Ormer Locklear, the Dance of Death, and the Wing-Walker Who Climbed Out of the Cockpit and Never Really Came Back

Ormer Locklear was America’s first great wing-walker, a Texas-born Army pilot who turned climbing out of a moving airplane into a national spectacle in the years after World War I. He invented the plane-to-plane transfer known as the “Dance of Death,” became a movie star, and died at age 28 on August 2, 1920, when a night film stunt went wrong. His legacy shaped every airshow act that followed - and left behind a hard lesson about betting your survival on a signal you can’t verify yourself.

Who Was Ormer Locklear?

Ormer Leslie Locklear was born in Texas in 1891. Big, good-looking, and fearless as a boy, he was the kind of kid who climbed water towers and windmills just to prove he could. When the United States entered the Great War, he enlisted in the Army’s air service and trained on the aircraft that would define his career: the Curtiss JN-4.

His talent for wing-walking was discovered by accident. As a cadet at Barron Field near Fort Worth, Texas, in 1918, Locklear was flying with a faulty radiator cap spraying water back at him. Instead of landing, he unstrapped, climbed out onto the top wing in flight, fixed the problem, and climbed back into the cockpit. His instructors were horrified - and then fascinated.

What Was the Curtiss “Jenny,” and Why Did It Matter?

The Curtiss JN-4, universally nicknamed the “Jenny,” was a two-seat biplane built of wood, wire, and fabric. Its 90-horsepower engine produced roughly the output of a modern economy car, and it cruised at only 60 to 70 miles per hour. Stalled, it tended to mush gently and settle rather than drop - a forgiving trait that made it the training aircraft for an entire generation of American pilots.

After the war ended in 1918, the government was left with thousands of surplus Jennys, many still crated and brand-new. They were sold off for a few hundred dollars apiece, sometimes less.

That surplus created a perfect storm: cheap airplanes flooding the market at the same moment thousands of trained pilots came home to a country with no airlines and no aviation jobs waiting for them.

What Was Barnstorming?

Barnstorming was how out-of-work pilots made a living. A flier would buzz a small farm town, cut a few loops over Main Street to draw a crowd, land in a hayfield, and sell rides - typically $5 a head, or a dollar when times were tight.

It was equal parts entertainment and improvisation, and it turned rural America’s introduction to aviation into a traveling show. Locklear was about to become its brightest and wildest star.

What Did Ormer Locklear Actually Do?

Discharged from the Army in 1919, Locklear teamed up with two other pilots - Milton “Skeets” Elliott and Shirley Short - to build an act unlike anything the public had seen. Elliott would fly the Jenny while Locklear climbed out of it in flight.

The reality of that was brutal. Open-cockpit biplanes had no cabin and no door. Locklear unstrapped into an 80-mile-an-hour slipstream trying to peel him off the airframe, surrounded by flying and landing wires that could slice a hand or throw off his balance. And he did it all without a parachute - barnstormers of the era rarely wore them, partly because early chutes were bulky and unreliable, and partly because a man wearing one looked like a man who expected to fall.

Once on the wing, Locklear performed handstands, hung upside down by his knees from the landing gear, and stood atop the top wing with his arms spread wide. Crowds called him the “King of the Wing-Walkers,” and he essentially invented the trade.

What Was the “Dance of Death”?

The “Dance of Death” was Locklear’s signature stunt and the one that made his name national news. It was a plane-to-plane transfer performed in midair.

Two Jennys flew in tight formation at matched speed, one just above and behind the other. Locklear would climb onto the wing of the lower aircraft. The upper plane lowered a rope ladder whipping in the propwash, and Locklear grabbed it and stepped off one flying airplane onto another - no net, no safety line, nothing but his own hands and two pilots holding formation so tightly that a single gust or lapse could fold him into the propellers.

Spectators named it the Dance of Death because that is exactly what it was. Crowds of ten thousand people would fall completely silent as one man hung in open air between two engines.

