America fell in love with aviation in the 1930s and the dangerous nature of air races drew large crowds to airports such as Cleveland Municipal Airport, shown as it appeared under construction on a race day in the photo below. A half-mile of grandstands adjacent to the home stretch of the race course accommodated 50,000 spectators and thousands more in standing room only. The large field on the right speaks for itself…each black dot is an automobile in the airport parking lots.
Some of the contests were relatively ho-hum endurance flights but the closed-course races—with pilots flying at high speeds and very low altitudes—were extremely hazardous; crashes were common, some were fatal.
THE GRANVILLE BROTHERS AND THEIR AIRPLANES
In the midst of the nation's financial problems in 1929, five brothers in the Granville family moved their aviation repair service at the East Boston Airport to Springfield, Massachusetts intending to build airplanes that would wind up in the hierarchy of the air-race community. Economic conditions notwithstanding, the Granville siblings—Zantford, Thomas, Robert, Mark and Edward—established a business known as Granville Brothers Aircraft Incorporated; their company acquired the nickname "Gee Bee" that morphed into the corporate logo and was displayed on nearly every airplane they manufactured.
Their first venture—designed and manufactured in 1929—was designated the Gee Bee Model A, an open cockpit, 2-place Sport Biplane. Innovative features included side-by-side seating to improve communications and dual control sticks mounted horizontally to make room for the heavy clothing required in New England winter weather. The Model A cruised at 100 mph and landed at 39 mph…no speed demon, but it was a beginning. With few exceptions from that point on, Gee Bee airplanes were named "Sportsters," an appellation that would surely resonate with the "sporty" aviators, i.e. air-race pilots.
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| Model A Sport Biplane |
A year later the Gee Bee Model B was rolled out and displayed significant changes in airplane design and performance. The Model B was a single-seat monoplane with a 100 horsepower in-line engine that produced a top speed of 145 mph. The Gee Bee airplanes were showing signs of using high-speed aeronautical technology.
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| Model B Sportster
1930 was a good year for the Granvilles. In addition to producing Models B and C, their Model X Sportster finished second in the The All-American Flying Derby, longest air race in the world at that time. Ten of the 18 pilots who left Detroit returned 11 days, 12 mandatory stops and 5,541 miles later. The Model X averaged 116 mph, only 11 mph less than the winner.
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| Model X Sportser |
EXPLORING IN THE AIR AND ON THE GROUND
The Q-1 Ascender (definitely not a "Sportster") was built in October 1931 to investigate the flight characteristics of an airplane a movable control surface located well ahead of the main wing a la the Wright brothers design 28 years earlier. Pitch and bank were controlled with a conventional stick topped with a steering wheel that provided directional control on the ground and in the air. The power source was a two-cylinder, 26 hp engine. The wings and other parts were cannibalized from a wrecked airplane and the Ascender was built in one week at a cost of $500.
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| Zantford Granville and The Ascender |
It was not a pretty airplane but it flew quite nicely. In a 1931 newsreel, Zantford performed a short demo flight in the Ascender then described (with considerable tongue in cheek) the advantages of the airplane's tricycle landing gear, to wit: "Any kind of a landing is perfectly alright, frontwards or sideways, on one wheel or any other way you'd wish." On a later flight with brother Mark Granville at the controls, the Ascender got into an unrecoverable spin and spiraled toward the ground. The airplane crashed, Mark survived and the airplane was subsequently scrapped. Probable cause?...undetermined. Post-crash, the Ascender was whimsically renamed "Ass-ender."
So much for that flying machine. In 1933 the Granville boys designed a three-wheel race car and named it "Atlanta" (name source unknown). The drawings (which was as far as Atlanta got) were probably influenced by the aerodynamic qualities of the upcoming Gee Bee Model R airplanes whose fat fuselages tapered to a point at the tail. The vertical stabilizer would likely help to keep the Atlanta on the straight and narrow.
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| The Gee Bee "Atlanta" automobile, 1933. |
The brothers wanted to enter their car in the 1934 Indianapolis 500 auto race but for reasons unknown, Indy race officials would not accept the Atlanta as a contestant.
ONWARD, UPWARD…AND A LOT FASTER
With the Ascender and Atlanta out of the picture the Granvilles (with a lot of help from their engineering staff) focused their efforts on airplanes that would fly very fast. They recognized that in general, air-cooled radial engines produce more power per pound than their liquid-cooled brethren, an advantage which led to a series of Gee Bees powered with so-called "round engines," capable of delivering up to 1,000 horsepower.
The Super Sportster Models R-1 and R-2 were the ultimate GB speedsters. These near-identical airplanes could achieve the high speeds required for closed-course and long-distance air racing and the GB staff engineered these planes to their aerodynamic limits. The result was two fat-nosed airplanes with minimum control surfaces, questionable stability, tiny wings, an almost non-functional vertical stabilizer and rudder…and the big radial engines must have created a ton of torque on takeoff.
