Lincoln J. Beachey

Career Lincoln Beachey was born on March 3, 1887, in San Francisco. In 1903, he first rode in a tethered balloon. In 1905, Lincoln and his older brother Hillery signed a contract with Thomas Scott Baldwin to fly his dirigible at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. On September 10, 1906, the Beachey brothers flew their dirigible around Washington, D.C., with Lincoln landing on the White House lawn, and then on the United States Capitol steps. Lincoln then participated in the 1910 Los Angeles International Air Meet at Dominguez Field. This led Lincoln to abandon dirigibles, and start his career with aeroplanes as a mechanic for Glenn Curtiss.

At the 1911 Los Angeles airshow, Beachey made the first successful nose-diving spin recovery, and deadstick landing. No previous pilot had survived a "deadly spiral." Lincoln then won the shortest take-off event at the Tanforan Aviation Meet. Beachey is also cited as having discovered the maneuver. Climbing to , he forced his plane into the spin and then turned the rudder in the direction of the spin, allowing him to level out. He repeated the maneuver eleven more times to confirm that it worked.

In June the organizers of the U.S.-Canadian International Carnival offered $4,000 to fly through the Niagara Gorge, and another $1,000 to fly under the Honeymoon Bridge. On June 27, 1911, Beachey flew his Curtiss D biplane before an estimated 150,000 spectators. Flying through the mist of Horseshoe Falls, then descending within of the surface of the Niagara River, he flew his plane under the bridge, and down the length of the gorge. In 1913, Beachey took off inside the Machinery Palace on the Exposition grounds at the San Francisco World's Fair. He flew the plane at and landed it, all inside the confines of the hall. His stunt speciality was the "dip-of-death", where he would take his plane up to , and dive toward the ground at full speed with his hands outstretched. At the last moment he would level the plane and zoom down the raceway, with his hands off of the controls, gripping the control stick with his knees. In a jest aimed at Blanche Stuart Scott, another member of the Curtiss exhibition team, Beachey dressed up as a woman and pretended to be out of control in a mock terror to hundreds of thousands.

In 1913, a Russian pilot, Captain Pyotr Nesterov, made the first inside loop. Frenchman Adolphe Pegoud later that year became the second and more famous person to do it. Beachey wanted to try it himself. Curtiss refused to build him a plane capable of the stunt, and Beachey left the flying team. At the same time, he wrote a scathing essay about stunt flying, stating most people came to exhibitions out of morbid eagerness to see young pilots die. On March 7, 1913, he announced he would never again fly professionally, believing he was indirectly responsible for the deaths of several young aviators who had tried to emulate his stunts. In May, he would cite twenty-four fatalities, all of whom were "like brothers" to him.

Beachey went into the real estate business for a time, until Curtiss reluctantly agreed to build a stunt plane powerful enough to do the inside loop. Beachey returned and, on October 7, took the plane up in the air at Hammondsport, New York. On its first flight, either a downdraft or a loss of speed following a turn caused the plane to dip momentarily. One wing clipped the ridgepole of a tent on the field and the plane then swept two young women and two naval officers off the roof of a nearby hangar, from where they had been watching the flight, contrary to Beachey's wishes. One woman was killed and the others injured as a result of the fall, a distance of about . Beachey's plane crashed in a nearby field but he managed to walk away from the wreckage with minor injuries. A coroner's jury ruled the death of the 20-year-old woman as accidental.

Beachey became an aviation superstar: In one year, 17 million people saw him fly. At the time, the population of the United States was just 90 million people. His achievements include inventing figure 8s and the vertical drop. He was also the first pilot to achieve terminal velocity by flying straight toward the ground. On November 24, 1913, he flew an inside loop,

In 1914, he dive-bombed the White House and Congress in a mock attack, proving that the US government was woefully unprepared for the age that was upon it. built, the Taube (Dove), which included tricycle landing gear, enclosed cockpit, ailerons at the ends and rear of the wings, and cowling around his Gnome engine.

Thousands lined the streets for his funeral in San Francisco. He was interred at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma.

In popular culture Beachey's final flight, which resulted in his death, was remembered in a children's jump-rope rhyme which was sung by children in San Francisco in the 1920s,Lincoln Beachey thought it was a dream

To go up to heaven in a flying machine.

The machine broke down, and down he fell.

Instead of going to heaven he went to . . .

Lincoln Beachey thought it was a dream... Beachey is also referenced in pages 19 and 20 of the fiction book Johnny Got His Gun. In the book he is flying over the main character's home town.