Three History-Making Aviators with Disabilities You'll Want to Know

Did you know that Calbraith Perry Rodgers, the first pilot to fly across America was partially deaf? Americans with disabilities like Rodgers have made history flying almost since the airplane was invented.

Here are just three stories of Americans with limb differences who have made aviation history.  

Neal Loving

Neal V. Loving was the first Black American and first person with double leg amputations to earn a racing pilot’s license. 

Born in 1916, Loving was 11 years old when Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic Ocean—feeding the young man’s fascination with aviation. He studied aeronautics in high school. In 1941, he designed and manufactured gliders to sell. In 1942, when all white Civil Air Patrol squadrons wouldn’t admit him, he helped start an all-Black squadron.  

In July 1944, Loving lost both legs in a glider crash. He designed and built airplanes to allow him to fly—customizing it to his needs.  

For instance, in the Loving WR-3, he added wooden blocks with metal caps to both rudder pedals in the cockpit of the WR-3 to keep his prosthetic lower legs from slipping off. The rudder pedals control side-to-side, or yaw, motion of an airplane. Flying these homebuilt airplanes, Loving became the first Black American certified to race airplanes. 

More About Loving       Collecting Loving's WR-3

Alverna Williams

Although Neal Loving earned his pilot’s licenses before losing his legs and then adapted a plane to continue flying—Alverna Babbs Williams (nee Bennett) was the first American with a limb difference at the time she earned her pilot’s license.  

Born in 1918, Williams’ legs were amputated above the knee following a car accident when she was 13 months old.  

As a child, she was interested in performing (once even running away to find the actor who played Tarzan). As a teenager, she joined the circus—even touring with Ringling Brothers as an acrobat and trapeze artist.  

It’s probably no surprise that her first husband, “Speedy” Babbs was a dare-devil. The couple bought an airplane for their 7th anniversary and Williams set out to learn to fly.  

When the Civil Aeronautics Administration refused to grant her a student permit, she got famed pilot Roscoe Turner to plead her case. It worked. She received her student permit in 1944 and her pilot’s license in 1946.  

More About Williams

Jessica Cox

Jessica Cox was the first licensed pilot without arms.  

Cox was born without arms in 1983. In 2009, when she was 26, Chicago’s Daily Herald reported “Jessica Cox likes to say there's nothing she can't do, only things she hasn't figured out how to do. Yet. … She uses her feet like hands - to drive a car (she has an unrestricted license), to type on a keyboard (25 words per minute), to pump her own gas, even to put in and remove her contact lenses.” She was black belt in taekwondo and learning to scuba dive.  

Cox also added to the list: fly an airplane. She earned her pilot’s license in October 2008.  

Cox flies an Ercoupe. “"It's the only airplane that does not have rudder pedals. Most planes require that you use all four limbs to control the airplane. This plane only requires two," Cox told the Tuscon Weekly.  

Cox continues to add to her list of accomplishments. She is an accomplished public speaker, a published author of Disarm Your Limits, a YouTuber, a fourth-degree black belt, and the founder of a nonprofit that aims to “arm children born with bilateral limb difference with the skills and tools needed to live independent and fulfilling lives.” 

More About Cox

This story was adapted from the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall.