Lincoln Beachey - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Lincoln J. Beachey was a pioneer American aviator and barnstormer

Barnstorming

Barnstorming was a popular form of entertainment in the 1920s in which stunt pilots would perform tricks with airplanes, either individually or in groups called a flying circus. Barnstorming was the first major form of civil aviation in the history of flight...

. He became famous and wealthy from flying exhibitions, staging aerial stunts, helping invent aerobatics

Aerobatics

Aerobatics is the practice of flying maneuvers involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in normal flight. Aerobatics are performed in airplanes and gliders for training, recreation, entertainment and sport...

, and setting aviation records.

He was known as The Man Who Owns the Sky, and sometimes the Master Birdman. Beachey was acknowledged even by his competitors as "The World's Greatest Aviator". He was "known by sight to hundreds of thousands and by name to the whole world."

Birth

Beachey was born in San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

on March 3, 1887.
He worked as a dirigible pilot for Thomas Scott Baldwin

Thomas Scott Baldwin

Thomas Scott Baldwin was a pioneer balloonist and U.S. Army major during World War I. He was the first American to descend from a balloon by parachute.-Early career:...

. Beachey helped build the dirigible "California Arrow" and made his first dirigible flight in 1905 at the age of 17.

He piloted his balloon at the 910 Los Angeles International Air Meet at Dominguez Field where he raced against a fixed-wing aircraft around a course, at an altitude of 100 feet (30.5 m).

Beachey learned to pilot airplanes at the Curtiss Flying School

Curtiss Flying School

left|thumb|A Curtiss Jenny on a training flightThe Curtiss Flying School was started by Glenn Curtiss to compete against the Wright Flying School of the Wright brothers...

On June 27, 1911, he took off into a drizzle and flew over the lower falls of Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls

The Niagara Falls, located on the Niagara River draining Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, is the collective name for the Horseshoe Falls and the adjacent American Falls along with the comparatively small Bridal Veil Falls, which combined form the highest flow rate of any waterfalls in the world and has...

, then above American Falls

American Falls

The American Falls is one of three waterfalls that together are known as Niagara Falls on the Niagara River along the Canada-U.S. border. Unlike the much larger Horseshoe Falls, of which two-thirds of the falls is located in Ontario, Canada and one-third in New York State, United States, the...

, before an estimated 150,000 spectators. He took his plane under "Honeymoon Bridge," 20 feet (6.1 m) above the rapids. (Local papers described his plane as looking like "a beat-up orange crate.")

In Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Beachey raced a train and let his wheels touch the top of the moving train as it passed underneath. At the 1911 Chicago International Aviation Meet

1911 Chicago International Aviation Meet

The 1911 Chicago International Aviation Meet was major aviation show held at Grant Park in Chicago, Illinois, United States in August 1911., 362-63 Lincoln Beachey set a world altitude record of 11,642 feet at the meet....

, he won multiple awards for stunts, and set a new altitude record. He filled his tanks with fuel, then said he would point the plane's nose skyward and keep going until the fuel ran out. For an hour and forty-eight minutes he spiraled upwards until the engine sputtered and died. The plane glided in spirals to the ground, and Beachey climbed out, numb and stiff. The barograph aboard the plane showed he had reached a height of 11578 feet (3,529 m), temporarily setting the world's altitude record. In 1913, Beachey took off inside the Machinery Palace on the Exposition grounds at the San Francisco World's Fair

World's Fair

World's fair, World fair, Universal Exposition, and World Expo are various large public exhibitions held in different parts of the world. The first Expo was held in The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, United Kingdom, in 1851, under the title "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All...

. He flew the plane at 60 miles per hour and landed it, all inside the confines of the hall. His stunt specialty was the "dip-of-death", where he would take his plane up to 5000 feet (1,524 m), and dive toward the ground at full speed with his hands outstretched. At the very last moment he would level the plane and zoom down the raceway, with his hands off of the controls, gripping the control stick with his knees. In a jest aimed at Blanche Stuart Scott

Blanche Stuart Scott

Blanche Stuart Scott , also known as Betty Scott, was possibly the first American woman aviator.-Early life:...

