http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704211704575140081449754638.html?mod=dist_smartbriefDubbed "The Flying Flapper" by newspapers that followed her every feat, Elinor Smith set aviation records for endurance, height and speed at a young age.
Ms. Smith, who died Friday at age 98, was one of the last survivors of aviation's early barnstorming days. She flew with such legends as Amelia Earhart and James Doolittle. She recalled Charles Lindbergh seeing her off from Roosevelt Field in 1928 on her most notorious exploit, flying under four of New York City's East River bridges.
It seemed Ms. Smith was born to fly. When she was age 6, her father, vaudeville star Tom Smith, tied her blond braids together and put her in a sight-seeing biplane that took off from a Long Island potato field not far from her home in Freeport, N.Y. "What I cannot forget is the view," Ms. Smith wrote in a 1980 memoir. She added, "I knew that my future in airplanes and flying was as inevitable as the freckles on my nose."
Along with French and piano lessons typical for a well-off girl, Ms. Smith studied aeronautics. By age 10, she had learned to take the controls, aided by wooden blocks attached to the rudder pedals of a Curtiss Jenny. She soloed at age 15, and at 16 became among the youngest pilots licensed up to that time, her license signed by Orville Wright. Ms. Smith nearly lost the license a year later thanks to the bridge stunt—another flyer had his suspended by the Commerce Department after he crashed into another East River bridge.
On a dare, Ms. Smith studied the four suspension bridges and did her stunt one Sunday morning in October. She headed south in her Waco 9 biplane, dodging ships while flying beneath the Queensboro, Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges. She finished by flying sideways beneath the Brooklyn Bridge and then circled the Statue of Liberty twice.
Mayor Jimmy Walker was so charmed when he met the young aviatrix that he volunteered to smooth things over with the Commerce Department. Ms. Smith was back flying within days, now a celebrity. "I got the letter of reprimand with a little personal note," she wrote in her memoir, "asking for my autograph by return mail."
Over the next few years, Ms. Smith would set numerous records, spurred on by a handful of other aviatrices, including Ms. Earhart, Bobbi Trout, and Pancho Barnes. All were trumpeted by the media. Ms. Smith's "Flying Flapper" moniker was matched by "The Flying Cashier" and "The Flying Salesgirl." Each strove to break free of the pack.
"That's how you got jobs, by setting records," said Dorothy Cochrane, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum. "Women had to take what they could get since careers in the military were closed to them."
Ms. Smith set several endurance records, and once flew so high in an attempt to set the altitude record that she blacked out above 30,000 feet.
"When I came to, I was in a power dive right into the Hempstead Reservoir," but averted a crash, she told writer Laura Muha in the 2000 book "Takeoff! How Long Island Inspired America to Fly."
Ms. Smith's feats aloft—all well publicized—got her jobs piloting for the Irvin Air Chute Co., maker of parachutes, and as a test pilot for the Fairchild Aviation Corp. She also worked for several years as an aviation commentator for NBC radio.
Married without publicity in 1933 to New York lawyer and politician Patrick Sullivan, Ms. Smith retired a few years later to concentrate on raising a family. She gave lectures on the history of flight and on aviatrix fashion, something many of the early female fliers were expert in.
She occasionally returned to flying when invited to air shows, and had the chance to pilot training jets in the 1950s. In 2000, she flew the Space Shuttle flight simulator, and managed to successful land after crashing on her first try.
The past is slipping away from us. This was the last of the first.
