There is a moment in every Younkin Airshows performance when the Twin Beech lumbers down the runway, its two radial engines filling the air with a sound that belongs to a different era, and then the pilot does something that makes no sense. He rolls it. A 1943 navigation trainer, an aircraft designed to haul freight and teach young men to find their way across oceans, executing a roll on takeoff in front of a crowd that cannot quite believe what it is seeing. The act that follows includes Cuban eights, point rolls, a loop, and the Elephant Waltz, in which the wings rock more than ninety degrees with the gear and flaps fully extended. None of it is supposed to be possible. All of it happens anyway.
The man at the controls is Matt Younkin of Siloam Springs, Arkansas. The airplane is the same one his father Bobby perfected the act in over fifteen years of airshow performances. Bobby is gone now. So is Matt's sister Amanda. So is Jim, Matt's grandfather, who started the whole improbable chain of events by loving aviation so completely that it became the family's identity across three generations. The story of the Younkins is the story of what happens when a gift runs so deep in a family that it outlasts everything, including tragedy.
James Ray Younkin was born on April 3, 1929, in Fairfield, Iowa, the youngest of three brothers, all of whom built model airplanes and dreamed of flight. His two older brothers enlisted in the Navy to fly in World War II. When Jim was thirteen the family moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he finished high school and graduated in 1946. He joined the Army that same year, and was assigned, in the way the Army sometimes assigns people to things that have nothing to do with what they love, to play in a dance orchestra at Fort Knox. He was a gifted musician who played saxophone and clarinet, and he would continue playing in jazz groups throughout his life. When his service ended he used the GI Bill to put himself through the University of Arkansas, earning an engineering degree in 1952. He was twenty-three years old, trained as an engineer, fascinated by aviation, and about to begin a career that would touch nearly every general aviation cockpit in the world.
He went to work for Hughes Aircraft in Tucson, briefly taught electronic engineering at the University of Arkansas, and then moved to Collins Radio in Iowa, where he invented a gyroscope for airplane navigation systems. The gyroscope was not a new idea. The B-29 Superfortress had used gyroscopes as the mechanical heart of its analog fire control computer during the Second World War, precision instruments that calculated lead angles in real time by spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute inside housings machined to tolerances measured in thousandths of an inch. What those wartime gyroscopes were not was practical for the average pilot. They were military-grade, expensive, bulky, and required constant maintenance by trained technicians. General aviation in the 1950s was still using autopilots built from surplus wartime components, technology a decade old and never designed for the demands of civilian flying. Jim Younkin changed that.
He moved to Mitchell Industries in Mineral Wells, Texas, and designed the Century I through IV autopilot series, the first practical autopilots built specifically for general aviation aircraft. They replaced the antiquated surplus systems that had been employed since the war. He also designed one of the first successful horizontal situation indicators, a derivative of which is still being manufactured and installed in aircraft today. By the time he was finished Jim Younkin held twenty patents and had fundamentally changed how light aircraft navigate. He was inducted into the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame and the Experimental Aircraft Association's Vintage Aircraft Association Hall of Fame. The EAA's president called him the very heart of the vintage aircraft movement.
In 1978, at forty-nine years old, Jim retired from the autopilot world and started a second career doing something he had always wanted to do with his hands. He began restoring and building antique aircraft, focusing on the Golden Age racing planes of the 1930s that had captivated him as a boy. He built a replica of the Travel Air Mystery Ship. He built a replica of Howard's Mr. Mulligan. He modified a series of Beechcraft Staggerwings that became known as Younkin Staggerwings. He designed and scratch-built four examples of his own aircraft design, the Mullicoupe, which combined elements of the Monocoupe and Mr. Mulligan into something entirely his own. The aircraft he built and restored now fill the Arkansas Air and Military Museum in Fayetteville, which Jim co-founded and considered one of his proudest achievements. In 1999, not yet finished with innovation, he co-founded TruTrak Flight Systems, the first general aviation digital autopilot company, and began his third career designing state of the art flight instruments. He was seventy years old. He prided himself as a gadgeteer. His wife Ada called him an endearing genius. He died on May 13, 2019, at the age of ninety, and donated his body to science and medical research. He is survived by his wife Ada, his daughter Robin, his grandson Matt, and a family that carries his name into the sky every time the Beech 18 takes the runway. Three careers, twenty patents, two aviation halls of fame, and a workshop full of aircraft he had built with his own hands because it brought him joy. In 2025 Arkansas PBS premiered a documentary about the family called Artistry in Air: The Story of the Younkins, a fitting tribute to a family that gave everything to the sky and kept giving anyway.