, another member of the Curtiss exhibition team, Beachey dressed up as a woman and pretended to be out of control in a mock terror to hundreds of thousands.

Orville Wright said: "An aeroplane in the hands of Lincoln Beachey is poetry. His mastery is a thing of beauty to watch. He is the most wonderful flyer of all." Thomas Alva Edison wrote: "I was startled and amazed, when I saw that youngster take to the sky and send his aeroplane through the loop and then follow that feat with an upside-down flight. I could not believe my own eyes, and my nerves were atingle for many minutes."

Solo career

In 1913, a Russian pilot, Captain Peter Nesterov

Pyotr Nesterov

Pyotr Nikolayevich Nesterov was a Russian pilot, an aircraft technical designer and an aerobatics pioneer.-Life and career:The son of a military academy teacher, Pyotr Nesterov decided to choose a military career. In August 1904 he left the military school in Nizhny Novgorod and went to the...

made the first inside loop

Aerobatic maneuver

Aerobatic maneuvers are flight paths putting aircraft in unusual attitudes, in air shows, dog fights or competition aerobatics. Aerobatics can be performed by a single aircraft or in formation with several others...

. Frenchman Adolphe Pegoud

Adolphe Pegoud

Adolphe Célestin Pégoud was a well known pre-war French aviator who became the first fighter ace.Pégoud served in the French Army from 1907 to 1913...

later that year became the second and more famous person to do it and Beachey wanted to try it himself. Curtiss refused to build him a plane capable of the stunt, and Beachey left the flying team. At the same time, he wrote a scathing essay about stunt flying, stating most people came to exhibitions out of morbid eagerness to see young pilots die. On March 7, 1913, he announced he would never again fly professionally, believing he was indirectly responsible for the tragic deaths of several young aviators who had tried to emulate his stunts. In May, he would cite twenty-four fatalities, all of whom were "like brothers" to him. He felt tremendous guilt about their deaths and the suffering of their families.

Beachey went into the real estate business for a time, until Curtiss reluctantly agreed to build a stunt plane powerful enough to do the inside loop. Beachey returned and, on October 7th, took the plane up in the air at Hammondsport, NY. Unfortunately, on its first flight either a downdraft or a loss of speed following a turn caused the plane to dip momentarily. One wing clipped the ridgepole of a tent on the field and the plane then swept two young women and two naval officers off the roof of a nearby hangar, from where they had been watching the flight, contrary to Beachey's wishes. One woman was killed and the others injured as a result of the fall, a distance of about ten feet. Beachey's plane crashed in a nearby field but he managed to walk away from the wreckage with minor injuries. (A coroner's jury ruled the death of the 20-year-old woman as accidental.) Beachey decided for the second time to leave aviation.

However, the sight of a circus poster changed his mind. The poster depicted a plane flying upside-down, a stunt that hadn't been attempted yet. Beachey was determined to master the loop and upside-down flight, but decided to go it alone.

He tried making a living demonstrating loops on exhibition grounds, but soon found that people would not pay to see a stunt they could see easily outside the gates. He retired for a third time, but returned when his manager had an idea that he depicted in a poster: the "Demon of the Sky" against the "Daredevil of the Ground." Beachey was to race his plane against a racing car driven by the popular driver, Barney Oldfield

Barney Oldfield

Berna Eli "Barney" Oldfield was an automobile racer and pioneer. He was born on a farm on the outskirts of Wauseon, Ohio. He was the first man to drive a car at 60 miles per hour on an oval...

. The manager made sure there was a high fence around the exhibition grounds, forcing people to pay if they wanted to see the race. Beachey's plane was faster than Oldfield's car, but they took turns "winning," and crowds flocked to see their daily competitions. With the money he earned by racing, Beachey designed and built a new plane, the "Little Looper." He had his name painted in three-foot-high letters across the top wing. Soon he was flying multiple loops. Whenever he heard about another pilot setting a record for flying continuous loops, Beachey would promptly break it, flying as many as eighty loops in a row. Beachey and Oldfield toured the country, staging races everywhere they went. In Dayton, Ohio, home of the Wright Brothers, they performed to a crowd of 30,000.

