Art Smith (pilot)

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.cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,721679,00.html|publisher=Time|title=Pilot Smith|date=1926-02-22] 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. [cite book|title=Before Amelia: Women Pilots in the Early Days of Aviation|last=Lebow|first=Eileen|publisher=Brassey's|pages=p. 189|date=2002|id=ISBN 1574885324] 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.cite news|title=우리나라 상공 날은 한국인 최초의 비행사, 언론학자에 의해 새로 태어난 안창남 (An Chang-nam, the first Korean pilot to fly in our country's skies, born again in the discussions of scholars)|url=http://news.icross.co.kr/cgi-bin/newsview.cgi?idx=31003&hsn=0|last=Min|first=Gyeong-myeong|date=2002-12-13|accessdate=2007-05-22|publisher=Chungcheong Review] cite web|url=http://www.airforce.mil.kr:7778/news/afnews/afnews_3_1177.jsp|publisher=Republic of Korea Air Force|title=우리나라 최초의 여류비행사, 권기옥을 말한다 (Discussing Kwon Ki-ok, our country's first female aviator)|accessdate=2007-05-21] cite book|title=Art Smith: Pioneer Aviator|last=Roberts|first=Rachel Sherwood|publisher=McFarland|id=ISBN 0786416467|date=2003] 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. [cite book|title=San Francisco's Presidio|date=2005|last=Bowen|first=Robert W.|pages=p. 62|publisher=Arcadia Publishing|id=ISBN 0738529869] 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. 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.

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