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| Gee Bee Model R-1 |
At the completion of the first R-1 test flight the pilot had only one complaint, commenting that "the ship fishtailed during the landing approach and apparently did not have enough fin area." The problem was rectified by adding two square feet of fin and a similar increase in rudder area, a repair that made the R-1 look more like a real airplane. The photo above makes it look like the R-1's tail had been neatly amputated.
The Models R-1 and R-2 were subjected to tremendous stress during their high-speed flights, particularly those events that were flown on closed courses defined with pylons. One of the R-1s broke up in flight during an attempt to set a world speed record but post-accident investigations blamed pilot incapacitation, not structural failure. Hats off to the Gee Bee workers who designed and manufactured these sturdy birds…and most of the airplane's structure and coverings was wood.
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| Gee Bee Model R-2, undressed. |
(Note the increased surface area of the fin and rudder)
ENTER JAMES DOOLITTLE
Only two weeks before the entry deadline for the 1932 National Air Races in Cleveland the Granville brothers needed a highly qualified race pilot and the most highly qualified pilot needed a very fast airplane; a quirk of fate that brought Jimmy Doolittle and the Gee Bee R-1 together. Doolittle was an outstanding U.S. Army Air Corps pilot (he organized and led the B-25 raid on Tokyo in April 1942 ), a veteran race pilot and a well-educated aviator, evidenced by his PhD in aeronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Doolittle jumped at the opportunity to fly the GB Model R-1 and upon arrival at the Gee Bee factory he probably got a quick briefing (perhaps the fighter pilots' humorous pre-takeoff checklist…"kick tire, light fire, show me the go-handle!"). But Doolittle didn't need a checkout; he squeezed into the cockpit and headed west for Cleveland. Less than two hours later he wired the Granvilles: “Landed in Cleveland OK, Jim.” After winning the Thompson Trophy and setting a new world speed record (296 mph), Doolittle voiced his feelings about the R-1:
"She is the sweetest ship I've ever flown. She is perfect in every respect and the motor is just as good as it was a week ago. It never missed a beat and has lots of stuff in it yet. I think this proves that the Granville brothers up in Springfield build the very best speed ships in America today."
“She’s got plenty of stuff. I gave her the gun for just a few seconds and she hit 260 like a bullet without any change for momentum and without diving for speed, and she had plenty of reserve miles in her when I shut her down.”
Doolittle apparently enjoyed flying the Gee Bee R-1 but admitted “I didn’t trust this little monster. It was fast, but 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.”
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After several close calls Doolittle felt he had used up all his good luck and bowed out of air racing in 1932. He remained active as a pilot and became manager of the Shell Oil Company aviation department. One of his many significant projects was the development of 100-octane fuel for USAAF combat airplanes in World War Two.
THE SLIPPERY FINANCIAL SLOPE
As the 1930s moved into mid-decade, the Granville brothers were planning a fleet of commercial transport planes. First was the Fourster (a four-seat cabin airplane with a not-so-clever but definitive name), the Sixster (guess how many seats) and the Eightster, which would have been the queen of the Bee Gee airplane kingdom.
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| The Gee Bee Eightster |
But alas, the Great Depression (anathema to many small businesses) brought the Granvilles' commercial venture and the entire operation to a halt due to the lack of assets and the corporation sank into bankruptcy in 1934. The four- and six-seat transports never got off the drawing board and the Eightster was under construction when the company closed its doors. The brothers produced a total of 25 airplanes during their five years in the aviation business and only two original Gee Bee airplanes have survived. There is a Model A in the Connecticut Aeronautical Historical Association museum and the second is a Model R6-H (a stretched 2-seat R-1), exhibited in a Mexican museum.
Overall the accident record of the Gee Bee airplanes was exceptionally high…15 accidents and ten fatalities in a short period of time. Mishaps that involved the R-1 and R-2 Super Sportsters cost the lives of four pilots, events that led to the Model Rs' reputation as menacing, virtually uncontrollable airplanes…a misguided judgment because those accidents were often the result of inadequately trained pilots attempting to fly very sophisticated airplanes (re-read Jimmy Doolittle's closing comment re: the Model R.).
END NOTES
The National Air Races were spellbinders ever since their first event in 1920 at Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York. After nine years of military aviation demonstrations the show relocated to Cleveland, Ohio and the name was changed to Cleveland National Air Races. For the next 20 years (including a seven-year hiatus during WW II) the program included cross-country contests, closed-course races, static exhibits, aerobatics and much more.
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| Closed-course race map, 1949. (black circles indicate pylon positions) |
Closed-course races were the most exciting events because the pilots were constantly jockeying for position in their high-speed three-dimensional environment. Accidents were common and sure enough, a pilot was killed in a crash in 1947, followed by a similar incident in 1949 when a racer crashed into a house, killing the pilot and two people inside. Shortly afterward, several communities close to the airport barred races from their airspace, effectively ending the Cleveland National Air Races.
The annual event resumed in 1964 as the Reno [Nevada] National Championship Air Races, featuring multi-lap, multi-aircraft races with super-high-performance ex-military aircraft. The 2011 races were cancelled following an accident that killed the pilot and 10 spectators and injured 69 others.
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