26. The Daredevil Who Took It Too Far
Early in the twentieth century, airplanes and all things having to do with flight fascinated the public. Indeed, they did so in a manner and to an extent that is difficult today, accustomed as we are to flight as just another routine aspect of modern life, to grasp. Most people back then had never seen an airplane before. As a result, paying crowds gathered in the hundreds and thousands to watch the era’s pioneering pilots put on aerial displays for them.
Ormer Locklear (1891 – 1920) was a daredevil aerial pioneer who learned to fly with the US Army Air Service. He then went on tour as a barnstormer pilot, putting on aerobatic displays for crowds across the country. Locklear is credited with developing the stunt of wing walking. It was highly popular with air show audiences in the 1920s, as a means of enabling pilots to make repairs in flight. He also came up with the trick of jumping from one airplane to another mid-flight, and of clambering aboard a low flying plane from a moving car. Unfortunately, he took things too far and ended up perishing in a tragicomic way.
