Art Smith (pilot)

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Art Smith posing in the muzzle of a 12-inch mortar at the Presidio of San Francisco during the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition

Art Smith was an American pilot. He grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana; in 1910, his parents mortgaged their home for $1,800 so that he could build a plane, on which he spent six months; however, he crashed it on his first flight, destroying everything but the motor.^[1] However, he quickly became a celebrated stunt pilot, notable for flying at night; he was one of the pioneers of skywriting at night using flares attached to his aircraft. Katherine Stinson, one of America's first female stunt pilots, was inspired to compete against him by this feat, and the competition between her, Smith, and other men received widespread press coverage.^[2] Smith made two trips to Asia, in 1916 and 1917; his aerobatics demonstrations in Korea during those trips are believed to have inspired both An Chang-nam (Korea's first male pilot) and Kwon Ki-ok (Korea's first female pilot) to learn to fly.^[3][4][5] He later worked as a test pilot and instructor after the American entry into World War I; he had originally sought to enroll in the United States Army's Air Service, but was refused. His height (5 feet 3 inches) was mentioned as one possible reason for the refusal; the numerous injuries he had suffered in earlier crashes were another.^[5][6] During the war, he was stationed at Langley Field, Virginia and McCook Field, Ohio; he was one of two men trained to fly the De Bothezat helicopter, an early quadrotor helicopter.^[5] After the war, he joined the United States Postal Service; he eventually came to fly the overnight mail delivery route between New York and Chicago, established in July 1925. He died in February 1926 at age 32 near Montpelier, Ohio; he was two miles off-course when he crashed into a grove of trees while flying east. After Charles Ames, he was the second overnight mail service pilot to die on duty.^[1]

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