Editing Barnstorming (section)

===Background===
[[Image:Moisant-John 03.jpg|thumb|An advertising [[poster]] for the early flying exhibition team, the Moisant International Aviators]]

The [[Wright brothers]] and [[Glenn Curtiss]] had early flying exhibition teams, with solo flyers like [[Lincoln Beachey]] and [[Didier Masson]] also popular before [[World War&nbsp;I]], but barnstorming did not become a formal phenomenon until the 1920s. The first barnstormer, taught to fly by Curtiss in 1909, was one [[Charles F. Willard|Charles Foster Willard]], who is also credited as the first to be shot down in an airplane when an annoyed farmer fired a [[varmint rifle|squirrel gun]] and broke his propeller.<ref>{{cite news|title=Charles F. Willard, Who is Trying to Perfect Monoplane; Bullet Hit Airship of Boston Aviator; Charles F. Willard of Hull Has Become Prominent in Aeronautics|page=3|date=June 2, 1910|location=Boston, Mass.|work=Boston Journal|quote=It was a Boston man who figured in the first case recorded of an aeroplane brought to earth by a bullet...Charles F. Willard, whose machine was wrecked in Joplin, Mo., during a cross-country flight}}
* {{cite news|title=Charles F. Willard Is Dead|date=February 2, 1977|work=The New York Times|location=New York|author=AP News|page=17}}
* {{cite book|title=Frail were my Wings|last1=Willard|first1=Charles F.|editor=Frank H. Ellis|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9ny49YQ7XlAC&pg=PA31|pages=31, 70|magazine=Flying Magazine|date=February 1956}}</ref>

During World War I, the [[United States]] manufactured a significant number of [[Curtiss JN-4]] "Jenny" [[biplanes]] to train its [[Military aviation|military aviators]], and almost every American airman learned to fly using the plane. After the war the U.S. federal government sold off the surplus material, including the Jennys, for a fraction of their initial value (they had cost the government $5,000 each, but were being sold for as low as $200).<ref name=southern/> This allowed many servicemen who already knew how to fly the JN-4s to purchase their own planes. The similar-looking [[Standard J]]-1 biplane was also available.

At the same time, numerous aircraft manufacturing companies sprang up, most failing after building only a handful of planes. Many of these were reliable and even advanced designs which suffered from the failure of the aviation market to expand as expected, and a number of these found their way into the only active markets—mail carrying, barnstorming, and smuggling. Sometimes a plane and its owner would drift between the three activities as opportunity presented.

Combined with the lack of [[Federal Aviation Regulations]] at the time, these factors allowed barnstorming to flourish.