Ormer Locklear, the Wing Walker Who Climbed Out of a Jenny at Sixty Miles an Hour and Turned the Whole Sky Into a Stage

Ormer Locklear was a Texas-born Army flight instructor who, in the years just after World War I, invented the discipline of wing walking and performed the first-ever airplane-to-airplane transfer in flight. Nicknamed the “King of the Wing Walkers,” he drew crowds in the tens of thousands before dying in a filmed stunt crash on August 2, 1920, at age 28. The safety practices that govern airshows today - hard decks, crowd lines, and harnessed performers - trace directly back to Locklear and the barnstormers who found the edge by going over it.

Who Was Ormer Locklear?

Locklear was born in 1891 and grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. By every account he was a compulsive climber as a boy - water towers, windmills, church steeples on a dare - the kind of child who kept his mother in a permanent state of worry.

When the United States entered the Great War in 1917, thousands of young men lined up to learn to fly the new aircraft the Army was buying by the thousands. Locklear enlisted and was sent to Barron Field near Fort Worth to train on the Curtiss Jenny.

What Was the Curtiss “Jenny”?

The Curtiss JN-4, universally known as the Jenny, was a two-seat biplane built from wood, wire, and doped fabric. It was powered by an OX-5 engine producing about 90 horsepower on a good day - an engine notorious for burning, leaking, and throwing castor oil back into the pilot’s face.

The Jenny cruised at roughly 60 to 65 miles per hour and stalled around 45 mph. Crucially, it was a stable aircraft. Trimmed properly, it would hold straight and level with hands off the controls - the single characteristic that made everything Locklear later did on the wing possible.

How Did Wing Walking Begin?

The legend starts during Locklear’s training. When a minor problem developed in flight - accounts differ on whether it was a loose radiator cap or a wire that needed tending - Locklear did not land for the mechanics. He unbuckled, climbed out onto the wing at altitude, fixed the problem, and climbed back into the cockpit.

His instructors were officially furious. But they noticed something: whenever Locklear went out on the wing, morale across the camp rose. The stunt made the deadly-serious business of learning to fly feel, for a moment, like the greatest adventure imaginable.

So the Army made him an instructor and quietly let him continue. He used the wing to demonstrate confidence to cadets, and in the process he began working out an entirely new discipline in real time - how to brace against a 60-mph wind, which parts of the airframe could bear his weight, and how the machine wanted to roll when 160 pounds moved out to a wingtip. There was no manual. Locklear was writing it.

How Did the Barnstorming Era Start?

The armistice came in November 1918, leaving the U.S. government holding thousands of surplus Jennys it no longer needed. The aircraft were sold off for a few hundred dollars each - sometimes still crated and packed in cosmoline, never flown.

That fire sale lit the barnstorming era. Cheap airplanes, plus young men trained to fly them, plus a country that had never seen an aircraft in person. In 1919, most Americans had never laid eyes on an airplane anywhere but a newspaper photo. Landing a Jenny in a farmer’s pasture could draw a crowd from three counties.

Locklear mustered out and went into business with two service friends: pilot Milton “Skeets” Elliott and pilot Shirley Short. They flew the county-fair circuit, buzzing towns low and loud, landing in a nearby field, and selling rides. A hop around the pasture cost five dollars - often a full week’s wages, and paid gladly.

What Made Locklear Famous?

Locklear pushed the wing far past anything anyone had attempted. He hung by his knees from the landing gear, stood atop the wing with his arms spread, dangled below the aircraft, and moved from wingtip to wingtip while Skeets Elliott held the Jenny as steady as possible.

Then came the stunt that made him immortal: the airplane-to-airplane transfer. Two Jennys were flown in tight formation, one just above and ahead of the other, and Locklear would leave one aircraft to grab a rope ladder trailing from the second - swinging in open air between two moving machines.

Nobody had ever done it. Both pilots held formation by eyeball alone - no radios, no autopilot - while prop wash hammered the lower aircraft and Locklear timed a leap where a half-second error meant a fatal fall. He performed it as a paying act, town after town.

Newspapers dubbed him the “King of the Wing Walkers.” Crowds swelled into the tens of thousands. The spectacle grew so intense that spectators fainted or turned away, and Locklear himself began to worry it was too much to watch.

The Hollywood Years

California’s young film industry was hungry for spectacle, and Locklear was the most spectacular thing anyone had seen. He went west and starred in “The Great Air Robbery” (1919), performing all his own flying and stunts. The film was a sensation, and Locklear was on his way to becoming a genuine movie star in the earliest days of the medium.

How Did Ormer Locklear Die?

By 1920, the economics of barnstorming were lethal. Performers flew low, tired, and in worn-out surplus aircraft, always pushing one notch further than the week before, because a stunt the crowd had already seen no longer sold tickets. The margin kept getting thinner.

In the summer of 1920, Locklear was filming “The Skywayman.” One scene called for a nighttime spin down toward oil derricks and a pond, lit by ground searchlights. The plan was simple: the searchlights would serve as his altimeter. When it was time to recover from the spin, the lights would cut off - his signal that he was low enough to pull out.

On the night of August 2, 1920, Locklear flew the spin exactly as filmed. But the searchlights never went out. Whether someone missed the cue, the beams blinded him, or he simply ran out of night, the lights stayed on him all the way down. Locklear flew a perfectly executed spin straight into the ground in front of the cameras. Skeets Elliott, in the aircraft with him, died as well. Locklear was 28 years old.

The studio kept the footage and used his death to sell tickets to the film.

Why This Matters for Pilots Today

Locklear’s death was not just a tragedy - it became a foundational lesson. Nearly every modern airshow safety rule was written in the names of fliers who ran out of altitude chasing a crowd’s gasp.

The hard deck - a floor a performer will not descend below regardless of what the crowd wants - exists because of men like Locklear. So does the crowd line on the ramp, the harness rig that secures today’s wing walkers to the airframe, and the culture of briefing, rehearsing, and setting minimums that are honored without exception. The barnstormers learned all of it the hard way, and modern aviation inherited it.

They also gave America its first love affair with the airplane. They landed in the pasture and let a farmer’s kid touch a wing - and some of those kids grew up to build the airlines, fly the warbirds, and put men on the moon.

Key Takeaways

• Ormer Locklear (1891–1920) was a Fort Worth Army flight instructor who invented modern wing walking and performed the first airplane-to-airplane transfer in flight.
• He worked out the discipline on the Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny”, a stable, 90-horsepower biplane that cruised around 60 mph - its stability made his stunts possible.
• The post-WWI sale of thousands of surplus Jennys sparked the barnstorming era, when most Americans had never seen an airplane in person.
• Locklear became the “King of the Wing Walkers” and a film star before dying in a filmed night-spin crash on August 2, 1920, at age 28, alongside pilot Skeets Elliott.
• Today’s airshow safety standards - hard decks, crowd lines, and harnessed performers - trace directly back to the fatal lessons of Locklear and the barnstormers.