Skelton Frankman, Betty (1926 - )
Media
Date
1956
Location
Daytona Beach, Florida
Media
Date
1956
Location
Daytona Beach, Florida
Media
Date
1956
Location
Daytona Beach, Florida
Betty Skelton (later Frankman) was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1926. In 1938, only twelve years old, she made her first solo flight. By 1950, Ms. Skelton and her open-cockpit Pitts biplane, named Little Stinker, were famous worldwide. Her specialty was a maneuver known as "the inverted ribbon cut," in which she flew her plane upside down, only 10 feet above the ground, and cut through a ribbon stretched between two poles.
Besides her life-long passion for flight, Skelton also loved fast cars, and she set the women's land-speed record three times over the NASCAR-measured mile on the sands of Daytona Beach, the last time in 1956 when she hit just over 145 mph in a Corvette (the men's record was only 3 mph faster). She still holds more combined aviation and automotive records than anyone else (male or female) in history.
Working side-by-side with the most legendary figures in Chevrolet (and especially Corvette), Skelton became the first female technical narrator at auto shows and other high-profile events. The Design chief at the time, Harley Earl, created a one-of-a-kind Corvette for Skelton, complete with a pale-gold paint job, which she drove to pace all of the 1957 NASCAR races.
Retired and living in Florida, in a recent interview, Skelton proclaimed that she would still welcome the challenge to break her old records.
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