Betty Skelton, the Little Stinker, and the First Lady of Firsts Who Cut the Ribbon Upside Down, Told From the Aerobatic Rows at Oshkosh

Betty Skelton was an American aviation and automotive pioneer nicknamed the “First Lady of Firsts,” who won the International Feminine Aerobatic Championship three years running and became famous for cutting ribbons while flying inverted just feet off the ground. Flying a small red-and-white Pitts Special biplane she named the “Little Stinker,” she shattered barriers in aerobatics, land-speed racing, and even early astronaut testing at a time when women were routinely turned away from professional flying. By the end of her career she held roughly 17 combined aviation and automotive records.

Who Was Betty Skelton?

Betty Skelton grew up in Pensacola, Florida, right next to the Navy base where the service trains its aviators. As a child she watched the yellow trainers fly the pattern from the other side of the fence, and that view shaped the rest of her life.

She soloed an airplane at age 12 - unofficially, since the legal minimum was 16. Her instructor climbed out and let her take the airplane around by herself, with her feet barely reaching the rudder pedals. She soloed again legally on her 16th birthday and earned her commercial certificate and instructor rating not long after.

The professional aviation world of the 1940s did not welcome her. She wanted to fly for the airlines and was denied. She wanted to fly for the Navy in her own hometown and was denied again. Both doors were closed for the same reason: women weren’t allowed.

Why the Pitts Special “Little Stinker” Made Her a Legend

Blocked from the airlines and the military, Skelton went to the one corner of aviation where nothing mattered except whether you could actually fly: the airshow circuit. In 1948, she bought the airplane that would define her career - a Pitts Special.

The Pitts was the creation of Curtis Pitts, a self-taught Florida builder who worked in wood, steel tube, and fabric. In the 1940s he set out to build the smallest, lightest, most responsive aerobatic biplane he could imagine. The result was a tiny single-seat machine light enough to nearly pick up by the tail, with stubby wings, a round cowling, and a tailwheel.

Skelton’s airplane was one of the early examples. She painted it red and white and named it the “Little Stinker.”

Flying it demanded pure skill. There was no glass cockpit and no G-meter - just a stick, a throttle, a slip-skid ball, and feel. When she rolled inverted, the early carburetors would stumble and cough, oil and fuel systems protested, and grit from the cockpit floor rained into her face. Pilots held the airplane there by listening to the engine and watching the horizon.

What Was Betty Skelton’s Inverted Ribbon Cut?

Skelton won the International Feminine Aerobatic Championship in 1949, 1950, and 1951 - three consecutive titles. But her signature maneuver is what audiences remembered most.

Crews would stretch a ribbon between two poles standing only about 10 to 12 feet off the ground. Skelton would come in low and fast, roll the Little Stinker onto its back, and fly through the gap inverted, slicing the ribbon with the airplane’s vertical fin - hanging in her straps just feet above the grass.

The inverted ribbon cut is one of the most unforgiving maneuvers in aviation. Down low and upside down, the controls feel backwards and there is no margin for error: push when you should pull, and the ground wins. Even today’s best airshow performers train for years and treat it with extreme caution.

Skelton was doing it in the late 1940s in a fabric-covered biplane. She stood barely five feet tall and had to stuff cushions behind her back just to reach the controls.

What Records Did Betty Skelton Set After Flying?

Skelton never stopped looking for new barriers. When aerobatics had given her all it could, she moved to the ground.

She drove at the Bonneville Salt Flats and set a women’s land-speed record, breaking into an automotive world every bit as closed to women as aviation had been. She test-drove Detroit’s fastest cars and set records on the ground the way she had in the air.

In the late 1950s, NASA and the space program brought her in to undergo many of the same physical and psychological tests given to the Mercury astronauts. A magazine photographed her in a silver flight suit and called her a candidate. She was among the very first women in America seriously evaluated for spaceflight - though it would be more than 20 years before the U.S. actually sent a woman into space.

Adding it all up, she held roughly 17 combined aviation and automotive records - a résumé no one else, man or woman, could match. That’s how she earned the nickname the “First Lady of Firsts.”

Where Is the Little Stinker Today?

Skelton eventually donated the Little Stinker to the Smithsonian. After a careful restoration, it hangs today in the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles, painted red and white exactly as she flew it.

The airplane type she made famous is thriving. Walk the aerobatic aircraft parking at events like EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh and you’ll find rows of Pitts Specials - red ones, blue ones, classic round tails and newer squared-off wings - every one a direct descendant of what Skelton flew more than 70 years ago.

The Pitts went on to teach two generations of American airshow pilots how to fly, won world championships for the U.S. aerobatic team, and still fills the aerobatic box at Wittman Field year after year. And the barrier-breaking spirit Skelton carried is visible in the young pilots who attend today - including women who, a couple of generations back, would have been told flatly that flying wasn’t for them.

Betty Skelton is a large part of the reason no one gets to say that anymore. She didn’t set out to be a symbol; she set out to fly because she loved it. She was simply so good, so fearless, and so undeniable that the walls fell down behind her.

Key Takeaways

• Betty Skelton, the “First Lady of Firsts,” won the International Feminine Aerobatic Championship three straight years (1949–1951).
• She flew a Pitts Special named the “Little Stinker,” which she bought in 1948 and painted red and white.
• Her signature inverted ribbon cut was performed upside down at roughly 10–12 feet off the ground - one of aerobatics’ most dangerous maneuvers.
• She later set a women’s land-speed record at Bonneville and underwent Mercury-era astronaut testing, ending with about 17 combined aviation and automotive records.
• The original Little Stinker is preserved at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles, and Pitts Specials remain a fixture of aerobatic flying today.