Ormer Locklear and the Airplane Transfer: The Texan Who Built Barnstorming Into an Art Form

Ormer Locklear performed the first recorded airplane-to-airplane transfer in 1918, stepping from one flying Curtiss JN-4 Jenny to another while both aircraft held formation at altitude. Born in Greenville, Texas in 1891, Locklear turned what began as an airborne repair habit into the most electrifying aerial performance America had ever seen - and in doing so, seeded a barnstorming era that introduced aviation to the American public in ways no government program could have managed on its own.

What Drove a Texas Pilot to Climb Out of a Flying Airplane

Locklear enlisted in the Army Air Service during World War I and trained at Call Field, outside Wichita Falls, Texas. There he learned to fly the Curtiss JN-4 Jenny - a 90-horsepower OX-5 engine, fabric-covered biplane with an open cockpit and a top speed of roughly 75 miles per hour. It was not a sophisticated machine, but it was forgiving, and it had one well-known flaw: the OX-5 engine was temperamental. Carburetor issues, loose radiator caps, fuel problems that needed attention mid-flight.

Other pilots landed when something went wrong. Locklear climbed out and fixed it.

He would pull himself from the cockpit, onto the wing, into the full slipstream at 50 to 60 miles per hour, address the problem, and climb back in. He did this often enough that it stopped being a survival technique and became something closer to an experiment.

The First Airplane-to-Airplane Transfer in History

The logical question followed: could you step from one flying airplane to another?

Locklear studied it with a mechanic’s precision. He analyzed how two Jennys moved relative to each other in close formation, where wake turbulence from one wing affected the other, where a person could stand and find a pocket of relatively stable air. Then he did it.

The first airplane-to-airplane transfer in recorded history was Locklear stepping from the lower wing of one Jenny to the upper wing of another - both aircraft flying at altitude, in tight formation. Two fabric biplanes holding position in the slipstream while a man stepped between them. The earth a thousand feet below. That was the moment the barnstorming era found its defining act.

Why Barnstorming Worked: Aviation as Public Spectacle

By early 1919, Locklear was drawing crowds at Call Field on word of mouth alone. To understand why, you have to understand what aviation meant to ordinary Americans at that moment. Most had never been close to a flying airplane. They had read about it in newspapers, maybe seen a photograph. An actual flying machine overhead was still a genuine wonder.

The barnstorming formula was almost perfectly engineered for that environment. A pilot would buzz a town to announce his arrival, find a suitable pasture or fairground, and set down. The town would come to him. For a dollar or two, you could get a fifteen-minute ride in an open cockpit - the patchwork of fields laid out below, the wind pressing hard against your face. For many people, that single flight was the most remarkable experience of their lives.

For the stunt show, crowds gathered along the edge of the field. No public address system. No announcer. The airplane appeared overhead, and whatever happened next, happened in silence and in full view. When Locklear stood on the upper wing at altitude, people grabbed the arms of whoever was standing next to them. When he stepped between two aircraft in flight, the silence from the ground was total - and then came the sound.

The term barnstorming itself came from the theater. Traveling stage troupes had worked the countryside for generations, sometimes performing in barns when no proper venue was available. When aviators took to the same circuit after the war, the name followed naturally.

The Barnstorming Circuit: Locklear, Elliott, and Short

After leaving the service, Locklear teamed up with pilot Milton “Skeets” Elliott and flier Shirley Short. They assembled a small troupe and worked the circuit. Word spread faster than the aircraft could fly.

Other wing-walkers were active by then, other barnstormers working the same towns and fairgrounds. But nobody else was doing the airplane transfer. That was Locklear’s, and it was one of those things that had to be seen to be believed. No newspaper account could prepare you for watching two Jennys close on each other at altitude while a figure crawled out onto a wing and stepped across.

The crowd went from total silence to something that was less like applause and more like a collective exhale.

Hollywood, “The Great Air Robbery,” and the Price of Fame

Universal Pictures took notice and signed Locklear to make a feature film. “The Great Air Robbery,” released in 1919, used actual aerial footage of Locklear performing his stunts - not trick photography, not models. Camera operators hung from open cockpits with equipment bolted to wing struts to capture it. The film was a significant success.

