Steve Wittman, Buster, and the Little Racer That Gave Oshkosh Its Name

Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is named for Sylvester “Steve” Wittman (1904–1995), a small, self-taught racing pilot who beat well-funded factory teams with airplanes he built by hand. He managed the Oshkosh field for roughly four decades, invented the spring-steel landing gear still used under Cessna light aircraft, and gave his name to the airport that now hosts the world’s largest fly-in every July.

Who Was Steve Wittman?

Sylvester Joseph Wittman was born in 1904 in the Wisconsin countryside near Byron. Everyone called him Steve. He stood barely over five feet tall and had eyesight so poor that examiners were reluctant to issue him a pilot certificate.

By the standards of his era - bad eyes, small frame, a farm kid with no money - he was the last person anyone would have bet on to become one of the fastest pilots alive.

He learned to fly in the 1920s, the barnstorming years, buying time behind war-surplus aircraft and working county-fair crowds. But he was never truly a showman. He was a builder and a self-taught engineer, a man who looked at an airplane and immediately started calculating how to make it cleaner, tighter, and faster.

How Did Oshkosh’s Airport Get Its Name?

In 1931, Wittman took the job of managing the small airport at Oshkosh - a role he held for close to 40 years. He ran the field, repaired airplanes, and taught people to fly there. And in the back of the hangar, he built racers.

In 1969, the airport was renamed Wittman Field in his honor, recognizing a lifetime spent managing and flying out of that ground. Today it is officially Wittman Regional Airport, the name pilots hear on the ATIS every summer.

The Racer Called Buster

In the 1930s, air racing was one of the biggest spectacles in America - some years drawing bigger crowds than baseball. The National Air Races in Cleveland were dominated by big money: Gee Bees, Howard aircraft, and other machines built by well-funded teams with enormous engines.

Wittman showed up with something he had built himself, in his own shop, on a manager’s salary. He called his first racer Chief Oshkosh - a tiny, brightly painted low-wing monoplane with a wing so short it looked unfinished. Other pilots laughed. Then it flew, screaming around the pylons at speeds that made no sense for an engine that size, beating airplanes that cost ten times as much.

He later rebuilt and renamed that airplane Buster, refining and re-engining it over the years to squeeze more speed from an impossibly small airframe. His guiding principle was simple: drag is the enemy. Every strut, wire, and square inch of frontal area was a tax paid in speed, and he cut that tax ruthlessly.

He also built a larger, meaner racer named Bonzo to run with the unlimited class. Wittman took Bonzo to the Thompson Trophy, the premier closed-course race in America, and ran up front against the sport’s heaviest hitters.

Pylon racing in that era was brutally dangerous. There were no simulators and no advanced instrumentation - just a cramped wood, steel, and fabric machine flown at rooftop height in a pack of others doing the same thing. Men died every season. Wittman flew it for decades and kept walking away, not because he was reckless but because he was an engineer first, and he knew exactly where the edge was.

Steve Wittman’s Biggest Contribution: Spring-Steel Landing Gear

Wittman’s most lasting gift to aviation wasn’t a trophy. It was a spring.

When he was building his racers, landing gear was heavy, complicated, and draggy. Wittman devised something beautifully simple: a tapered leaf of spring steel - one clean, flexing bar that absorbed landing shock with no oil, no struts, and no moving parts to fail. It was light, cheap, and nearly indestructible.

Cessna licensed the concept and put it under tens of thousands of airplanes, including the Cessna 150 and Cessna 172. If you have landed one of those, you have landed on Wittman’s idea - a design that has been carrying student pilots onto runways for about 70 years.

Why the EAA Fly-In Came to Oshkosh

The Experimental Aircraft Association was founded in 1953 by Paul Poberezny and a handful of homebuilders in a Milwaukee basement - ordinary people who believed you didn’t have to be Boeing to build an airplane. The convention outgrew several locations, and in 1970 it settled at Oshkosh, on Steve Wittman’s field.

The fit was almost too perfect. The world’s greatest gathering of do-it-yourself airplane builders came to rest at the airport named for the man who did exactly that - who beat rich teams with something he made himself in the back of a hangar. Nobody planned it that way, but they couldn’t have chosen better ground.

Every July, roughly half a million people and about 10,000 airplanes converge on the field, turning it into the busiest airport in the world for one week. As of July 2026, that tradition continues in full force this week.

He Never Stopped Building or Flying

Wittman kept designing throughout his life. He created the Tailwind, a fast, efficient two-seat homebuilt that enthusiasts still build in their garages today. He kept racing and setting speed records in his own designs into his 70s and 80s, long after most pilots his age had retired.

In 1995, at age 91, Wittman was still flying an airplane he had built with his own hands. That spring, he and his wife Paula were killed in a crash in Alabama. He was active, building, and flying to the very end.

Where to See Buster Today

Buster - the little racer that shouldn’t have won and won anyway - now hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, among the most important aircraft the country ever produced, sharing space with the Spirit of St. Louis and the Wright Flyer.

Closer to home, the EAA Aviation Museum, located right on the Oshkosh field, preserves Wittman’s machines and story. Visitors can step out of the July heat and stand in front of the racers, the spring-steel gear, and the history - so the next generation can look up at a tiny bright airplane and start wondering what they might build in their own garage.

That is the enduring idea Oshkosh celebrates: that an ordinary person with a good mind and a set of tools can build something that flies faster and better than the experts said was possible. Steve Wittman proved it with poor eyesight, no money, and a wing the size of a barn-door hinge.

Key Takeaways

Steve Wittman (1904–1995) was a self-taught Wisconsin pilot and engineer who managed the Oshkosh airport for nearly 40 years, starting in 1931.
His homebuilt racers - Chief Oshkosh (renamed Buster) and Bonzo - beat far better-funded factory teams; Buster now hangs in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Wittman invented the spring-steel landing gear that Cessna licensed for the 150, 172, and other light aircraft, in use for roughly 70 years.
The airport was renamed Wittman Field in 1969, and the EAA fly-in relocated there in 1970, now drawing about 500,000 people and 10,000 aircraft each July.
Wittman kept building and racing into his 80s and was still flying at 91, when he and his wife Paula died in a 1995 crash in Alabama.