The Curtiss Jenny, the Government Surplus Sale That Flooded America With Warplanes, and the Barnstormers Who Flew Them Into Every Cornfield in the Country

When World War I ended on November 11, 1918, the United States was left with roughly 6,000 surplus military aircraft and approximately 17,000 unemployed military pilots. Most of those aircraft were Curtiss JN-4D biplanes - the Jenny. What happened next was one of aviation’s great unintended consequences.

What Was the Curtiss Jenny?

The Curtiss JN-4D was the primary military flight trainer for American and Canadian pilots during WWI. Curtiss delivered approximately 6,800 of them before production ended. It was a two-seat, open-cockpit biplane powered by the Curtiss OX-5 engine - a water-cooled V-8 producing 90 horsepower on a good day. Cruise speed was around 65 mph, with a top speed of roughly 75 mph.

It was slow, and it wasn’t forgiving at the edges of the envelope. But it stalled gently, gave pilots warning, and absorbed mistakes before collecting its debt. Those qualities made it ideal for turning farm boys from Ohio into pilots in six weeks. After the war, those same qualities made it perfect for flying strangers over county fairs in Kansas.

How Cheap Were Surplus Jennys After WWI?

The government surplus sales began in 1919. An aircraft that had cost the government roughly $2,000 to build and procure could be had for $200 to $500. Worn-out examples with cracked ribs, patched fabric, and exhausted engines went for even less - there are accounts of Jennys changing hands for $50, though that figure may have appreciated over years of hangar-flying.

At $500, a flyable Jenny was within reach of any veteran pilot who’d saved his service pay. And there were 17,000 of them looking.

How Did the Barnstorming Business Model Work?

The word “barnstormer” came from traveling theatrical troupes who performed in barns and open fields across small-town America. The pilots borrowed the name and the method.

The model was straightforward: fly over the town low and loud, let the engine noise gather a crowd, follow them to a nearby pasture, and take them up for rides. Two dollars bought roughly ten minutes in the air. If the farmer objected to his pasture being commandeered, a dollar or two resolved the dispute - sometimes he ended up selling tickets at the fence.

Most barnstormers operated alone. One pilot, one airplane, a bedroll and a toolbox in the front cockpit. They followed railroad lines between towns because the tracks were visible from altitude and connected everything. No airport, no tower, no weather briefing beyond what the pilot could read from the cockpit. You landed because you needed to land.

How Did Barnstormers Keep Crowds Coming Back?

A simple ride was a novelty, and novelties wore off. To sustain the income, barnstormers invented spectacle.

Wing walking appeared almost immediately - performers climbing out onto the wings in flight, hanging from the undercarriage by their wrists, doing handstands on the top wing at altitude. Some were ex-military. Some came from actual circus backgrounds and recognized a new kind of big top when they saw one. Parachute jumps, aerobatics, engine-off spirals simulating forced landings, and plane-to-car transfers - where a performer climbed down a rope ladder from the aircraft onto a moving car below - all served the same purpose: generate talk.

Ivan Gates understood this better than almost anyone. A promoter by instinct, he built what became known as the Gates Flying Circus starting around 1922 - one of the largest barnstorming operations in the country, traveling with multiple aircraft, performers, mechanics, and a booking agent across the Midwest and South.

His star performer was Clyde Pangborn, who billed himself as “Upside Down Pangborn” for his inverted flight and low-altitude aerobatics. Pangborn’s work in a Jenny in front of fairground crowds bore no resemblance to what the engineers at Curtiss had intended when they drew the blueprints. He flew away from all of it, and in 1931 - long after the barnstorming era had faded - Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon completed the first nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean: 41 hours and 14 minutes from the beach at Sabishiro, Japan, to Wenatchee, Washington, in a Bellanca monoplane named Miss Veedol.

That trajectory was common. Barnstormers did not stay still.

Why the OX-5 Engine Made Better Pilots

The Curtiss OX-5 had a reputation, and the reputation was not flattering. Being water-cooled meant carrying a radiator, and the radiator leaked. The oil system was sensitive. The magnetos were temperamental. On any given day, over any given field, the OX-5 might simply decide it had worked hard enough.

A forced landing in a Jenny was not an emergency. It was a Tuesday.