How Did Locklear Become Famous and Wealthy?

Locklear’s rise was engineered by his promoter, William Pickens, who understood - in the tradition of P.T. Barnum - that danger sells and a handsome hero courting death sells even better. Pickens booked Locklear at fairs, exhibitions, and air meets across the country, where he earned thousands of dollars for a single appearance at a time when a working man made a few dollars a day.

His stunts kept escalating. He raced automobiles from the air, snatching objects off moving cars, and once transferred from an airplane onto a speeding train running flat-out down the tracks.

Then Hollywood came calling. In 1919, Locklear traveled to California to star in a film called The Great Air Robbery. Audiences were captivated because the stunts weren’t faked - that was genuinely him, stepping between airplanes with the coastline a thousand feet below.

How Did Ormer Locklear Die?

Locklear died on August 2, 1920, over an oil field near Los Angeles while filming a night stunt for his second picture, The Skywayman. He was 28 years old. His longtime partner Skeets Elliott, who was piloting, was killed alongside him.

The scene called for the Jenny to spin down through the dark toward a cluster of oil derricks lit by magnesium flares and studio searchlights, then recover at the last moment and roar away just above the ground. In a night spin, a pilot’s only altitude reference is the ground itself. The agreed signal to pull out was the searchlights going dark - lights off meant low enough, recover now.

Locklear and Elliott took off, climbed over the field, and rolled into the spin on cue. But the searchlights never went dark. Whether someone wanted a few more feet of dramatic footage or a signal was simply missed remains unknown. Waiting for a cue that never came, blinded by the glare with blackness beyond it, the two men could not judge their height. The Jenny spun straight into the oil field, killing both instantly.

The cameras captured the crash, and the studio left the footage in the finished film - advertising even leaned on it. It was the ultimate proof of the world Locklear lived in: danger sells, and the ultimate danger sells best.

Why Ormer Locklear Still Matters

Every wing-walker at every airshow performing today stands on Locklear’s shoulders - he drew the map for the entire profession. But his broader impact was even larger.

The barnstormers - Locklear, Bessie Coleman, and the whole ragtag army flying surplus Jennys out of cow pastures - introduced America to the airplane. In the early 1920s, most Americans had never seen an aircraft up close. A barnstorming Jenny at the county fair gave many their first ride and their first sight of a man walking a wing against the sky. A great many of the people who later built the airlines and won the air war of the 1940s got their first taste of aviation at those shows. The barnstormers were recruiters who never knew it.

There is also a lasting safety lesson. Locklear didn’t die doing the Dance of Death or walking a wing without a parachute - he’d survived those feats a hundred times. He died because he entrusted his life to a signal he couldn’t verify from the cockpit, and ran out of altitude waiting for it.

The airplane didn’t kill Ormer Locklear. The plan did. Every pilot has flown a version of that mistake: trusting the weather would behave as forecast, trusting the fuel was in the tanks because someone said so, pressing on into the dark waiting for the picture to improve when the smart move was to break off while altitude remained. Brave is not the same as safe - and in aviation’s wide-open early years, the two were confused far too often.

This account draws on records held by the National Air and Space Museum, along with aviation historians and the newspaper reporting that followed Locklear during his life and mourned him after his death.

Key Takeaways

Ormer Locklear (born 1891) invented professional wing-walking after climbing onto a Curtiss Jenny’s top wing in flight to fix a radiator during 1918 training at Barron Field, Texas.
His signature stunt, the “Dance of Death,” was a midair plane-to-plane transfer performed without a net, parachute, or safety line.
The surplus of cheap Curtiss JN-4 “Jennys” and out-of-work pilots after WWI created the barnstorming era, which introduced most Americans to aviation for the first time.
Locklear died at 28 on August 2, 1920, filming a night stunt for The Skywayman when the searchlight signal to recover from a spin never came.
His death is a permanent reminder that brave isn’t the same as safe: never bet your recovery on a cue you can’t verify from the cockpit.