Col. Umstead, a distinguished military aviator and aviation pioneer, earned his pilot's wings in 1918 and flew more than 6,800 hours in a 32 year flying career, with much of it involving the hazardous work of testing new and experimental airplanes in an era when aviation was still in its infancy and progress was being made mostly through trial and error. As a young pilot his superior airmanship was recognized by his being chosen as one of a select group of pilots to fly escort for Charles Lindberg during his tour of the U.S. in 1927 following his historic flight. In 1928 he was selected to do performance testing of the 15 aircraft entered in the Guggenheim Foundation's Safe Airplane Competition and in 1932 was chosen to perform high speed testing for the National Aeronautics Assn. of the aircraft entered in that year's National Air Races. As Chief of the Air Corps' Flying Branch at Wright Field from 1936-1941 he was the acknowledged "dean" of Army test pilots and flew more than 2000 test hours in over 100 types of new aircraft being evaluated for procurement by the Air Corps, including most of those that were to be used in WWII. He set an official transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to New York in a B-17 in 1939. His specialty was the big 4-engined bombers and he piloted the two largest airplanes of that era on their maiden flights — the XB-15 in 1940 and the giant XB-19 (then the world's largest airplane) in 1941. Col. Umstead concluded his illustrious career in 1951 and died in 1958 at age 62.