Paul Albert Mantz (1903-July 8, 1965) was a leading stunt and racing pilot of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
Dismissed from United States Army flight school for recklessness in 1927, he moved to California and started an air charter service before eventually moving into movie stunt flying. He made a specialty of flying airplanes through the open doors of large buildings - an airplane hangar in the 1932 film Air Mail, for example. Mantz's air charter service also flourished, and became a favorite of Hollywood stars, many of whom became friends. He tutored Amelia Earhart in long-distance flying and navigation before her attempted round-the-world flight in 1937, and won the Bendix Trophy three consecutive years (1946-1948) in a converted war-surplus P-51.
Mantz's career as a movie stunt pilot continued into the late 1950s, when he joined forces with fellow pilot Frank Tallman to form Tallmantz Aviation. The company supplied airplanes, as well as the services of its two founders, to movie directors who wanted to film flying sequences. Mantz died on July 8, 1965, while working on one such movie: The Flight of the Phoenix. Flying a built-for-the-film plane with skids instead of conventional landing gear, Mantz struck a small hillock while taking off from a desert site in Arizona. The plane nosed over, killing him instantly.
Aviation writer Don Dwiggins published a biography of Mantz, Hollywood Pilot, in 1967.
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