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The battle for Land Speed Records (George Webster) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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BreakFix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
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We have a very professional speaker here who is used to commanding a classroom.
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George Webster was a teacher for many years, and I think this is going to
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be a very scholarly presentation.
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He's from Oakville, Ontario.
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And he has been a friend of the center since the day it opened in 1999.
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He's been here at all of our activities and been a big supporter of ours and
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we're delighted he's going to speak.
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Now George has been coming to Watkins Glen since 1959.
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I think you were about four that year, weren't you?
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He also was present at every U.
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S.
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Grand Prix.
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You might wonder how George got into this and he'll probably tell you.
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Land speed records are something that we all like in motorsport, but many of us...
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Have been to road races, and we're aware of land speed.
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George was originally interested in road racing.
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Since he retired from teaching, since the 70s, he's been a motoring journalist.
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A number of magazines he's written for, Auto Week Canada.
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He's covered NASCAR and car for other publications.
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PRN Ignition, National Speed Sport News, the website Go Racing Inc.
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He's also been a photographer.
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He's very, very knowledgeable in this field.
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I asked George, now how did you get interested in land speed?
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He got interested in model cars, but realizing there were thousands
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and thousands of model cars, his interest turned to, uh, land speed
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cars, because there weren't so many.
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It wasn't gonna clutter up his house, and he wanted to keep his wife happy,
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and I know some guys, though, I say, my God, you got 1, 200 model cars.
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How does your wife tolerate it?
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Well, you know, those model cars are worth 800 to 500.
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So, the wives say, fine, keep those, I'll have them when you pass on.
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He started to read more about land speed.
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So, when we talked about this presentation, I said, Oh,
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that's such a great field.
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What aspect are you going to talk about?
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He said, well, If you give me four days, I can start at 1900 and George is going to
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concentrate on what happened after world war II and quickly go on to the sixties.
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And there's been so much in that area and I know all of us are interested in it and
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I don't know how many are experts in it.
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George said, you know, I'm not an expert.
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But the guy is thorough.
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He is a great researcher.
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It brings to mind what an expert is.
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An expert is somebody that nobody can question.
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I had to talk to a hundred judges who came to town, and we went up around the race
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course in two school buses at great speed, and then I went up to the press room and
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I talked to these 100 judges about the history of road racing in America and
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Watkins Glen, and I did not have one.
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contradiction from them.
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Now, I would never go before that group and talk to them about how
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to run their courtroom, or the rule of law, or the constitution.
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So, there may be one or two of you who may have a question or two,
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George, and he's expecting it, and he'll be very glad to hear from you.
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Thank you.
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This is the poster they put together for my speech, and it's based on
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a picture that I sent to them, and it kind of tells you a bit about
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the evolution of the presentation.
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As JC said, my original idea was to do the land speed records.
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Quickly, within a moment, I realized that that would never work and I thought, well,
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maybe you could split it into three parts.
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Two before World War II and one after World War II.
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And that was my idea that Most relevant to us would be the part that many of us
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lived through, the post World War II part.
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So, originally that was my plan and the original publicity for this gave
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that as the title of the presentation.
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I realized once I got into it that I could never do that justice.
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I trimmed it down to what the title you see there, the Battle for
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the Landspeed Record in the 60s, Campbell, the Irfons, and Breedlove.
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But the picture is Gary G's car, which is from 1970 approximately.
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That's from an earlier version of the speech.
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Now I'm Watkins Glen.
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I don't think I can do a talk about the land speed record without at least
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mentioning Glen Curtis from Hamport.
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I assume everybody knows where Hamport is.
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It's over towards the three 90, but it's not very far from here.
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And he started the Curtis Aircraft Company from here.
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In 1907, there was a speed week at Ormond Beach, which is just up
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the north end of Daytona Beach.
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And he had this V8 motorcycle with a aircraft engine in it.
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And he was timed at a speed of 136.
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364 mile per hour in the mile.
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Unfortunately, it wasn't an official timing.
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So, it's an unofficial land speed record and whenever you get these unofficial
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records, they're controversial whether you should recognize them or not.
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Come daylight the next day when the official timers were there, he broke
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something in the engine, and he got that repaired, and then the chassis,
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the frame of the bike got bent, and he wasn't ever able to do an official run.
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So, this was considered to be the fastest speed of anything at that time in 1907.
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Car, boat, airplane.
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And it has a motorcycle record as such.
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It's not official.
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It stood for about over ten years.
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Anyway, that's the local reference to the land speed record.
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And a reproduction of that bike is in the museum here.
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And the original is in the Smithsonian.
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This period, post war to 66, involves the Bonneville Salt Flats, and I'm sure
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you all know that the Bonneville Salt Flats is, uh, the remains of an old
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salt lake to the west of Salt Lake City.
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1949, there had been runs on the Bonneville Salt Flats pre war.
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The most notable was when Malcolm Campbell decided that Daytona Beach was not
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suitable for him to try to go any faster.
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One of the big problems, if you've been to Daytona, there's piers that
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go out and he had to shoot through the eye of the needle underneath
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the piers to get enough distance.
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The beach is sometimes good, sometimes not so good because every time the
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tide goes out, you get a new beach.
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Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not, and you need a long run.
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Bonneville had been used before that so he went out to Bonneville
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in 35 and at Bonneville was able to break 300 miles an hour.