Robert Allan Younkin was born on October 30, 1955, in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, to Jim and Catherine Younkin. He was fascinated with aircraft from the age of three, influenced by his father Jim from the very beginning. He grew up watching Jim build things in the workshop, understanding from childhood that aviation was not something the Younkins did for recreation. It was something they were. He learned to fly at sixteen, and realized in his very first solo flight that he could do aerobatics. He had already learned the fundamentals flying radio-controlled model planes and found the transition to a full-size aircraft surprisingly natural. As his father Jim had observed watching Bobby attempt a difficult maneuver as a boy, maybe aerobatics is like music. Those who are going to excel have a special gift. Bobby had to be flying all the time. He eventually married Jeanie Younkin of Fayetteville, and together they had two children. Amanda Michelle Younkin was born on March 14, 1986, in Springdale, Arkansas, to Bobby and Jeanie Younkin. Matt Younkin was born in Springdale as well. Both children grew up inside the airshow world their father was building.
For his high school graduation Jim gave Bobby five hours of instruction with legendary aerobatics pilot Duane Cole, one of the most gifted teachers in the history of the discipline. By the time Bobby turned eighteen he had flown in his first airshow, in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, performing in a North American AT-6 Texan. He flew airmail briefly in the late 1970s, ran a successful air charter service, and made his living in the years that followed doing what the Younkin family had always done with aircraft: finding something nobody else thought was possible and then doing it anyway. He also, somewhere along the way, acquired a pet lion cub. He named it Samson, after his beloved Wolf Samson biplane. The lion lived with the family near Springdale and flew exactly once, on the trip home as a cub, and then declined all further aviation opportunities. Bobby Younkin, the man who flew cargo planes through loops and rolls, had a lion that would not get back in an airplane. Even Samson had limits. Bobby received the Bill Barber Award for Showmanship at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in 2004, one year before his death. He had logged more than 15,000 hours over his thirty year career. His son Matt would later win the same award in 2012.
The idea came to him while he was hauling freight in a Twin Beech. He was sitting at the controls of a 1943 navigation trainer, a workhorse transport that had trained half the bombardiers and navigators of the Second World War and spent the decades since carrying cargo and passengers around the country, and he thought: I could do aerobatics in this. Most pilots would have dismissed the thought immediately. The Beech 18 had no business doing aerobatics. It was heavy, underpowered by aerobatic standards, and designed for exactly the kind of steady, predictable flight that is the opposite of what airshow crowds come to see. Bobby Younkin was not most pilots. In 1989 he found the right airframe and prepared it for airshow use. The specific modifications Bobby made to that original aircraft were never publicly documented, but the Beech 18's airframe proved strong enough for aerobatic loads as built. What Bobby brought to the equation was not a rebuilt airplane but an entirely new way of flying one. The crowds were stunned. Everyone told him he was crazy. He considered that a recommendation.
He did not stop there. The same year he debuted the Beech 18 act, Bobby converted a Learjet 23 for aerobatic use. The Learjet 23 was the ninth one ever built, a corporate jet designed to carry wealthy passengers in comfort and style at 400 miles per hour. It had never been intended for aerobatics. Bobby had to apply to the FAA for special approval to fly it in airshows, approval granted on the basis of his track record as a pilot. He got it. The red and black Learjet became one of the most visually spectacular acts in airshow aviation, climbing 6,500 feet and reaching 400 miles per hour in a routine that combined grace with raw power in ways nobody had thought to combine them before.
