Steve Wittman, the Little Man Whose Name Is Painted on the Field, and the Oshkosh Racer Who Flew Faster on Less Than Anybody Alive

Steve Wittman was the aviation pioneer, air racer, and airport manager whose name is painted on Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin - the home of EAA AirVenture. Legally blind in one eye, he became one of America’s winningest air racers, invented the tapered spring steel landing gear used on thousands of Cessnas and other light aircraft, and ran the Oshkosh field for roughly 40 years. Most pilots who fly into Oshkosh each summer land on ground he shaped without ever knowing his story.

Who Was Steve Wittman?

Sylvester Joseph Wittman was born in 1904 in Byron, Wisconsin, just outside Oshkosh. He was a small, slight man - and legally blind in one eye, a condition that would have washed most candidates out of flight training in that era.

He flew anyway. Wittman soloed in the mid-1920s and spent his early years barnstorming, hopping passenger rides out of farm fields for a couple of dollars a head and sleeping under the wing when money ran short.

But he was more than a stick-and-rudder pilot. He was a self-taught engineer and builder - an aircraft designer without a diploma - and that combination is what set him apart from nearly everyone else on the flightline.

How Did Steve Wittman Become Connected to Oshkosh?

In 1931, the city of Oshkosh hired Wittman to manage its small municipal airport. He took the job and ran the field for the better part of four decades.

He didn’t just administer the airport - he lived on it. His hangar was there, and he built and raced airplanes off that same patch of Wisconsin sod for more than 60 years.

That long stewardship is why the field carries his name today: Wittman Regional Airport, also known as Wittman Field.

What Made Steve Wittman a Racing Legend?

The 1930s were the golden age of American air racing, centered on the National Air Races in Cleveland. The big money and big names flew large, factory-backed aircraft with powerful engines.

Wittman showed up with something different: a tiny midget racer he built himself in a shed, called Chief Oshkosh. It was a low-wing airplane barely bigger than the pilot, and on paper it had no business keeping up.

His edge was aerodynamics. Wittman understood drag better than most of the factories did - he won with clean lines, tight cowlings, and minimal wasted surface rather than raw horsepower. Chief Oshkosh, and later racers named Bonzo and Buster, made him one of the winningest air racers the United States ever produced. He routinely beat aircraft with twice his horsepower by out-thinking them on the drawing board.

What Did Steve Wittman Invent That Pilots Still Use Today?

Wittman’s most widespread legacy is under the belly of thousands of airplanes: the tapered spring steel landing gear.

Instead of bungee cords or oil-and-nitrogen oleo struts, his design used a single clean, tapered blade of steel that flexes on landing and soaks up hard arrivals with virtually no maintenance. It was simple, light, and durable.

The idea was so good that Cessna adopted it for thousands of production aircraft. If you fly a modern Cessna, Cherokee, or Van’s, there’s a strong chance the gear forgiving your less-than-perfect landings traces directly back to Steve Wittman.

Why Does Steve Wittman Matter to Homebuilders and EAA?

After World War II, Wittman focused on a problem every working pilot understands: how to fly affordably on ordinary wages.

His answer was a series of small, buildable airplanes. The two-seat, tandem Tailwind and the single-seat Buttercup were honest, cheap, rag-and-tube designs a person could build in a home shop. That racing and homebuilt lineage folded into the designs homebuilders came to know as the W-8 and W-10 - all fast on small engines because Wittman never stopped thinking about drag.

That spirit - an individual building an airplane on their own plans, answering only to their own craftsmanship - is the founding idea of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). When EAA’s summer convention outgrew its previous home and needed a field large enough to host the world, it moved to Oshkosh: Wittman’s field.

The homebuilder’s convention came to the homebuilder’s town, and EAA AirVenture has camped there every July since. Wittman lived to see it - an old man still flying and building while roughly a quarter of a million people flooded his town each year to celebrate the very thing he’d spent his life doing.

How Did Steve Wittman Die?

Wittman flew nearly to the end of a very long life, still at the controls and still attending races into his 80s.

In 1995, he and his wife Paula died in a crash of one of his own designs in the southern United States. He was 91 years old and still flying.

For a man whose entire life was spent in the air - from barnstorming cow pastures to the Cleveland pylons to the fleet that carries his fingerprints - it was, in the eyes of many pilots, a full ride to the very end.

Key Takeaways

Steve Wittman (1904–1995) was an air racer, self-taught aircraft designer, and the longtime manager of the Oshkosh airport now named Wittman Regional Airport.
Despite being legally blind in one eye, he became one of America’s most successful air racers with self-built aircraft like Chief Oshkosh, Bonzo, and Buster.
He invented the tapered spring steel landing gear that Cessna put under thousands of production airplanes - still in wide use today.
His affordable homebuilt designs, the Tailwind and Buttercup, embodied the do-it-yourself spirit at the heart of the EAA.
EAA AirVenture is held every July on Wittman’s own field, making Oshkosh the fitting home of the homebuilt aircraft movement.