The headline in the tabloid press was: “Aerial Petting Ends in Wetting.” This would be even more fun, as a writer, if they had been deer hunters.Īnyway, Sperry claimed that the force of the impact “divested” them of their clothing. The two were rescued from the wreckage by a pair of duck hunters, who were surprised - to say the least - to find the pair buck naked. Polk were in a Curtiss flying boat that had been equipped with Sperry’s latest invention: The autopilot, a device that left Sperry’s hands free to do something other than fly the plane.Īpparently, one thing naturally led to another, something went wrong, and at an inauspicious moment, the plane took a nose drive and crash-landed in the drink. Polk was off serving his country in World War I, Sperry was giving flying lessons to Mrs. The official honor of being the first members of the Mile High Club, becoming its founders, goes to playboy inventor Lawrence Sperry, of Sperry Gyroscope fame, and Cynthia Polk, a New York socialite. It doesn’t count if you’re on the apron or in the hangar. Thank God my mother didn’t know what the Mile High Club really was.īecause, as most people know, the Mile High Club is slang for having had sex in an airplane. I ordered a pair at once and wore them proudly on my new flight jacket. It said something like “show your membership in this exclusive club.” Remember, this was before the Internet, so getting the real skinny on something mysterious wasn’t as easy as it is now.Įven though the pin said “club” on it, there was no membership requirement to buy the wings, so I assumed any pilot who flew more than a mile high above sea level was eligible to wear the wings. The accompanying descriptive text in the catalog was somewhat vague.
Anyway, looking through the latest issue of the Sporty’s Pilot Shop catalog at the flight school, I found a handsome set of pilot’s wings that said “Mile High Club” on them. Of course, then as now, most wings are military issue. Kathy, a non-pilot navigator from Texas, asks: Who founded the “Mile High Club?”Įmbarrassing true story (but probably not the one you’re expecting): When I was first learning to fly at age 17, I really, really, really wanted a set of pilot’s wings.
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