In 2002, Bobby joined forces with Jimmy Franklin and Jim LeRoy to form the X-Team and their signature routine, the Masters of Disaster. Jimmy Franklin had been performing airshows since he was nineteen years old. He was widely regarded as the most naturally talented pilot who had ever performed at an airshow. His signature aircraft was a massive black Waco biplane with a General Electric J85 jet engine bolted to its belly, an aircraft that combined the visual elegance of a 1930s biplane with the raw noise and power of a jet engine in a combination that stopped crowds cold. Bobby and Jimmy had been friends for years, performing separately and occasionally together, their styles complementary and their friendship genuine. Jim LeRoy was the third member, flying his Bulldog Pitts, a modified S2S with a 400 horsepower Lycoming engine. The three of them flying together, simulating a World War One dogfight at low altitude in front of crowds of thousands, was one of the most celebrated acts in the airshow world.
Bobby had also recently bought a Super Decathlon with a specific purpose in mind. He intended to teach both Matt and Amanda aerobatics in it. He had flown with Matt twice in the airplane before Moose Jaw, working mainly on slow rolls. Bobby always said the slow roll was the key to almost every aerobatic maneuver. Master the slow roll and you can master anything. He never got to finish teaching them.
On July 10, 2005, Bobby Younkin and Jimmy Franklin were killed.
They were performing the Masters of Disaster routine at the Saskatchewan Centennial Air Show at Canadian Forces Base Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan, Canada. It was a Sunday afternoon, 4:20 local time. Bobby was flying the Wolf Samson, his beloved 450 horsepower replica biplane. Jimmy Franklin was flying his jet-powered Waco. The routine called for a complex modified version of a maneuver called the Dairy Turn that required precise timing and visual contact between the pilots. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board later determined that the modification introduced multiple potential collision points and allowed the pilots to lose visual contact with each other just before the critical crossing. The Wolf Samson and the jet Waco collided belly to belly in a ball of fire in front of thousands of spectators. Both pilots were killed instantly. Jim LeRoy, in his Bulldog Pitts, did not collide and landed safely.
Jimmy Franklin's son Kyle had just finished a wing-walking performance with his father earlier that day. He was standing in the announcer's booth, calling the Masters of Disaster routine as it unfolded above him, when his father and his father's closest friend collided above the crowd. He watched it happen from the booth.
Kyle Franklin and Bobby Younkin's daughter Amanda had known each other since childhood. They had been dating for a year. In October 2005, three months after watching their fathers die together at Moose Jaw, Kyle and Amanda were married. Aviation had taken both of their fathers on the same afternoon. They chose to find in each other what had survived.
Bobby's Beech 18 sat as a static display in Tullahoma, Tennessee for two years after his death. Matt Younkin, Bobby's son, had grown up inside the airshow world the same way his father had grown up inside Jim's workshop, understanding from childhood what the family was and what it did. He had learned to fly at fourteen in a Piper J-3 Cub from family friend Ken Collier. At fifteen, Chuck Irvin, the same instructor who had taught Bobby to fly, refined Matt's skills. On his sixteenth birthday he soloed in his grandfather Jim's own 1928 Travel Air 4000 biplane, the same aircraft Jim had built and restored with his own hands. Three generations of Younkins in a single flight. Bobby had bought the Super Decathlon to teach both Matt and Amanda aerobatics. After his death Matt took it out alone and taught himself the rest, just as Bobby had always said he would have to do eventually anyway. Bobby had told him the slow roll was the key. Matt perfected his slow rolls, then used the same radio-controlled model instincts his father had used to teach himself everything that followed. At Sun-N-Fun 2007, Matt debuted his version of his father's Beech 18 routine. The act his father had spent fifteen years perfecting was now his.
The following year, at Sun-N-Fun 2008, Matt debuted something his father had never done. He took the Beech 18 up at night. Equipped with more than fifty externally visible lights, the aircraft glowing from above and twinkling violently from below, combined with smoke, noise, choreography, and a musical score, the Twin Beech Night Spectacular became one of the most sought after acts in the airshow world. Matt had taken what his father built and made it something new.
