Wing walking

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Locklear with his Curtiss JN-4D, around 1919-1920

Team Guinot, the largest wing walking formation in the world.

Seen in airshows and barnstorming during the 1920s, wing walking is the act of moving on the wings of an airplane during flight.

Wing walking was seen as an extreme form of barnstorming, and wing walkers would constantly take up challenges of outdoing each other.^[1] They themselves admitted (or rather proclaimed proudly) that the point of their trade was to make money on the audience's prospect of possibly watching someone die.^[1]

Ormer Locklear is generally acknowledged as the first enthusiast of this form of entertainment. As an officer in the Army Air Force, he was known for climbing out of his cockpit in mid-flight to examine the plane's mechanics or make repairs, an activity he started in 1917. Initially, the purpose of doing this was out of convenience; as Locklear continued wing walking, others took to it and began performing stunts on the wings of their Curtiss JN-4 biplanes.^[1]

Variations on wing walking became common, with such stunts as doing handstands, hanging by one's teeth, and transferring from one plane to another. Eventually wing walkers began making transfers between a ground vehicle, such as a car, a boat, or a train, to the plane. Other variations included free-falls ending with a last-minute parachute opening; Charles Lindbergh, whose career in flight began with wing walking, was well-known for stunts involving parachutes. The first African-American woman granted an international pilot license, Bessie Coleman, also engaged in stunts using parachutes.^[1] Another successful woman in this profession was Lillian Boyer who performed hundreds of wing walking exhibitions, automobile-to-plane changes, and parachute jumps. ^[2]

Barnstorming and wingwalking might today be termed extreme sports and the inherent hazards proved deadly for many participants. Eight wing walkers died in a relatively short period during the infancy of wing walking and even the great Ormer Locklear himself perished in 1920 while performing a stunt for a film. Eventually, the US Government made wing walking below 1500 feet illegal, effectively making it impossible for spectators to watch wing walkers. As wing walkers struggled to work their way around legal and financial restrictions, the act faded from existence^{[dubious – discuss]}, with a few remnants in the 1950s and 1960s.^[1]

[edit] Other uses of the term

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Another meaning of "wing walker" is a member of an airport ground crew whose primary job function is to walk alongside an aircraft's wing tip during towing or taxiing to ensure that the aircraft does not collide with any objects on the ground.