How the ‘Flying Flapper of Freeport’ pulled off one of the most audacious stunts in aviation history

Seventeen-year-old Elinor Smith was sitting in the cockpit of her Waco 9 biplane, making final preparations for takeoff, when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

Six decades later, she could remember the shock of looking up “into the handsome face of the world’s hero, Charles Lindbergh,” she wrote in her memoir.

“Good luck, kid,” said Lindbergh. “Keep your nose down in the turns.”

Word was clearly out: Smith — the world’s youngest licensed aviator — was about to stage an audacious feat of flying.

Taking off from Long Island’s Curtiss Field, she planned to climb to about 6,000 feet and follow the East River into New York City. Then she would drop down to just 10 feet above the water and pass under each of the four suspension bridges then spanning the river.

Despite her age, Smith was no novice flyer. She took her first plane ride in 1918 at the age of 6. By age 10, she was already training to become an aviator.

“Becoming a professional pilot was for me the most desirable goal in the world, and I was not going to allow age or sex to bar me from it,” she later wrote.

At 15, she was ready to solo and won a license from the Fédération aéronautique international (FAI) signed by Orville Wright himself. She set a world altitude record of 11,889 feet a few weeks later. In September 1927, she became the…