Ormer Locklear, the First Wingwalker, and the Night a Hollywood Stunt Killed Him on Film

Ormer Locklear invented wingwalking in 1918 not as a performance, but as a maintenance fix - and within two years he was dead on a Hollywood film set, his fatal crash captured on film and released to theaters across America. His story defines the barnstorming era at its most extraordinary and most unforgiving.

How Wingwalking Was Invented Over Barron Field, Texas

On a sweltering afternoon over Barron Field, just south of Fort Worth, a Curtiss Jenny trainer developed a loose radiator cap during flight. The pilot in the rear cockpit - Ormer Locklear - climbed out onto the lower wing at 65 miles per hour, worked his way forward along the fuselage, tightened the cap with his bare hands, and climbed back in.

His commanding officer issued a formal reprimand. Locklear filed it and kept going.

What he had recognized was that a Jenny in straight and level cruise was a stable platform. The airflow was punishing, but the wing surface itself was steady. If you understood the aerodynamics and moved with the machine instead of fighting it, you could move around on the exterior of the aircraft. He began doing it methodically - learning to walk the upper wing, hang from the landing gear, stand on the nose - building through repetition a complete physical vocabulary for the outside of the machine.

The Barnstorming Era and the Economics of Spectacle

The barnstorming movement began the moment the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. The U.S. government held thousands of surplus Curtiss JN-4 trainers - the Jenny - and no use for them. Powered by a 90-horsepower Curtiss OX-5 engine with a cruise speed around 65 mph, the Jenny was not beautiful, but she was reliable and suddenly available for $200 to $500, roughly the price of a decent automobile.

Young pilots who had trained stateside and never made it overseas came home with skills and no clear path. An affordable airplane changed the math.

The formula was direct: find a flat field outside a small town, land, put up a hand-lettered sign, and offer rides. A dollar and a half bought ten minutes in the sky. Farm families drove wagons from ten miles away. Whole counties went from never having touched an airplane to sitting in one in the course of a single summer afternoon.

Rides alone couldn’t keep a pilot fueled and fed. The economics required spectacle - something that drew crowds large enough to make the arithmetic work. That is where the aerial circus came from.

Ormer Locklear’s Act and the Airplane-to-Airplane Transfer

Locklear, born in Greenville, Texas in 1891, was a mechanic by trade and constitutionally incapable of accepting “that’s just how it is” as a final answer. He enlisted in the Army Signal Corps Aviation Section in 1917 and began training at Barron Field.

He teamed up with two fellow pilots: Lieutenant Milton “Skeets” Elliott and Lieutenant Shirley Short. Together they developed a coordinated multi-aircraft act with genuine choreography - a real show, not a series of individual stunts.

The centerpiece was the airplane change. Two Jennies flew in formation. Locklear climbed out of the upper aircraft, worked his way to the upper wing, and as the lower plane came up beneath him - both aircraft moving at 60 to 65 mph - he stepped from the wing of one airplane to the wing of the other. No net. No parachute. Nothing between him and the ground but his own judgment about where both machines were relative to each other and to him.

Parachutes were considered dishonorable in certain barnstorming circles. The philosophy held that the aviator is demonstrating mastery - that aviation is conquered territory. Jumping for a parachute told the crowd a different story. Locklear did not carry one.

Hollywood, “The Great Air Robbery,” and the Second Film

Hollywood found Locklear in 1919. Universal Pictures needed someone who could actually perform on camera what their aerial adventure required - no stunt doubles, no approximations. They signed him.

The first picture, “The Great Air Robbery” - a story about the theft of government airmail - was a genuine hit. Audiences who had never seen a man walk the wing of a moving airplane watched it for the first time in a darkened theater. Universal wanted a second film immediately.

“The Skywayman” went into production. For the climactic sequence, the production designed a night stunt: Locklear would take a Jenny up after dark, fly a steep spiraling dive over a simulated burning oil field, and pull out low over the cameras. Powerful floodlights would illuminate the aircraft against the dark sky. No one had ever captured anything like it on film.

The Night of August 2, 1920

On the night of August 2, 1920, approximately 100,000 people gathered near DeMille Field in Los Angeles to watch the filming. Word had spread across the city, and the crowd materialized from every direction.

Locklear and Elliott went up. The Jenny climbed into the Los Angeles night. The floodlights came on.

The lights that were meant to illuminate the aircraft for the cameras were blinding from inside the cockpit. The glare washed out everything beyond the circle of light. Locklear could not see the ground. He could not read his instruments. He entered the spiraling dive as planned. The altitude bled away.

He never pulled out.

At approximately 11:30 PM, the aircraft hit the ground. Ormer Locklear and Skeets Elliott were both killed on impact. Some in the crowd reported hearing the engine cut out in the final seconds, as though Locklear had tried to signal that something was wrong. Whether he knew what was coming and could not stop it, or whether the ground rose up before he understood where it was, no one will ever know.

The cameras had been running the entire time.

Universal Released the Crash Footage

Universal Pictures made the decision to release “The Skywayman” with the crash footage intact. Audiences across America watched Ormer Locklear die - and they knew it was real. The film played to large audiences.

The End of the Barnstorming Era

Locklear’s death did not end barnstorming. The era ran on well into the 1920s. The Gates Flying Circus became the largest of the traveling operations, at its peak employing dozens of pilots and performers. Ivan Gates essentially industrialized the barnstorm, turning individual acts into a scheduled, nationally routed enterprise visiting hundreds of towns per year.

Federal regulation arrived with the Air Commerce Act of 1926, establishing pilot certificates, aircraft inspections, and federal authority over civilian aviation for the first time. The wide-open era when any man with a Jenny and enough nerve could set up in a field and charge admission was closing. The accident rate had been extraordinary - pilots and passengers died regularly - and the wonder and the carnage had run together throughout.

Why the Barnstorming Era Matters to Aviation History

What barnstorming gave America cannot be fully accounted for in any casualty report. Before it, most Americans knew airplanes the way they knew about submarines - they’d read about them, seen photographs. After barnstorming, millions had touched a wing. Had smelled warm castor oil on an idling OX-5. Had watched a human being stand on top of a flying machine at a thousand feet with the casual ease of a man crossing a street.

That created something durable. The public fascination and public appetite that aviation needed to survive the years before it was commercially viable - the airports, the airlines, the transcontinental routes - were built on a foundation of wonder laid one hayfield at a time, one dollar-and-a-half ride at a time.

Key Takeaways

Ormer Locklear invented wingwalking in 1918 at Barron Field, Texas, by climbing out to fix a loose radiator cap at 65 mph - then turned it into a deliberate performance art
The barnstorming era was born from surplus Curtiss JN-4 Jennies sold post-WWI for as little as $200–$500, giving veteran pilots an affordable aircraft and no other options
Locklear’s airplane-to-airplane transfer - stepping from the wing of one moving aircraft to another at altitude - was the defining stunt of the early aerial circus
On August 2, 1920, blinded by film set floodlights during a night dive, Locklear and his pilot Skeets Elliott were killed in front of 100,000 spectators at DeMille Field; Universal released the crash footage with the film
The Air Commerce Act of 1926 ended the barnstorming era by establishing federal oversight of civilian aviation - but by then, the barnstormers had already introduced millions of Americans to flight