Ormer Locklear, the First Wing Walker, and the Night Dive That Ended the Most Dangerous Career in Early American Aviation

Ormer Locklear was the man who invented aviation as spectacle. A former Army pilot from Greenville, Texas, he turned a necessity - climbing out of a moving airplane to fix a mechanical problem - into a national phenomenon that filled fairgrounds, produced two Hollywood films, and drew an estimated 10,000 mourners to his funeral procession. He was 29 years old when he died on the night of August 2, 1920.

What Was the Barnstorming Era?

The armistice that ended World War I in November 1918 left the United States with roughly ten thousand trained military pilots and no place for them to fly. There were no commercial airlines. The airmail system could absorb only a handful of fliers. Aircraft manufacturers were cutting payroll, not hiring.

What changed the equation was the Army’s decision to liquidate its training fleet. The Curtiss JN-4 - the “Jenny” - was a fabric-covered biplane powered by a 90-horsepower OX-5 V-8 engine, with 43 feet of wingspan and a top speed around 75 mph. Honest, forgiving, and built for instruction, it had been purchased by the thousands. After the armistice, those aircraft hit the auction block.

Jennies that had cost the government several thousand dollars each were selling to private buyers for $200 to $300. For a returning pilot with some savings and no other prospects, that was a door opening.

Who Was Ormer Locklear?

Locklear was stationed at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas - a carpenter by trade before the war, and a man who could fix anything mechanical. That instinct for machinery is what first put him outside an airplane.

The Jenny’s OX-5 engine was capable but temperamental: loose connections, radiators demanding attention mid-flight, problems that couldn’t always wait until landing. One day over Kelly Field, something came loose on Locklear’s airplane. Rather than land, he handed the controls to his observer and climbed out of the cockpit. In flight. At altitude. He fixed the problem and climbed back in.

When he landed, his fellow pilots stared. But Locklear did it again. He had understood something nobody else had fully articulated yet: at low airspeed, the aerodynamics of a biplane created an environment a person could survive in. The slipstream was brutal, the footing on a fabric-covered wing treacherous, and there was nothing between you and the ground but Texas air. But if you knew exactly what you were doing, it could be done.

What Did a Wing Walking Performance Actually Look Like?

The act Locklear developed with fellow Kelly Field pilot Lieutenant Milton “Skeets” Elliot beginning in 1919 was built on controlled technique, not recklessness.

A Jenny came in low over the fairground, its OX-5 popping and crackling in the morning air. Locklear climbed out, stood on the wing at roughly 60 mph with one hand on a strut. Then he went higher - to the top of the upper wing, both arms extended, no handhold. And he waved to the crowd.

That casual, unhurried wave was the thing audiences couldn’t shake. It wasn’t danger they were watching. It was mastery. A man so thoroughly in command of his environment that he could afford to be casual about it.

The act expanded from there. Elliot would put the Jenny through banks and turns while Locklear clung to the outside. The signature move was a mid-air aircraft transfer: Locklear would climb from his own Jenny onto a rope ladder hanging from a second airplane, haul himself up, and get in. Two aircraft, both flying. One man moving between them.

How Did Locklear Become a National Celebrity?

By the end of 1919, Locklear had crossed from county-fair attraction to genuine national celebrity. Newspapers covered him. Magazines ran photographs. The American public knew his name in a way very few aviators, before or since, have achieved.

Hollywood noticed. Universal Pictures needed someone who could perform actual stunts on actual aircraft in front of actual cameras. His first film, “The Great Air Robbery” (1919), was a sensation. Audiences who had read about wing walking in the papers could now watch it projected twenty feet tall at their local movie house - Locklear walking the top wing at three thousand feet, dangling from landing gear over Los Angeles rooftops, transferring between aircraft over city streets.

The picture was a hit. Universal wanted more.

What Happened the Night Ormer Locklear Died?

His second film, “The Skywayman,” required a climactic night dive. The plan called for Locklear and Elliot to bring their biplane down in a near-vertical dive aimed at two searchlights on the ground. The ground crew would kill the lights when the aircraft reached a safe pull-out altitude - that signal was Locklear’s cue to recover.

A large crowd gathered at DeMille Field on August 2, 1920. Word had spread that something extraordinary would happen that night, and in that era, that was enough.

The aircraft climbed into the darkness. The searchlights came on. Locklear pushed the nose down.

What exactly went wrong has been debated for more than a century. Some accounts say the ground crew was blinded by camera floodlights and never saw the aircraft coming. Others say the signal came too late. Some say the searchlights simply never went dark. What is not disputed: the airplane did not pull out. Locklear and Elliot flew straight into the ground at the base of those lights. Both men were killed instantly.

The audience initially believed it was part of the act.

What Was Ormer Locklear’s Legacy?

His body was returned to Fort Worth, Texas. An estimated 10,000 people lined the streets for his funeral - a number that reflects exactly what he had meant to the country in two years of public flying.

His death did not end the barnstorming era. It was, in a real sense, the moment the era truly began. The aircraft surplus remained. The pilots remained. They had watched what Locklear built - the crowds, the headlines, the Hollywood contracts - and understood there was a living to be made in an America hungry for aviation spectacle.

The 1920s became the golden age of the barnstormer: flying circuses working the county fair circuit from Maine to California, wing walkers and parachute jumpers and pilots landing on moving automobiles. Women entered the circuit as well - Phoebe Fairgrave, Lillian Boyer, the Larkin sisters - matching the men stunt for stunt before their own paying crowds.

Regulations and insurance eventually made the wilder stunts impractical. By the time the Depression hit, the barnstorming circuit was a shadow of its peak. But what the era accomplished was permanent. The barnstormers gave hundreds of thousands of Americans their first airplane ride. The child standing in an Iowa pasture in 1921, watching a Jenny bank low and the figure on the wing wave to the crowd, grew up to become a pilot, an engineer, or the parent of someone who would become both.

Locklear started all of it by climbing out of a cockpit over a Texas training field on nothing more than necessity and nerve.

Key Takeaways

Ormer Locklear pioneered aerial stunt performance, beginning with an impromptu in-flight repair over Kelly Field in San Antonio - not showmanship, but a practical problem solved at altitude.
The Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny,” sold at Army surplus auction for as little as $200, was the aircraft that made the entire barnstorming era economically possible.
Locklear’s first Hollywood film, “The Great Air Robbery” (1919), made him a national celebrity; his second, “The Skywayman,” killed him.
He died on August 2, 1920, at age 29, when a night dive stunt failed after the ground crew’s searchlight abort signal was never received - or given too late.
Despite his death, the barnstorming era he launched gave hundreds of thousands of Americans their first direct experience of aviation, planting the seeds for a generation of pilots and engineers.