After he first successfully completed a loop, he wrote a poignant reflection, saying, "The silent reaper of souls and I shook hands that day. Thousands of times we've engaged in a race among the clouds. Plunging headlong in to breathless flight, diving and circling with awful speed through ethereal space. And many times when the dazzling sunlight has blinded my eyes, and sudden darkness has numbed all my senses, I have imagined Him close at my heels. On such occasions I have defied him, but, in so doing have experienced fright which I can not explain. Today, the old fellow and I are pals."

In 1914, he dive-bombed the White House and Congress in a mock attack, proving that the US government was woefully unprepared for the age that was upon it.

In 1915, he had a large wooden model made of the Battleship Oregon, and had it anchored a mile offshore of San Francisco just before the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The Navy loaned him 100 sailors to man the fake vessel, which was loaded with explosives. Beachey flew his plane over the model, dipped, and dropped what looked like a smoking bomb. One explosion grew into fifty as Beachey swooped over the model dreadnought. The crew had already escaped aboard a tugboat, but 80,000 people onshore screamed and some fainted in the belief that Beachey had just blown up the Oregon.

Death

It was at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition that Beachey made his last flight. Prior to the exposition, in 1914, he had ordered a Taube monoplane built with an 80 hp engine, powerful enough to carry out a maneuver Beachey had not yet presented to the public: inverted flight. He had tested it at low altitudes, and on March 14, 1915, he was ready for his first public flight. He took the plane up in front of a crowd of 50,000 (inside the Fairgrounds, another 200,000 on the hills), made a loop, and turned the plane onto its back. He may have been so intent on leveling the plane inverted he failed to notice he was only 2000 feet (609.6 m) above San Francisco Bay. He pulled on the controls to pull the plane out of its inverted position, where it was slowly sinking. The strain caused both wings to shear off, and the fuselage plunged into the bay. Navy men jumped into action, but it took 1 hour and 45 minutes to recover Beachy's body. Even then, rescuers spent three hours trying to revive him. The autopsy found he had survived the crash and had died from drowning.

His funeral in San Francisco was said to be the largest in the city's history up until then. Vast crowds had followed his tours and it has been estimated 30 million people saw him in his career, 17 million in 1914 alone.

Monikers

{see The Man Who Owned the Sky}

The Man Who Owns the Sky
The World's Greatest Aviator
The Most Wonderful Flyer of All
Alexander [the great] of the Air
The Genius of Aviation
Master Birdman
The Divine Flyer

Achievements

Credited with the invention of stall recovery
First to fly inverted
First American to complete an inside loop
First to fly inside a building
First to achieve terminal velocity and live
First controlled powered flight in state of Washington

Timeline

1887 Born March 3
1900 US Census
1906 Dirigible crash in Cleveland on June 3
1906 Lands on White House lawn in dirigible on June 14
1908 Sets dirigible speed record on July 4
1910 US Census
1910 Pilot's license
1911 Flight over Niagara Falls on June 27
1913 Announces he will fly no more on May 12
1913 Robbed of $6,000 on October 8
1913 Kills a spectator in a crash on October 13
1913 Completes inside loop in San Diego on Nov 19th
1914 Start of 126-city tour on May 12
1914 Orville Wright calls him, "the most wonderful flyer of all.”
1914 Ends 126-city tour on December 31
1915 Dies on March 14

Trivia

There's a skipping-rope rhyme

Skipping-rope rhyme

A skipping rhyme , is a rhyme chanted by children while skipping. Such rhymes have been recorded in all cultures where skipping is played. Examples of English-language rhymes have been found going back to at least the 17th century...

about Lincoln Beachey sung in the 1920s:

Lincoln Beachey thought it was a dream

To go up to heaven in a flying machine.

The machine broke down, and down he fell.

Instead of going to heaven he went to . . .