Locklear became a celebrity on a level that only movie stars and champion athletes could reach in that era. Photographed at parties. Recognized in restaurants. He had come a long way from carpentry work in Greenville, Texas.

The Night Shoot That Killed Ormer Locklear

Universal moved immediately into a second picture: “The Skywayman.” For this film, the producers wanted a night sequence - a dramatic dive toward lights on the ground simulating a city far below, with Locklear pulling out at the very last possible moment.

The shoot was set for the night of August 2, 1920, at a field near Glendale, California. Arc lights on the ground - the blazing white units used to illuminate movie sets - were aimed upward into the dark. The plan was for Locklear and Skeets Elliott to take the Jenny to altitude, dive toward the lights, and pull out at a few hundred feet.

The trouble with arc lights is their intensity. Flying toward them at speed in the dark, they destroy night vision completely. You cannot judge altitude. You cannot judge your rate of descent. You are flying toward a wall of white fire with only cockpit instruments to tell you how close the ground is getting.

The cameras were rolling. The airplane began its dive around nine in the evening.

It did not pull out.

The Jenny struck the ground at speed. Both Ormer Locklear and Skeets Elliott died that night. Locklear was 28 years old.

His body was returned to Fort Worth. The funeral drew thousands of people. Newspapers across the country ran his photograph on the front page. He had been nationally known for less than two years.

The Barnstorming Era He Left Behind

The era continued for roughly another decade after Locklear’s death. Operations like the Gates Flying Circus traveled the country with whole teams of pilots and performers. Clyde “Upside Down” Pangborn became one of the era’s signature showmen. Ivan Gates ran his circus with near-military precision, booking towns months in advance and managing the enterprise like a traveling theater company that happened to have airplanes.

At the peak, estimates placed roughly 5,000 barnstormers active across the United States in any given summer. On a warm weekend, a show was within easy driving distance of nearly anywhere.

The Curtiss JN-4 Jenny was the backbone of all of it. After the war, the government sold surplus aircraft for almost nothing - $50 to $100 apiece. Young men who had learned to fly in the service came home to find no civilian aviation industry waiting for them, so they bought a Jenny and went. Later came the Standard J-1 and early Stearman biplanes, sturdier airframes that held up better on rough fields. But the Jenny started it.

The era wound down through the late 1920s. The Air Commerce Act of 1926 required pilot licenses and aircraft certification, adding cost and complexity that the seat-of-the-pants operation had never budgeted for. The Depression ended the dollar-a-ride economics for good. Many barnstormers moved on to the early airlines or the airmail routes. Some simply stopped.

What Barnstorming Did for American Aviation

For roughly one decade, the barnstormers did something no government program could have accomplished on its own. They introduced aviation to the American public - not as a military instrument, not as a wealthy man’s sport, but as something for ordinary people in ordinary fields on ordinary Saturday afternoons.

A boy who watched a Jenny banking low over his father’s cornfield in the summer of 1922 might have gone on to fly from a carrier deck in the Pacific twenty years later, because of what he saw that afternoon. The barnstormers seeded the culture.

Locklear seeded it more than most. He understood something the others were still working out: that danger alone was not enough. That the audience needed something to follow. That there had to be a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. He gave the barnstorming show its grammar.

Two years at the absolute peak of something nobody had ever done before, in front of crowds who genuinely could not believe their eyes. By any measure that matters, that is not a short life. It is a concentrated one.

Primary sources: Don Dwiggins’ “The Barnstormers” and the archives of the National Air and Space Museum.

Key Takeaways

Ormer Locklear (1891–1920) of Greenville, Texas performed the first airplane-to-airplane transfer in recorded history, stepping between two flying Curtiss JN-4 Jennys at altitude.
What began as an in-flight repair habit - climbing out of the cockpit to fix a malfunctioning OX-5 engine mid-flight - evolved into the signature act of the barnstorming era.
Locklear’s 1919 film “The Great Air Robbery” used live aerial stunt footage and made him a national celebrity within months.
He died on August 2, 1920, age 28, during a night shoot for “The Skywayman” when arc lights on the ground destroyed his night vision during a low-altitude dive.
At its peak, an estimated 5,000 barnstormers were active across the U.S. each summer, flying surplus Jennys purchased for as little as $50, until the Air Commerce Act of 1926 and the Great Depression ended the era.