He was a real-life Maverick, a brash military pilot who had pulled off perhaps the greatest stunt in Michigan history on a whim.
John Stanley Lappo, a Muskegon native, joined the Air Force during World War II and became one of the most celebrated pilots in the military. He served as first lieutenant during the Korean War and ended up flying 38 bombing missions over North Korea. He also flew several intelligence-gathering reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross in the process.
Then he gave it all away with one dangerous and impulsive stunt.
Lappo had been dreaming of flying under a bridge since his days in World War II.
“I thought it would be the Golden Gate,” he said in a later interview. “When I was flying missions to the Far East, I was a co-pilot, and I wanted to fly under the Golden Gate at night. But I couldn’t induce the pilot to do it.”
But on April 24, 1959, he was the pilot. As he and his crew were coming back from a training run in England, 39-year-old Capt. Lappo took his B47 Stratojet bomber under the Mackinac Bridge at 425 mph. It was a last-minute decision. As they were approaching the bridge, he polled his other two crew members as to whether he should do it.
His copilot voted yes. His navigator voted no.
With the vote in his favor, he swooped down over the Straits of Mackinac and said, “I’m taking her under!”
There’s only 150 feet between the water and the bridge, but Lappo leveled out above the water and zoomed underneath.
There were only two vehicles on the bridge at the time, a car and a truck, both heading north. Lappo probably scared the hell out of both drivers.
The daredevil stunt happened in the blink of an eye, but it ended up costing Lappo his wings and a whole bunch of money.
As it turned out, there was one big problem with Lappo’s scheme. The navigator who voted against the stunt was no ordinary airman. He was the son of an Air Force general, and he decided to tell daddy about it.
“I don’t know why he ratted on me,” Lappo said many years later as he retold the story to a senior citizen group in Muskegon. “Maybe I’ll look him up and ask him. Nobody would fly with him after he did that. No one would be associated with him.”
Within a few days, Lappo was court-martialed and found himself in a military tribunal.
He might have been a reckless daredevil, but he was also an honorable man, so he pleaded guilty and agreed to accept whatever punishment they wanted to hand out. The Air Force docked his pay $200 a month, a 25% pay cut, and told him that he was going to be grounded for life.
He would keep his rank and wouldn’t do any time behind bars, but he was assigned to an aircraft maintenance crew.
An impulsive two-second flight under the Mackinac Bridge had cost him his wings.
Lappo spoke about the flight many times afterward, and despite what it cost him, he never expressed regret. He would invoke the spirit of British mountaineer George Mallory, who was once asked why someone would want to climb Mount Everest.
“Because it’s there.”
“Why do men climb mountains? Or what motivates them to go into space? It’s just a sense of adventure that some men have and some don’t,” Lappo said.
Although he lost his wings in 1959, Lappo remained in the Air Force until 1972, when he retired with distinction as a lieutenant colonel.
Lappo and his wife moved to Alaska, where he worked for the state and owned a trucking company. He died on Nov. 15, 2003, at the age of 82, and he was given a military burial in Anchorage.
On June 28, 2020, a Lappo wannabe pulled a similar stunt. A Coast Guard officer captured the whole thing on video. A pilot in a small private plane flew under the Mackinac Bridge at about 2:50 p.m. at a low speed.
Flying under the Mackinac Bridge is highly illegal, so the Coast Guard and Michigan State Police launched an immediate investigation. There’s no record the guy was ever caught.
It was a stupid stunt, and it was also unoriginal. There will only ever be one John Stanley Lappo.
Buddy Moorehouse teaches documentary filmmaking at Hillsdale College.
