Wingwalker to the rescue

September 1, 2021 10:08 AM

Al, momentarily concerned by the dead motor, suddenly brightened. ‘Go on in and land her, Jerry. I’ll hold that wheel on with my foot.’ Santa Monica, 1926: Pilot F. Gerald Phillips takes off in a Curtiss biplane and realizes he’s missing a wheel on his landing gear.
posted by gottabefunky (20 comments total)

That is fucking crazy. I love it.

Also reminds me of this post, which is just as amazing.
posted by nushustu at 10:26 AM on September 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

Holy shit.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:32 AM on September 1, 2021

So how exactly do they stay on the plane at 70mph -- just really good hand strength?

I mean, at no point are the wing-walkers actually tied or belted on to any part of the plane, right?
posted by wenestvedt at 10:33 AM on September 1, 2021

An early entry in the Continuing Series, Reasons why LOTO is a thing.
posted by zamboni at 10:41 AM on September 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

Superb story. Al's nonchalance as he greeted Jerry, having boarded the plane from another frigging plane in mid-air, was particularly sweet.

Also, if I ever need a new username, I call dibs on My God, it was my landing gear!
posted by cheapskatebay at 11:03 AM on September 1, 2021 [3 favorites]

How did those planes ever get off the ground with the weight of the huevos of those pilots back then?
posted by Qubit at 11:33 AM on September 1, 2021 [5 favorites]

Being young and dumb weighs hardly anything.
posted by The Tensor at 11:43 AM on September 1, 2021 [19 favorites]

It reminds me of the nonchalance exhibited in those photos of the 1920s skyscraper workers, sitting on a girder eating lunch or walking along with a bucket of rivets, perched on a narrow beam above a hundred foot fall. They’d done it so much it’s no big thing to them, but it’s still crazy to contemplate from the safety of my comfy chair.
posted by darkstar at 12:25 PM on September 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

What a great story. And talk about thinking on your feet — or au volant, so to speak.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:36 PM on September 1, 2021

Every account of that post WW1 period where the Army sold off all of the surplus Jenny biplanes and every twenty-something who these days would buy a motorcycle ended up justifying their purchase by selling rides in them sounds amazing.

Like, can't we encourage military over-investment and subsequent sell-off of surplus in something that's actually cool?
posted by straw at 4:41 PM on September 1, 2021 [3 favorites]

Great story! You want to be with someone who actually gets calmer and happier in a disaster.
posted by michaelh at 4:51 PM on September 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

Now that, that was flying.
posted by Rash at 5:53 PM on September 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

I've heard of the 13 Black Cats (the group the author flew with). IIRC, they had a basically perfect safety record, unlike just about every other barnstormer/stunt group of the era.

One of the stories that I find especially tragic is that of Ormer Locklear, who was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood for a brief while before his life ended as you may expect.
posted by Ickster at 6:34 PM on September 1, 2021

It looks too well-shot not to be staged, but here's a film from 1926 of somebody doing basically what's described in this article.
posted by The Tensor at 11:44 PM on September 1, 2021 [3 favorites]

Ok, nushustu, I thought I would be able to listen to Maggie land again now three years later and keep my composure here at work, but despite having heard it before and knowing it all ends well I totally teared up AGAIN at those first shaky "ok"s.
posted by Harald74 at 12:03 AM on September 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

It looks too well-shot not to be staged, but here's a film...........
The fall doesn't look that scary but the chance of getting thwacked by the propeller scares the living bejesus out of me!
posted by Pembquist at 8:53 AM on September 2, 2021

The 1926 British Pathé film that The Tensor links to is of Gladys Ingle, another member of the 13 Black Cats, the barnstorming circus that F. Gerald Phillips belonged to. Apparently they turned Phillips' unplanned incident into a stock stunt:

As the barnstormers continued flying, there was a Jenny that would take off right in front of the crowd.As the airplane broke ground, everyone in attendance witnessed the creation of a disaster. Right as the weight of the plane lifts from the landing gear, one of the wheels falls off. The announcer feigns shock, pointing out how the airplane is going to crash on landing. Everyone runs around thinking about ways to keep the airplane in the air, fix it, or otherwise avoid disaster.

This is the moment Gladys Ingle would step up to the occasion.

She would calmly grab her small bag of tools, strap a spare tire to her back, and climb into another Jenny “suddenly made ready” to counter the impending disaster. Then she would go to work.

The airplanes rendezvoused overhead and Gladys would walk out on the wing, climb to the top wing, and then transfer to the “stricken aircraft.” Once there, she would walk along the wing of that Jenny and slither down to the landing gear crossbar. Then she would install the new wheel, tighten the retaining nut, and “save the day!”

posted by zamboni at 9:19 AM on September 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

nushustu, thank you for that link to the previous Maggie! post. My son is a pilot in training and, well, I hope he is as calm as Maggie when he runs into his first real problem.

As for the wing walkers in this post, holy crap. Here, strap this wheel to your back, walk the wing, climb onto another plane at 1,000 feet, scamper to the landing gear, put wheel on, wave to crowd. Sure, I could do that if I wanted to.
posted by AugustWest at 10:38 AM on September 2, 2021

Being young and dumb weighs hardly anything.

Point of order: there is a big difference between weaving your crotch rocket through traffic in shorts and tennies and responding quickly and successfully to a life-threatening emergency. By 1926 the toll of dead aviators was high enough that these “young dumb” men (and a few women) had probably recovered more than one burned and mangled body of a colleague from a tangled wreck. Unlike the aforementioned crotch rocket artists.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:23 PM on September 2, 2021

responding quickly and successfully to a life-threatening emergency

The first time they did this maneuver, they were trading—probably unwisely—one risk for another: landing without a wheel (possibly injuring or killing pilot and passenger) vs. wing-walking from one plane to another (possibly killing pilot, passenger, second pilot, and wing-walker). After that, they turned it into a stunt that they performed for people's entertainment. Without safety equipment.

So, to reiterate: young and dumb.
posted by The Tensor at 12:33 AM on September 3, 2021