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The Gee Bee Racers of the early 1930s created winners and widows
In the 1930s, the Granville Brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts, developed a line of aircraft that some believed were either the fastest planes in the world or the most dangerous machines ever made. In truth, the Gee Bee Racers were both.
The year was 1931, and the Great Depression was devastating to the once-thriving sport aircraft industry. Nevertheless, the Granville brothers designed the Model Z Super Sportster to compete for the Thompson Trophy at the National Air Races in Cleveland that year, in hopes it would lead to a sales boost.
The Model Z Super Sportster was basically a giant engine, the Pratt and Whitney R-985 radial producing 535 horsepower, stuffed into the smallest airframe possible. It was completed in just five weeks at a cost $5,000 (more than $106,000 in today's dollars). In August 1931, it was ready for its maiden flight.
Due to its small size, measuring 15 feet long and 23 feet in wingspan, the Model Z was a lot to handle, but an absolute hot rod with a top speed of 267 miles per hour. The Model Z began stacking up record-qualifying speeds and wins. On September 7, 1931, barely a month after its first flight, Lowell Bayles piloted the Z and won the Thompson Trophy Pylon race. The brothers recouped their investment.
Its story doesn't end there.
It was slated for more power, and a larger 750 horsepower radial engine was installed. On the first flight of the more powerful model, it was unofficially clocked at 314 mph. Another flight was officially clocked at 281 mph. On December 5, the Z was making another speed record attempt when tragedy struck.
In one of the best-known crash films from this era, the Z is seen blazing through the sky when its right wing folds in half, sending the Z into a corkscrew and exploding on impact. Investigation of the crash with a frame-by-frame examination of the footage determined that the gas cap was not secured, came off, and punched through the windshield, striking Bayles in the face, knocking him unconscious. The change in pitch caused severe vibration in the right wing, causing a structural failure. Bayles was killed, but was posthumously awarded a new speed record.
Although the Gee Bee won several races that year, the plane was considered unsafe due to the crash.
The Gee Bee R-1 & R-2 Super Speedster
In 1932, design work began on the successor to the Z model. Engineers Zantford Granville and Howell Miller used a wind tunnel to determine that a more teardrop-shaped design reduced drag. The new design was wider at the engine and tapered back, with the cockpit now in front of the vertical stabilizer. The result was the R-1 and its sister ship, the R-2.
In its first race, the R-1 was piloted by Jimmy Doolittle, future commander of the World War II Tokyo Raid, who flew to victory at the 1932 Thompson Trophy race and set a world land speed record of 296 mph. Publicly, Doolittle spoke highly of the Gee Bees' performance.
Privately, Doolittle had other thoughts about the plane's stability.
'I could tell from the first moment that it was a touchy and probably unpredictable airplane. I didn't trust this little monster. It was fast, but flying it was like balancing a pencil or an ice cream cone on the tip of your finger. You couldn't let your hand off the stick for an instant, and I didn't know how much angle of bank would be safe when making pylon turns.'
The R-1 would come to deserve its dangerous reputation. In 1933, pilot Russell Boardman was killed after taking off from a refueling stop at the Bendix trophy race. The plane was rebuilt with an 18-inch extension to its fuselage. The aircraft crashed again in a runway overrun incident soon after its rebuild and was sold as is to Cecil Allen just before the bankruptcy auction that ended the Granville Brothers' company.
Allen rebuilt the aircraft with several modifications, including the addition of a rear fuel tank for long-distance races. When learning about this change, Gee Bee engineer Pete Miller wrote to Allen, warning him never to fill the rear tank, as it would drastically change the center of gravity and lead to some bad things.
In 1935, Allen took off from Burbank airport for the run to the Cleveland Bendix trophy race with all tanks full, and bad things did indeed happen. The Gee Bee crashed after takeoff in a field just beyond the runway, killing Allen.
Of the 22 original Gee Bees, none survived. There are a few replicas about, both flying and non-flying. The Fantasy of Flight museum in Lakeland, Florida has flying replicas on display, and another flying replica was used in the Disney film 'The Rocketeer.'
The Gee Bees were ahead of their time. They were designed for speed and required a skilled pilot. Meanwhile, many believed they were simply killer planes.
In 1954, the U.S Air Force developed a similar aircraft, the F-104 Starfighter. While not directly based on the Gee Bee's design, it, too, was built for speed as an interceptor, and it handled differently. It was in the Starfighter that the post-war German Luftwaffe set a record for pilots killed. Between 1961 and 1989, they lost 292 of 916 aircraft, and 116 pilots were killed, earning it the nickname Witwenmacher – the Widowmaker.
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