California 1937 - 1939
Ken Knowland did not send flowers. Engaged to be married to a San Francisco heiress, he was having an affair with his new young secretary during the reopening of America West airport over the Labor Day holiday, 1937. Both the airport and the Flying Circus Barbara staged and flew in were huge successes.
Air show fans got more than they expected when Barbara and Leila not only repeated the aerobatic maneuvers they had executed the year before, but added some hair-raising new spins and rolls.
Barbara did a solo for the finale. She told Leila it was too dangerous for a new mother to attempt, and her friend gladly let her steal the end of the show.
Barbara had gotten special training from Jackie Oldham in performing an Immelmann turn. The maneuver allows a pilot to quickly reverse the plane's course. Jackie had several brushes with death trying to master the trick, when her plane would go into deep power spins. Once, she was only able to pull out of a spin when she was less than 500 feet from crashing, and righting the plane could have spun her into the ground.
But even though she had learned to pull her plane out of spins, she tried to talk Barbara out of doing an Immelmann at her air show.
"I have to do something very daring, very death-defying," Barbara insisted. "Please teach me the Immelmann!"
Against her better judgment, Jackie taught Barbara the dangerous maneuver, while giving her some of the best aviation schooling the younger, less experienced pilot ever had. In teaching her the Immelmann turn, Jackie stressed that under-standing a spin is extremely important to any pilot but especially a stunt flier, because almost everything that can go wrong with a plane pulls it into a spin.
Barbara's Immelmann stunt brought the crowd to its feet at her Air Circus. Gail, who came for the big day in her friend's life and held her son and Barbara's godson in her arms as she watched, turned the baby's head away as Barbara took her used Northrop Gamma into its final spin. She even closed her own eyes until Barbara pulled her plane out of it and landed.
The only thing that would have made the day complete for Barbara was if Gail had told her she was going to move out to Mohave and join her as a partner at the airport.
"I do need a partner now," Barbara told her as they celebrated at the Genda ranch that night. "Russ Oberman is leaving, to be a beach bum in Hawaii. I've already bought him out. What do you say? You and I... partners?"