Golden Age of Air Racing Page 1
The Laird Super Solution was very successful in 1931. It was powered by an R-985 Wasp Jr. rated at 550hp which would later be barrowed to power the Gee Bee Model Z. With Jimmy Doolittle at the controls it won the Bendix trophy that year in this type of aircraft. The same year the Super Solution also set a new Transcontinental record from Burbank to New Jersey. It raced against the Gee Bee Model Z in the Thompson but was forced out because of an overheating engine. Only one was built but recently another one was built and certified. Some of the innovative features that went into a modified Super Solution but were later removed were the addition of retractable landing gear and clear longerons so that the pilot had better visibility.
The extremely limited forward visibility of the Laird Super Solution can be seen in this picture. Small windows were added to the sides of the fuselage just ahead of the pilot to try to give better visibility. These windows helped very little and therefore the plane was very difficult to take off and land due to this problem.
Perhaps the most famous race plane design of all time was the Gee Bee. Pictured above is a reproduction Gee Bee Model Z. This aircraft was brought to life in just five and a half weeks from conception to first flight! The Granville Brothers were the creators of this highly successful racer. They barrowed the R-985 engine that the Laird Super Solution had used to win the Thompson the year before and built the plane around it. This aircraft won the Shell Speed Dash in 1931 and set an absolute world speed record of 267.342mph. The aircraft's only accomplishment that it hadn't received was the 3km world speed record. It was re-engined with a Pratt and Whitney R-1340 and pilot Lowell Bayles prepared for the attempt. He was able to surpass the record at 281.75mph, but wasn't able to break the record by the required 4.97mph to set a new world record. Later they made an attempt on the record again. This time they clocked his first pass at over 300mph! During another pass the right outer wing collapsed as the plane pitched up and the plane spiraled into the ground. Bayles was killed instantly. At the time it was thought that a fuel cap had crashed through the canopy and injured the pilot causing the accident. Recent testing has shown that the ailerons may encounter flutter at over 260mph. This along with the possibility of a weakened main spar due to ground looping the Gee Bee in an earlier race was more than likely the cause of the failure.
The Gee Bee Model R was built to race in time for the 1932 races. Two models were built. The R-1 was built for the Thompson pylon race and powered by an R-1340 nine cylinder supercharged radial engine developing 800hp for all out speed while the R-2 was powered by an R-985 producing 535hp and built for the long distance Bendix cross country race. The Gee Bee had a barrel shaped fuselage to accomodate the large engine. It also had about thirty more square feet side area than wing area which could make it a difficult aircraft to control, especially in crosswind landings. In the 1932 Thompson race, pilot Jimmy Doolittle finished first while the R-2 flow by Lee Gehlbach finished fourth due to an oil leak. That same year Doolittle would set a new absolute world speed record of 296.287 mph in the R-1 with a max speed of 309mph. From 1933 onward there were a series of unfortunate crashes mostly due to pilot's failure to maintain speed and stalling the aircraft. Several of the pilots died and this led to many people thinking that the Gee Bee was an unsafe aircraft to fly. In the present era pilot Delmar Benjamin reverse engineered the Gee Bee R-2. He flew 1,500 hours accident free dispelling the rumors that the Gee Bee was a death trap. He attributes this to keeping his speed up, never below 100mph, and never make a 3-point landing in the aircraft.
Perhaps one of the most beautiful aircraft to ever grace the skies. It was designed and built by Howard Hughes and a team of engineers. This is a wind tunnel model of the Hughes H-1 Racer. It was used extensively to test the aircraft being designed to be the fastest aircraft in the world. The racer used a Pratt and Whitney R-1535 Twin Wasp Jr. rated at 825hp. Using a newly developed 100 octane racing fuel the engine put out nearly 1000hp! It was made using the latest technologies of wooden wings and aluminum fuselage with flush rivets instead of wood and fabric. On September 13, 1935 Howard Hughes set an absolute speed record for a landplane of 352.322mph which was over 11% greater than the previous record! (only 1% increase is required for the record) In 1937 he captured a transcontinental speed record from Burbank to Newark at an average of 327.15mph using only 48% of the available power! This record would stand until November 11, 1937 when a German Bf-108 would break the record with a speed of 380.178mph. On March 30,1939 that record would be beat by the Messerschmitt Me-209 at a speed of 483.41mph which would stand for over 30 years! The tight fitting bell shaped cowling would influence design in WWII fighter aircraft such as the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, Grumman F6F Hellcat, Mitsubishi Zero, and Focke-Wulf FW190. A replica of the original was built and flown by Jim Wright. In 2003 the plane experienced an engine failure and sadly we lost Jim and his beautifully crafted aircraft.
"Chief Oshkosh" was Steve Whittman's first homebuilt raceplane. It was powered by a Menasco C4S inline 4-cylinder inline engine rated at 150hp. The wingspan was only 13 feet wide! It was constructed in 1931 and entered the Cleveland races that year. Unfortunately it developed aileron flutter and had to drop out of many of the events that year. After a redesign the Chief was back and over the next several years it would win many races in its class. In 1937 it set a world speed record in its class of 238.22mph over a 100km course. The next year after a crash the airplane's fuselage and spare set of wings were rebuilt as "Buster" which now resides in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. In that same year, 1938, it hit speeds of 256mph! The Chief was reconstructed using the original wings and gear. Whittman designed and patented the single piece metal landing gear which was later copied by Cessna. Whittman also holds the record of most wins in pylon air racing that any single person has ever had. He competed in air racing from 1926 until 1989.
This airplane was conceived by Jimmie Wendell and Harry Williams. It was called the Model 44, but better known as the Wendell-Williams Red Lion. The Gilmore Oil Company sponsored the flamboyant aviator, Roscoe Turner, in the 1932 Thompson races. Turner was famous for feats such as wearing an Army Air Corp. WWI style uniform while racing even though he was a civilian, his seemingly perfect waxed mustache, and for flying with Gilmore. Gilmore was a lion cub which he had used as a publicity stunt since the Gilmore Oil Company's logo was a red lion. The lion would fly with him on his record flights until he got too big to fit in the cockpit. This particular aircraft pictured is a reproduction of the Wendell-Williams racer.
In 1932 Turner would fly this plane to a 3rd place finish in the Thompson, Bendix, and the Cleveland Shell Speed Dash races. He also set a new transcontinental speed record from New York to Las Angeles. In 1933 he won the Bendix and Shell Speed Dash races. Later he would become the only pilot to ever win the Thompson race three times. The smooth lines and the tight cowling with rocker cover fairings can be seen in this picture. This plane was powered by a 550hp Pratt and Whitney R-985 Wasp Jr. Later Turner would replace it with an 800hp P&W R-1340 Wasp Sr. for the 1933 Bendix Races. He would again replace the engine for the 1934 Thompson races with a P&W R-1690 Hornet rated at 1,000hp.
Legal Disclaimer - Please Read
© Brian Whittingham 2004
