Francis Thomas Evans, Sr.

Francis Thomas Evans Sr. (3 June 1886 – 14 March 1974) was a pioneer aviator. He was one of the earliest United States Marine Corps aviators, one of the first persons to perform a loop in a seaplane, and a pioneer of stall and spin recovery techniques.

Biography Evans was born in Delaware, Ohio, on 3 June 1886. He served as an enlisted member of the Ohio National Guard from 9 August 1904 to 8 August 1907 and attended Ohio Wesleyan University until 1908, becoming a member of Beta Theta Pi. Evans accepted a commission as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps on 24 January 1909.

By early 1917, Evans was the most experienced Curtiss N-9 floatplane pilot in the world. Although the consensus among aviators and even the N-9s manufacturer was that the N-9 could not be looped, Evans believed it was possible. On February 13, 1917, he flew an N-9 over the Gulf of Mexico off Pensacola, Florida, and began attempts to loop it. He succeeded on his fourth try, becoming one of the first persons ever to loop a seaplane (the first pilot to loop a seaplane was Polish aviator Jan Nagórski on 17 September 1916 in Grigorovich M-9 flying boat). Lacking witnesses, he flew over Naval Air Station Pensacola and repeated the feat. In 1936, he received the Distinguished Flying Cross for this achievement.

More important, however, were the stall and spin recovery techniques he discovered that day. During his first three loop attempts, the N-9 stalled before he reached the apex of the loop and fell into a spin. He found that by releasing back-pressure on the stick and aggressively applying opposite rudder to the direction of the spin he could change the spin into a normal dive and recover, something previously thought impossible in an N-9. His stall and spin recovery techniques remain in use to this day by aviators around the world. Francis T. Evans Elementary School in Clinton, Maryland, is named in honor of him.

A younger son, Captain Douglas K. Evans, served in the U.S. Army Air Forces and then in the U.S. Air Force in the Korean War and Vietnam War as a jet fighter pilot. Douglas Evans took Francis T. Evans Sr., on his first jet airplane flight on 4 January 1947, in a T-33 Shooting Star.

Death

Francis T. Evans Sr., died on 14 March 1974 after six years of declining health. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.