This is what shaped the barnstormer as a pilot. You were always scanning for the next field, always managing altitude to keep options open. The best of them could put a Jenny down in 200 feet of grass if necessary - a road, a dry creek bed, whatever presented itself. They read wind and terrain the way modern pilots read a sectional chart, because the consequences of misreading were never theoretical.

The OX-5 made philosophers of them. And extraordinary stick-and-rudder pilots. The ones who survived.

How Dangerous Was Barnstorming?

It was dangerous with a regularity that should have been - and eventually was - considered unacceptable.

Aircraft were old, often poorly maintained on budgets that didn’t stretch to proper upkeep. Fabric aged and tore. Bracing wires fatigued. Pilots pressed into weather the Jenny wasn’t designed for because the show had to move and the money was running low. Parachutes were packed by hand, sometimes by the jumper, and deployment was not guaranteed. Performers stepped off wings over fairgrounds and did not come down properly.

The crowds were a hazard of their own kind. People drifted close to spinning propellers not out of carelessness but pure innocence - they had no concept of what a turning prop could do. The barnstormer was simultaneously pilot, mechanic, showman, and crowd manager, with no margin in any category.

The attrition was terrible. The line of young men willing to take the job was very long.

What Ended the Barnstorming Era?

Two forces converged to end it.

The Air Commerce Act of 1926 gave the federal government its first authority over civil aviation. Pilots needed certificates. Aircraft needed to meet airworthiness standards. Operating for-hire aircraft without proper licensing became illegal. Most Jennys by that point were eight years old, flown hard, repaired with whatever was available, powered by OX-5 engines rebuilt past the point of prudence. Most couldn’t pass an inspection.

The Great Depression, beginning in 1929, removed the disposable income that had been funding two-dollar rides in the first place.

The era didn’t end overnight. It faded across the late 1920s, as newer and more reliable aircraft replaced the Jenny, better engines replaced the OX-5, and the great flying circuses either closed or transformed. The solo barnstormers found work as crop dusters, charter pilots, flight instructors, and aerial photographers. Some went on to the new commercial airlines.

In its fullest expression, the golden age lasted barely a decade.

Why the Barnstorming Era Still Matters

The barnstormers reached a country that had no access to aviation. Major cities had airfields. Newspapers covered transatlantic crossings. But in the towns of Indiana, Arkansas, and Montana, aviation was something that happened somewhere else, to other kinds of people.

The barnstormer changed that. For a generation of Americans, the Jenny was the first airplane they ever saw up close, the first cockpit they ever sat in, the first time they looked straight down at the earth and understood the world as something smaller and more navigable than they’d believed.

Some of those passengers became pilots. Some became the engineers, mechanics, and airline founders who built commercial aviation through the 1930s and 1940s. Some just carried ten minutes in the air for the rest of their lives and described it to their grandchildren with a precision they couldn’t apply to anything else.

Charles Lindbergh came up through this world. He did parachute jumps and wing walking in the early 1920s before he had his own airplane. By the time he lined up on the runway at Roosevelt Field in 1927, he had thousands of hours of hard-won flying time, nearly all of it earned in open cockpits over fields that weren’t designed for airplanes. The barnstorming life built the pilot who crossed the Atlantic.

He was not alone.

The Jenny - temperamental, slow, oil-burning, fence-post-dodging - was the instrument through which aviation introduced itself to America. Not the glossy transatlantic record flights. Not the air mail routes. A pilot with a crumpled helmet and a two-dollar pitch, landing in somebody’s pasture on a summer afternoon.

Key Takeaways

• When WWI ended in 1918, the U.S. government sold approximately 6,000 surplus Curtiss JN-4D Jennys - aircraft that cost $2,000 to build - for as little as $200 to $500 each, flooding the country with flyable airplanes.
• The barnstormer’s business model required no infrastructure: fly low over a town, land in a nearby pasture, charge $2 per ride, and move on - following railroad lines from town to town.
• The unreliable Curtiss OX-5 engine made forced landings routine and produced some of the most skilled off-airport, contingency-planning pilots in aviation history.
• The Air Commerce Act of 1926 and the Great Depression of 1929 effectively ended the era by requiring airworthiness certification most Jennys couldn’t meet and eliminating the disposable income that funded the rides.
• Barnstorming produced pilots who went on to define commercial aviation - including Charles Lindbergh, who parachute jumped and wing-walked before crossing the Atlantic in 1927, and Clyde Pangborn, who made the first nonstop Pacific crossing in 1931.