Betty Skelton

Betty Skelton Frankman Erde (June 28, 1926 – August 31, 2011) was a land speed record holder and aerobatics pilot who set 17 aviation and automobile records.

She was known as "The First Lady of Firsts", and helped create opportunities for women in aviation, auto racing, astronautics, and advertising.

She was born Betty Skelton in Pensacola, Florida on June 28, 1926.

Her parents were teenagers and she was their only child.

As a toddler, she was fascinated by the airplanes that flew over her home near the Naval Air Station and preferred model airplanes over dolls.

When she turned eight, she started reading books on aviation and made her parents realize that she was serious about flying.

Whenever they could, the family spent time at the municipal airport.

She would talk pilots into letting her ride on local flights.

Kenneth Wright, a Navy ensign, took a special interest in the Skeltons and provided instruction to Betty and her parents.

He allowed her to solo in his Taylorcraft airplane when she was 12 years old, which was not permitted.

After receiving her Civil Aviation Authority private pilot's license at age 16, she qualified for the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program, but the minimum age was 18½, so she was forced to wait.

WASP participants ferried Air Force pilots and aircraft to their duty stations, and it was the only flying program that accepted women.

However, it was discontinued four months before Skelton reached the required age.

While she was a teenager, Skelton flew whenever she could.

She borrowed a Fairchild PT-19 and Clem Whitteneck, a famous aerobatic pilot from the 1930s, taught her to loop and roll.

Within two weeks, she had honed her skills and mastered simple aerobatic maneuvers, which she repeated for the air show.

Because neither the military nor commercial airlines would accept a female pilot, air shows provided the only opportunity for her to work as a pilot, other than instructing.

She joined the Civil Air Patrol a few years after it was formed in 1941.

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She graduated from high school in 1944 and wanted a career in aviation, so she claimed to be 18 to get a job with Eastern Airlines as a clerk, working at night.

The job allowed her to rent planes and fly during the day.

She earned ratings for single and multiengine on land and sea.

At age 18, she received her commercial pilot licence and was certified as a flight instructor the following year, so she began teaching at Tampa's Peter O. Knight Airport.

Skelton's father, David, organized an amateur airshow in 1945 to raise funds for the local Jaycees.

The airport manager in Tampa suggested that Skelton perform some basic stunts, but she had never done aerobatics.

In 1946, she purchased a 1929 Great Lakes 2T-1A Sport Trainer biplane and performed at the Southeastern Air Exposition, held in Jacksonville, Florida.

That was the start of her professional aerobatic career, and also that of the Blue Angels, a new US Navy precision-flying exhibition team.

Skelton's repertoire included dozens of acrobatic tricks, but her most impressive maneuver involved cutting a ribbon strung between two fishing poles with her propeller, while flying upside down 10 ft off the ground.

She held the rank of major in the CAP and became a test pilot.

Besides piston-driven airplanes, she also flew blimps, gliders, helicopters, and jets.

After winning the championship in 1948, she bought a rare Pitts Special — a lightweight, open-cockpit (544 lb) biplane designed and hand built by Curtis Pitts for aerobatics.

The plane was repainted a dramatic red and white, and Skelton's Chihuahua, Little Tinker, outfitted with a custom-made working parachute, flew in her lap.

Skelton was US Female Aerobatic Champion in 1948, 1949, and 1950.

Her last two championships made her and her plane, Little Stinker, famous.

After her third championship, she was frustrated because no other challenges existed in aerobatics, and she was mentally and physically exhausted from the hectic, nonstop air-show circuit.

In 1949, she set the world light-plane altitude record of 25763 ft in a Piper Cub.

Two years later, she broke her own altitude record with a flight of 29050 ft, also in a Piper Cub.

She held the world speed record for piston-engined aircraft: 421.6 mi/h over a 3-km course in a P-51 Mustang racing plane.

She retired from aerobatics and sold the plane in 1951, but her first husband Don Frankman and she reacquired the airplane and donated it to the Smithsonian in 1985.

Little Stinker is now on inverted display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Washington Dulles International Airport, part of the National Air and Space Museum.