows: Aviation’s Wild West Era

The 1920s were the Wild West era of American aviation, the half-decade between the end of World War I and the establishment of federal regulation, in which thousands of ex-military pilots bought surplus training aircraft for a few hundred dollars apiece, descended on small towns across the country, performed death-defying stunts, and sold five-dollar rides to curious locals. The barnstormers were the first American pilots, the first American aviators most people ever met, and the first generation of aviation’s romantic figures. The era ended around 1927, when federal regulation, the rise of the airlines, and the growth of formal air racing combined to make the barnstormer’s life obsolete.

For the broader context, see the parent cluster aviation in the 1920s. For Lindbergh, who had been a barnstormer himself, For the women who shared the era, For 1920s sports culture more broadly, , and for the everyday life that aviation was beginning to transform,

The Postwar Surplus

The 1920s barnstorming era began in 1918, with the end of World War I. The U.S. Army Air Service had trained tens of thousands of pilots during the war, mostly on the Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” — a two-seat biplane that was the standard American trainer. The war ended before the pilots could see action, the military did not need them, and the planes and the men were both out of a job. The military began selling the surplus Jennies for as little as $200 each (later, the more decrepit models sold for as little as $50). The total number of Jennys sold as surplus was about 6,000.

The ex-military pilots were young, often in their twenties, and they had spent two years in training camps. They were also broke. Many of them bought the surplus Jennies and took to the road, flying from town to town and selling rides and stunts to the locals. The phenomenon was called barnstorming, possibly because the pilots were willing to fly under or through the open doors of farm barns for the right price. The first generation of American pilots — the Lindberghs, the Doolittles, the Earharts — all spent time in the barnstorming circuit.

The Showmen and the Stunts

The 1920s barnstormers were a small fraternity of daredevils. The most famous included:

Ormer Locklear (1891–1920), known as “The Locklear Dare-Devils,” the originator of the “plane-to-plane transfer” stunt, in which the pilot jumped from one aircraft in flight to another. Locklear was killed in 1920 while performing the stunt for a movie in Los Angeles.
Clyde “Upside-Down” Pangborn (1895–1958), famous for his inverted flying; in 1931, with Hugh Herndon Jr., he made the first nonstop transpacific flight.
“Tex” Rankin (1897–1947), a former Navy test pilot, who performed in air shows throughout the West and in Hawaii in the 1920s and 1930s.
Bert Acosta (1895–1954), a record-setter; with Clarence Chamberlin in 1927, he flew from New York to Germany, just 20 days after Lindbergh.
Art Goebel (1896–1973), winner of the 1928 Thompson Trophy.
Frank Hawks (1897–1938), the “Speed King of the Air,” who set 214 point-to-point records in the late 1920s and 1930s.
Florence “Pancho” Barnes (1901–1975), the Hollywood stunt pilot, speed racer, and friend of Howard Hughes.
De Lloyd Thompson (1887–1948), famous for his “car-to-plane-to-car” stunts.
Charles K. Hamilton (1885–1914, but the legacy of his daredevil flying shaped the 1920s culture).
“Speed” Holman (1888–1931), the “Dare Devil of the Air,” who was killed in 1931 when his parachute failed to open during a jump at an air show in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
Gladys Ingle (1901–1981), a wing walker and stunt pilot.
Bessie Coleman (1892–1926), the African American barnstormer known as “Queen Bess,” whose story is told in the first female pilots of the 1920s.

The Typical Show

The typical 1920s barnstormer would land at a small town, often at a county fair, and offer to put on a show for a percentage of the gate. Admission was usually 25 to 50 cents for a single show, with rides available for an additional $5 — about an hour’s wage for a working man. A good show would draw 5,000 to 10,000 spectators and earn several hundred dollars for the pilot, a small fortune in 1920 dollars.

The show would typically include:

Wing walking, in which an assistant stood on the upper wing of a moving plane.
Parachute jumps, often from a height of 2,000 feet or more, into a small field.
Plane-to-plane transfers, in which one pilot would climb from one aircraft to another in flight.
“Dead stick” landings, in which the pilot would cut the engine at the top of a steep climb and glide to a precision landing.
“Skid landings,” in which the pilot would land on the lower wing, then tip the plane back onto the wheels.
Passenger rides for the paying public.
“Skywriting” (introduced in 1922 by Captain Cyril Turner of England, who wrote “Hello USA” in the sky over New York City), used as advertising.

The barnstormer would typically leave the town after a few days and move on to the next one. The circuit followed the county fair season from spring through fall, with southern fairs in winter. The most successful barnstormers became regional celebrities; the most reckless were killed in crashes.

The National Air Races

The most important annual aviation event of the 1920s was the National Air Races, a combination of speed events, military demonstrations, and aerial pageantry. The first was the Pulitzer Trophy Race, held at Mitchel Field on Long Island in 1920, with a trophy donated by the Pulitzer family (in particular Ralph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World). The race was the brainchild of the National Aeronautic Association (NAA) and was intended to encourage the development of fast military aircraft. The first race attracted 17 entries and was won by Capt. Corliss Moseley of the Army Air Service at a speed of about 156 mph.

The Pulitzer Trophy Race continued annually until 1925, with stops at Omaha (1921), Detroit (1922), St. Louis (1923), Dayton (1924), and Mitchel Field again (1925). The 1925 race was won by Jimmy Doolittle in a Curtiss R3C-2 at 245.7 mph. (Doolittle would later lead the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo.) After 1925, the Pulitzer Trophy was retired, and the Thompson Trophy (donated by Charles E. Thompson of Cleveland) took its place, along with the Bendix Trophy (donated by Vincent Bendix in 1931). The races continued in various forms through 1949.

The races were a major stimulus to the development of faster, more reliable aircraft. The technology developed for the races — streamlined fuselages, more powerful engines, retractable landing gear — was used in the airline aircraft of the 1930s and the fighters of World War II.

Regulation and Decline

The barnstorming era ended, somewhat paradoxically, because the industry was succeeding. The Air Mail Act of 1925 (the Kelly Act) required contract airmail and offered the first commercial airline routes, and the major airlines — Varney, Western Air Express, Boeing Air Transport, Pan American — hired many of the best pilots. The Air Commerce Act of 1926 required pilots to be licensed and aircraft to be certified, and gave the Department of Commerce the authority to regulate air shows, parachute jumps, and other potentially dangerous activities. The 1927 formation of the Federal Radio Commission and the regulation of radio navigation aids further restricted the freedom of the barnstormer.

The 1928 formation of the major airlines and the 1929 stock market crash ended the wild era definitively. The pilots who had been barnstormers in 1920 were airmail captains in 1925, airline pilots in 1928, and airline captains in 1930. The Depression ended the discretionary income that had supported the air-show circuit. The barnstormers who survived — Lindbergh, Doolittle, Hawks, a few others — moved into the airline business, the military, or the formal racing circuit. The era of the Jenny and the county fair was over.