![]() But in December, while trying to set a new air speed record, Bayles had crashed in the Gee Bee and died. In the Thompson, Hall took a Model Y Senior Sportster to fourth and Lowell Bayles flew a Wasp Jr.-powered Model Z Super Sportster to victory.īut Hall had since split with the Granvilles, and in search of ever greater speed, the brothers had simply bolted the most powerful radial engine in the world-a nine-cylinder, supercharged, 740-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp Senior radial-into the Model Z. Chief engineer Bob Hall's “Gee Bee” (for Granville Brothers) racers had dominated the 1931 Nationals. “Granny” Granville, eldest of five brothers who had set up an airplane factory in an abandoned dance pavilion in Springfield, Mass. However, four days after his crash in the Super Solution, Doolittle received a phone call from Zantford D. But he was not destined, it appeared, to ever win the Thompson Trophy. On top of all that he had a doctorate in engineering from M.I.T. He had been first to cross the country in less than 24 hours, first in less than 12 hours, and first to fly from Ottawa to Mexico City via Washington, D.C., in one day. As an Army lieutenant, he had won the 1925 Schneider Trophy seaplane race he was the first man to perform an outside loop, and the first to complete a “blind” flight from takeoff to touchdown by instruments alone. The news spread rapidly across an aviation-crazy nation, for Doolittle was arguably the most famous pilot in the world. ![]() The Laird LC-DW-500 Super Solution, after Doolittle’s first flight with the new retractible gear He emerged unhurt, but with the plane’s prop blades bent and fuselage crumpled, the Super Solution would never make the Nationals. Finally he resigned himself to bellying in the LC-DW-500. “I spent two hours trying to jar the gear loose.nothing worked,” recalled Doolittle. But in the seventh lap of the Thompson, the plane’s 525-hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior radial engine blew a piston, forcing Doolittle to drop out. In the more powerful Super Solution, Doolittle had won the 1931 Bendix and gone on to set a transcontinental speed record of 2,882 miles in 11 hours, 16 minutes, and 10 seconds, while averaging 217 mph. Its predecessor, the Laird LC-DW-300 Solution, had been the only biplane ever to win the Thompson Trophy. The main events-the Burbank-to-Cleveland Bendix Trophy endurance race and the closed-course, 100-mile Thompson Trophy dash-demanded two very different types of aircraft, but Doolittle believed he had a plane capable of winning both. Less than two weeks remained before Labor Day weekend and the 1932 National Air Races at Cleveland, Ohio. It was being flown by perhaps the consummate airman of the age, Major James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, USAAC retĪll eyes craned upward at the speedy little red-and-yellow biplane cutting through the Kansas skies: one of the top two or three fastest aircraft in the world, the Laird LC-DW-500 Super Solution. One of the fastest racers of its day, the R2 won the Bendix race of 1932 with Jimmy Doolittle at the stick, setting a pace of better than 250 mph.Consummate airman of aviation’s Golden Age: Maj. By midday on Sunday the R2 was back in familiar form, looking like the powerhouse she truly is. Only the bright-red engine cowling, wheel pants and wing fairings remained on the hangar floor. By evening the airplane was in Fantasy of Flight’s maintenance hangar with the wings and horizontal tail surfaces already bolted back on the airframe. Weeks says the addition of the familiar red-and-white Golden Age speedster to his stable of more than 160 aircraft “really fills a niche in the collection.” Benjamin and the aircraft rolled onto the ramp early on Saturday morning, Jan. However, once flutter testing is completed there is talk of Weeks and Benjamin flying the R2 along with the yellow-and-black Z-model Gee Bee that Weeks already owns and displays at Fantasy of Flight. After logging 1500 hours with the Gee Bee, Benjamin is preparing his next project, which he refers to only as “a more unique airplane than this one.” Kermit Weeks, the visionary owner of Fantasy of Flight, intends to have the aircraft flutter-tested prior to doing any flying himself in the muscular mini. Two years after mothballing his famed Gee Bee R2 racer replica, air show icon Delmar Benjamin spent five days last week at the wheel of a 27-foot U-Haul truck moving his pride and joy to its new home at Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Fla., Jamie Beckett of The Flying Life magazine this week told AVweb.
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