Betty Skelton, Little Stinker, and the inverted ribbon cut twelve feet off the grass

Betty Skelton was a record-setting aerobatic pilot who, in the years right after World War II, flew her tiny red-and-white Pitts Special biplane “Little Stinker” upside down through a paper ribbon strung just ten to twelve feet off the ground. The inverted ribbon cut became her signature maneuver and one of the most thrilling acts of the golden age of American airshows. Today that very airplane hangs inverted at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, frozen in the moment that made it famous.

Who Was Betty Skelton?

Betty Skelton grew up in Pensacola, Florida, home to Naval Air Station Pensacola, the cradle of Naval Aviation. As a child she watched the Navy’s yellow radial-engine trainers buzz overhead and decided the sky belonged to her.

She soloed an airplane at age twelve — flying an Aeronca off the grass by herself, around the pattern, and back down. That wasn’t legal then or now; you couldn’t be licensed at twelve. But her parents were flyers, the airport was friendly, and a sympathetic instructor turned a kind eye. She earned her license the day the law allowed it, at sixteen.

By the time she was a young woman she was teaching, ferrying, and taking on any flying work she could find. But Betty didn’t want to fly straight and level. She wanted to fly aerobatics.

What Made Betty Skelton Famous?

Skelton started competing in a Great Lakes biplane on the postwar airshow circuit, and she got good — not “good for a woman,” just genuinely good. She won the International Feminine Aerobatic Championship three years running: 1948, 1949, and 1950. For three straight years, nobody could touch her.

This was the golden age of the airshow, before the polished, fenced-off, jet-noise affairs of today. Picture county fairgrounds and grass airfields where a few thousand people spread blankets on a Sunday afternoon to watch a pilot with a war-surplus airplane and enough nerve to loop it low — the smell of cut grass and hot castor oil, a crackling loudspeaker, and airplanes doing things airplanes weren’t strictly supposed to do.

What Was “Little Stinker”?

In the years around the end of the war, a quiet, brilliant Florida designer named Curtis Pitts built about the smallest, lightest, most responsive aerobatic airplane anyone had ever dreamed up: a single-seat biplane with stubby little wings and a tail that turned on a dime. The whole thing weighed about as much as a couple of big motorcycles. He called it the Pitts Special, and it would go on to dominate aerobatic competition for decades — pilots still fly Pitts Specials at airshows today.

Back then it was brand new and almost nobody had one. Betty got one of the early examples, registration N22E, painted it red and white, and named it Little Stinker.

A little airplane like that has controls so light and quick that you don’t fly it so much as wear it — roll rate that snaps your head, responsiveness that bigger, heavier airplanes simply couldn’t match. In the hands of a pilot as precise as Skelton, it could do the seemingly impossible.

What Was the Inverted Ribbon Cut?

The maneuver that made Betty Skelton famous was the inverted ribbon cut.

Picture two poles stuck in the ground in front of the crowd, with a paper ribbon stretched tight between them — not high in the sky, but about ten to twelve feet off the deck, roughly the height of a basketball hoop. The act is to fly through the gap and cut the ribbon with the airplane.

Doing that right-side up would make most pilots sweat through their shirts: twelve feet off the ground at airshow speed, threading between two poles with no room for error in any direction. But Skelton didn’t fly through it right-side up. She rolled Little Stinker onto its back and flew through the ribbon inverted — canopy pointed at the grass, her head hanging in the straps closer to the ground than the top of the airplane, cutting the ribbon with the landing gear and belly now pointing at the sky.

Consider what that takes. Inverted, every instinct is backward: pull the stick and the nose drops toward the sky. You hang in your harness with blood running into your head and grit from the cockpit floor falling up into your face, judging your height by looking up at the grass through the top of the canopy — and you have to hold the airplane within a foot or two of a height you cannot afford to get wrong. She did it again and again, all over the country, and the crowd came up off their blankets every single time.

She was just five foot three, and spectators couldn’t believe the size of the person matched against the size of what she’d just done. A favorite detail: she almost always flew with her bulldog, who had his own spot in the airplane. The young woman, the smallest airplane on the field, the dog, and a maneuver that made grown men hold their breath — it was irresistible.

The First Lady of Firsts

Skelton was far more than an airshow act. She set a light-plane altitude record, taking a small airplane up past 25,000 feet (reaching roughly 29,000 feet) in a barely-closed cockpit — freezing and fighting for breath — to prove what the airplane and pilot could do, at a time when many figured a woman’s place was anywhere but a record attempt.

When the airshow world wound down for her, she didn’t slow down. She set automobile land speed records on the salt and the sand and became a test driver. She chased so many firsts that the press dubbed her the “First Lady of Firsts.” In the late 1950s, as America began dreaming of spaceflight, Skelton underwent some of the same physical testing as the first astronaut candidates and appeared on magazine covers as the woman who might go to space. The program didn’t accept women then — but the same nerve that flew Little Stinker inverted is the nerve that put her in that conversation.

Where Is Little Stinker Today?

Little Stinker survived. It wasn’t scrapped or left to rot — it was lovingly restored to the way Betty flew it, red and white and gleaming.

Today you can find it at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s companion facility near Dulles International Airport in Virginia. And here’s the detail that gets you: the museum didn’t hang it right-side up like every other airplane in the building. They hung Little Stinker inverted — belly to the sky, exactly the way Betty flew through that ribbon — so everyone who walks beneath it sees what those crowds on the grass once saw.

You don’t need to know a thing about aerobatics to feel it. You look up at that little red-and-white airplane hanging upside down and you understand that someone very brave and very good once flew it about as low to the ground as a human being can fly inverted and live to do it again next Sunday.

Why Betty Skelton’s Story Still Matters

The soul of the airshow was never about how big the airplane was. It was about a person and a machine doing something honest, difficult, and beautiful, right there in front of you — close enough to feel the prop wash. In the smallest airplane on the field, Betty Skelton beat a crowd’s heart faster than any four-engine bomber ever could, because they could see her, see what it cost, and see that she wasn’t afraid.

Next time you watch an aerobatic pilot roll inverted and come down low across the crowd line, think of a five-foot-three young woman from Pensacola, a little red biplane named Little Stinker, and a paper ribbon twelve feet off the grass.

Key Takeaways

• Betty Skelton soloed at twelve, earned her license at sixteen, and won the International Feminine Aerobatic Championship three straight years (1948–1950).
• Her signature act was the inverted ribbon cut — flying her Pitts Special “Little Stinker” upside down through a ribbon just 10–12 feet off the ground.
• Little Stinker was an early Pitts Special (registration N22E) designed by Curtis Pitts, a type that went on to dominate aerobatics for decades.
• Skelton became the “First Lady of Firsts,” setting light-plane altitude and automobile land speed records and undergoing early astronaut-style testing.
• Little Stinker hangs inverted at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, preserved in the pose that made it famous.