Wonderful stuff. I share your enthusiasm for what must have been the headiest of times in aviation history. (That photo of Brookins at the contols of the Wright plane is amazing. It looks as though he's sitting in the rather flimsy frame of an old garden shed with his foot on a random piece of battening...) I'm slightly puzzled, though, that his life, at least as reported, seems to have been a couple of amazing years, (1910 and 1911) when he thrilled tens of thousands with his antics...and then he died - in 1953. What happened in between? I find it hard to believe that he achieved so much in his early twenties and then spent the next forty years doing largely nothing. If you have any leads on the rest of his life, please point me to them!
To think these intrepid flyers and their amazing machines did this a good 32 years before the invention of Duct tape!
Flying is the second greatest thrill known to man. Landing is the first.
I guess you’ve never flown a BT-67, Chris…
Wonderful stuff. I share your enthusiasm for what must have been the headiest of times in aviation history. (That photo of Brookins at the contols of the Wright plane is amazing. It looks as though he's sitting in the rather flimsy frame of an old garden shed with his foot on a random piece of battening...) I'm slightly puzzled, though, that his life, at least as reported, seems to have been a couple of amazing years, (1910 and 1911) when he thrilled tens of thousands with his antics...and then he died - in 1953. What happened in between? I find it hard to believe that he achieved so much in his early twenties and then spent the next forty years doing largely nothing. If you have any leads on the rest of his life, please point me to them!
Thanks, Patrick. As I understand it, Walter went to work for a wire service and was never heard from again…
That's a fascinating rabbit hole you found! Wow, 40 mph - amazing!