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  • 2018-04-09 (xsd:date)
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  • Are These Daredevils Playing Tennis on an Airplane? (en)
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  • An image of two daredevils purportedly playing a game of tennis on the wings of an airplane soaring high above the city of Los Angeles may appear at first glance like the work of some sort of editing trickery. This photograph, however, is real; it documents a genuine act of aerial acrobatics performed by Gladys Roy and Ivan Unger in November 1925: Gladys Roy and Ivan Unger were both wing walkers or barnstormers and frequently performed high-flying stunts at state fair type events. Although news reports at the time reported that Roy and Unger played a game of tennis, we are slightly skeptical, given the laws of physics, that they were actually hitting and returning serves. Here is a blurb about the stunt published in the Tampa Morning Tribune in November 1925: The stunt was performed on the wings of an Curtis JN-4 Jenny plane piloted by Jack Tomac, which had a top speed of about 80 mph. Even at this relatively low speed, however, the physics of hitting a ball back and fourth would be problematic. Furthermore, since this stunt was performed thousands of feet above the spectators, there was no real need to use a tennis ball, as it would be difficult to see from the ground. Indeed, a site dedicated to aviation pioneers Jack and Helen Fryer noted that this tennis match was played without a ball: The tennis game may have been staged, but the stunt was real. A second photograph available via Getty Images shows Unger (foreground) and Roy (background) in slightly different positions (a tennis ball can't be spotted in either picture): Unger was a member of the well-known barnstorming troupe known as the 13 Black Cats. It's unclear if Roy was ever considered an official member of the group, but she did perform alongside them on occasion and made a name for herself by doing the Charleston on the wings of a plane. According to her letterhead, Roy also held the record for the world's lowest parachute jump from just 100 feet. Roy talked about some of her stunts in a May 1926 profile published in the Los Angeles Times: Sadly, after all of her high-flying stunts, Roy's life was cut tragically short in 1927 when she was struck by a propeller at the end of a photoshoot: Roy was only 25. We couldn't find any footage of Roy and Unger's tennis match, but we did find this video of another woman associated with the Black Cats, Gladys Ingle, changing a tire mid-flight: (en)
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