Meanwhile, Amanda and Kyle had built something of their own. Amanda was a pilot in her own right, holding tailwheel and multiengine ratings, and she had become an accomplished wingwalker. Their act, Pirated Skies, had Amanda standing on the upper wing of Kyle's Waco biplane while Kyle flew the routines below her. She also served as business manager for both Franklin's Flying Circus and Younkin Airshows, and announced Matt's airshow routine. She was, by every account, the organizational heart of what remained of the family's airshow operations. Kyle, reserved and precise, flew. Amanda handled everything else and then climbed out onto the wing.
On March 12, 2011, at Air Fiesta 2011 at Brownsville-South Padre Island International Airport in Texas, the engine of Kyle's Waco biplane lost power during their wingwalking performance. Amanda was on the top wing in her rack when it happened. Kyle kept the aircraft straight and level, resisting every instinct to turn for the pavement, giving Amanda every possible second to unstrap from her position and climb down into the forward cockpit where she would have the best chance in a hard landing. She made it into the cockpit. Kyle executed a forced landing to vegetation-covered terrain adjacent to the runway. A post-impact fire broke out. Amanda was trapped in the front cockpit by her safety tether. She sustained burns to approximately seventy percent of her body. She was twenty-five years old. Her brother Matt witnessed the accident from the ground. Amanda Franklin died on May 27, 2011, of burns and the complications that followed.
Kyle Franklin had now lost his father, his father-in-law, and his wife to aviation accidents. Matt Younkin had lost his father and his sister. Jim Younkin, eighty-one years old and still in his workshop in Springdale, had outlived his son and his granddaughter. Any rational calculation of risk would have ended the Younkin family's relationship with aviation at any one of these points. The calculation was never rational. Bobby had said it clearly enough, in the way that people who have thought hard about something say it clearly: there is risk in what we do. We acknowledge that. We take every precaution that we can to eliminate the risk to make it safe. But if you live your life in fear that something could go wrong, you're not living your life.
Matt Younkin still flies the Beech 18 his father bought in 2000, the same 1943 AT-7C navigation trainer that spent the war teaching young men to find their way across oceans. It still wears the nose art of Miss Ellie, the pink elephant that begins and ends Matt's daytime show as the airplane lumbers down the runway to the Pink Elephants theme before doing things no navigator trainer was ever supposed to do. At AirVenture 2012, Matt became the first second-generation recipient of the Bill Barber Award for Showmanship. His father had won the same award. The same award, the same airplane, a different generation of the same family, still finding the impossible and doing it anyway.
Jim Younkin never stopped building. After Bobby died he kept working in his workshop, kept flying, kept designing. In the last years of his life he would sit with his wife Ada in Springdale and talk about the aircraft he had built and the ones he still wanted to build. He died in 2019 and donated his body to science, consistent with the engineering mind that had spent ninety years figuring out how things worked. His aircraft fill the Arkansas Air and Military Museum. His autopilots, or their direct descendants, are still flying in cockpits across the world.
The Younkin family has been described as dominating general aviation for sixty years. That is accurate as far as it goes. What it does not capture is what it cost. The sky that Jim Younkin devoted his life to understanding took his son and his granddaughter. It took Jimmy Franklin, Bobby's closest friend, on the same afternoon it took Bobby. It took Jim LeRoy, who had landed safely at Moose Jaw, two years later in Dayton. The airshow world the Younkins helped build has a long list of names on it that way.
I photographed the Younkin Beech 18 at the California Capital Airshow in 2018, both the daytime act and the night show. At the time I knew I was watching something unusual, a transport aircraft doing things transport aircraft are not supposed to do, and then doing them again in the dark with fifty lights blazing against a black sky. I was focused on getting the shot. It wasn't until I sat down to research the story behind the airplane that the full weight of what I had been watching landed. Jim Younkin was still alive that day, eighty-nine years old, the man who had started the whole improbable chain of events by loving aviation so completely that it became his family's identity. I didn't know that standing on the flight line. I know it now. Sometimes the most significant things you witness don't reveal themselves until later.
Matt still flies. The Beech 18 is still in the air. Bobby said you're not living your life if you live it in fear. The Younkins have lived it. All of it.