Lincoln Beachey's Wingwalkers and the Nine-Day Girl - Gladys Ingle, the Thirteen Black Cats, and the Mid-Air Wheel Change Told From the Vintage Rows at Oshkosh

In 1926, wing walker Gladys Ingle climbed from one moving biplane onto another and bolted a spare wheel onto its landing gear while both aircraft flew roughly 2,000 feet above Los Angeles County. She was the only woman in the Thirteen Black Cats, a professional Hollywood stunt-flying outfit, and her mid-air wheel change remains one of the most astonishing feats of the barnstorming era. It survives today because the group filmed itself, and that footage still exists.

Who Were the Thirteen Black Cats?

After the Great War ended, the U.S. government sold off thousands of surplus Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” training biplanes for a fraction of their value - sometimes a brand-new Jenny in the crate went for a few hundred dollars. That left a generation of trained pilots with cheap airplanes and no war to fly in.

So they went barnstorming. Pilots would land in a farmer’s field outside a small town, draw a crowd with loops and wing-walking stunts, and sell rides for a few dollars each. For most spectators, it was the first airplane they had ever seen.

Around 1924–1925, an outfit near Los Angeles turned that spectacle into a business and called themselves the Thirteen Black Cats - a name that piled up every superstition they could find. They were professionals with an actual price list of stunts they would perform for the motion picture studios.

That menu is one of aviation’s most remarkable documents: a set fee for a loop with a man standing on the top wing, more for a plane change (a flier crossing from one aircraft to another in flight), and still more for a deliberate crash into a house or tree for the cameras. These weren’t thrill-seekers. They were tradespeople - and the trade was terror.

What Was Gladys Ingle’s Mid-Air Wheel Change?

Gladys Ingle was the Thirteen Black Cats’ top wing walker. She shot a bow and arrow at a target on another airplane while both flew better than a mile a minute. But the stunt that made her a legend was the wheel change.

One Jenny took off with a wheel deliberately missing from its landing gear. A Jenny with one wheel cannot land safely - it would cartwheel down the field. So the problem, though manufactured, was real: that airplane needed a wheel, and it wasn’t coming down to get one.

A second Jenny then took off with Gladys Ingle riding the top wing, holding a spare wheel. She stood in a slipstream of roughly 70 miles per hour with no reliable harness and no dependable parachute - just a bracing wire, her hands, and her nerve.

The two aircraft edged together using only hand signals and the pilots’ eyes - there were no radios in 1926. Ingle crossed from one wing to the other over open air, climbed out onto the landing gear of the crippled Jenny, and fitted and bolted the spare wheel onto the axle with her bare hands while hanging in the wind. Then she climbed back up top and rode it down. The airplane landed on two wheels because she had put the second one there herself.

Was It Really Dangerous If the Stunts Were Staged?

Many barnstorming stunts were rigged for the camera. The wheel was never meant to fail, and the whole scenario was staged for the studios. Some people use that to argue the danger was exaggerated.

That argument doesn’t hold up. Staged or not, Ingle was still standing on that wing. The wind didn’t know it was a movie, and gravity didn’t read the contract. If her hand had cramped or the other pilot had drifted a few feet off, no amount of Hollywood makes a fall from 2,000 feet survivable. The danger was completely real even when the emergency was fake.

Why Did the Barnstorming Era End?

The barnstormers paid a real price. The working life of a wing walker in those years was short, and too many performers died in front of crowds. That toll was part of why the government began writing the first real aviation regulations in the late 1920s.

By the 1930s, the era was mostly over. Regulation, the Great Depression, and the simple fact that airplanes had stopped being a novelty all closed the curtain on the wild early years of American flight.

Why Barnstorming Still Matters

America fell in love with flying not in an airline seat but in a cow pasture - watching someone loop a Jenny while a woman stood on the wing and waved. The certification, training, and safety culture that modern aviation is proud of are the civilized inheritance of that reckless beginning.

The Thirteen Black Cats and Gladys Ingle survive mostly through the film footage the group shot of itself in the 1920s, now preserved in aviation and film archives and written up over the years in the aviation history press. The film is grainy, silent, and black and white - but it’s real, and it’s worth seeking out.

Key Takeaways

• Gladys Ingle was the only woman in the Thirteen Black Cats and their top wing walker, famous for changing an airplane wheel in mid-air in 1926.
• The stunt required crossing between two Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” biplanes at about 2,000 feet in a 70 mph slipstream, with no radios and no reliable safety gear.
• The Thirteen Black Cats, formed around 1924–1925, were professional stunt fliers who sold aerial feats to Hollywood from a set price list.
• Even staged stunts carried genuine, lethal risk - the danger was real even when the emergency was manufactured.
• Barnstorming faded by the 1930s under regulation, the Depression, and the loss of novelty, but it seeded America’s enduring love of flight.