Elinor Smith
| Elinor Smith | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Elinor Regina Patricia Ward August 17, 1911 New York City |
| Died | March 19, 2010 (aged 98) Palo Alto, California |
| Nationality | USA |
| Occupation | Pioneering aviator |
| Spouse(s) | Patrick Sullivan |
Elinor Smith (August 17, 1911 – March 19, 2010) was a pioneering American aviator, once known as "The Flying Flapper of Freeport". She was the first woman test pilot for both Fairchild and Bellanca (now AviaBellanca). She was the youngest licensed pilot in the world at age 16.
Smith was born Elinor Regina Patricia Ward (her actor father changed his name to Tom Smith, thus she became Elinor Smith) in New York City and grew up in Freeport, Long Island, New York. Her mother had been a professional singer before her marriage; her father was a comedian, singer and dancer. He toured extensively (including to Great Britain and France) in the role of the Scarecrow in a stage production of The Wizard of Oz and was a star of the Orpheum Circuit. He wrote his own material for his vaudeville act, and in the 1920s wrote comedy bits for Broadway shows as well.
In 1918, at the age of six, along with her brother Joe, she took her first plane ride in a Farman pusher that took off from a potato patch near Hicksville on Long Island. She immediately fell in love with flying, and took numerous rides that summer with the same French pilot, Louis Gaubert. At age 10 she began receiving flying lessons from Clyde Pangborn who tied blocks to the rudder pedals so Elinor’s feet could reach. She received further lessons from Frederick Melvin Lund, who piloted her father around the country on the vaudeville circuit and was teaching him to fly as well, and from Bert Acosta. Her father bought a Waco 9 and hired "Red" Devereaux as a pilot and flight instructor for both of them. However, during that time her father directed the instructors to not let her take off or land, because he was concerned for her safety. This prohibition was finally lifted by her mother while her father was out of town, and after ten days of intense instruction from Russ Holderman, she soloed for the first time at age 16. She began taking her father's Waco 9 up to higher altitudes than anyone had ever taken such a plane. (She later wrote in her memoir, "I had no business fooling around up there without oxygen—and I knew it.") Word got around, and it was arranged for her to get a Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) license and an FAI-certified barograph.Orville Wright finalized her FAI license, and three months after her first solo, she set an official light plane altitude record of 11,889 feet (3,624 m) in the Waco 9. In September 1927, at 16, she became the youngest U.S.-government-licensed pilot on record.
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