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For that, there were a number of other speed runs, particularly Easton and Cobb
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on the Bonneville salt flats in the 30s.
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After the war, and actually I guess it precedes the war, what we call now,
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we'd call hot rodders, in California who were running on Lake Muroc.
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Which is Edwards Air Force Base now.
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So it's the same thing, it's just the government took it over, so it's
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now called Edwards Air Force Base.
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So they ran there, and then they decided to come out to Bonneville in 49.
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And they ran a week, a speed week, late August.
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And they've been running a speed week there ever since.
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And so they were making runs at that time.
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Other people made runs over the years as well.
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But those are two kind of separate things.
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The next thing I want to talk about is the question of official landspeed records.
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I've already mentioned that Curtis's record wasn't official.
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It wasn't official, his wasn't official because it wasn't officially timed.
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It was timed by a buddy of his with a stopwatch.
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It wasn't officially observed.
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So the FIA, and I assume you all recognize the FIA, is considered to be the
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ultimate authority in automobile racing.
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Particularly in the United States here, not all automobile racing comes
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under the FIA, but FIA considers itself to be the ultimate authority.
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We're talking about superlatives here.
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The fastest.
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And you have to have rules, so that everybody's on the same playing field.
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If, for example, I said, Who is the oldest person in this room?
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Well, we know what the rule there is, right?
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The rule is birth date, and if we go and pass birth date, it
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would be the minute of birth.
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We wouldn't have to be in a big debate about what the rule is.
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However, if I said to you, What is the fastest drag racing record?
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What is the rule?
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Could somebody tell me what the rule is?
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Standing start over a quarter of a mile.
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Standing start over a quarter of a mile.
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How many agree with that?
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Anybody know why that's wrong?
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No, I don't think so.
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There are eighths in a mile.
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But standing start quarter mile used to be the standard.
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So now it's a thousand feet.
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So you can't compare the old quarter mile with the current thousand.
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Not every class is a thousand feet.
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It's just the fastest ones.
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And it's a safety question.
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They don't go as fast at the end of 1, 000 feet instead of 1, 320, right?
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It's to get the speeds under control.
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So the current NHRA records for those fastest classes are based on 1, 000 feet.
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Well, that's the rule.
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There's nothing magic about the rule.
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NHRA is the authority.
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They set the rule.
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And it used to be a quarter mile.
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But those old quarter mile records can't be compared to...
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That's an example of how you have to have a rule and you have to know
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what the rule is, and everybody has to run to the same rule.
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If you're in another place where they're running eighth of
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a mile, then that's the rule.
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So here's the FIA rules, and the first one is the most important in this discussion.
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A car has four wheels or more.
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And it's driven by at least two of those wheels, transmits the power to the ground.
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It also has to be steered by two wheels.
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It has to be timed over a measured mile or a kilometer.
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And this is a funny thing that you can have one mile distance or a kilometer
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distance and there doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule which one,
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you sort of take whatever you want.
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England and the U.
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S.
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has been at the forefront of land speed records.
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In both countries, you still talk in terms of miles.
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So the focus is on the mile distance rather than the kilometer distance.
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But you can set a speed record over a kilometer and claim
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that as a land speed record.
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The speed is based on the average of two runs in opposite directions.
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And you have to complete both the runs within an hour.
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Now, if you go to the SCTA speed week in August, they do two runs.
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I think they do them in the same direction.
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They do the second one the next day.
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So there's no way those runs can count as FIA records.
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from the SCTA Speed Week.
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In addition to that, they average the two speeds.
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The speed of the first run, the speed of the second run.
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And most of you probably did high school physics.
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And no, that's not the way you calculate average speed.
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You have to take the total time, and divide it by the total distance,
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not the average of the two speeds.
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So, here you have an organization that is blissfully using an incorrect
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method to average the speeds.
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But that's their rule!
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And it doesn't matter that they're wrong, that's their rule.
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The FIA uses the correct method of averaging the speeds, but they
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have another thing that I stumbled on, that they have a cockamamie
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way of rounding off their numbers.
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So, that's the way they do it.
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That's their rule.
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Everybody has to work to that rule.
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Pre war, John Cobb set the fastest time.
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He was convinced that he could go over 400 miles an hour any time the clock had
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kind of run out on him before the war.
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So he reconditioned the car, got some mobile sponsorship, came back to
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Bonneville in 1947, was aiming for 400.
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He did one run over 400, but the average ended up at 394.
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So, that.
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became the new goal.
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And so for the rest of this, land speed record, 400 miles an hour is the goal.
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You gotta beat 400 miles an hour, basically.
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In those days, you had to do 1 percent better to get a new record.
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So I think 1 percent would actually be over the 400.
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Now, in 1952, he was trying to set a water speed record, uh,
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on Loch Ness, and was killed.
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During the fifties, all these SCTA speed weeks, other people making runs,
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other independent people, so BMC came over three or four times, Donald Healy,
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Phil Hills, Sterling Moss, those of us who are Canadians probably remember Ed
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Levins, Ed Levins was involved in that.
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We get into the 60s, and finally, people start challenging
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that 400 mile an hour mark.
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Art Arfon said, this is like playing Russian Roulette.
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I set a new time to breed love, and you'll come back and set a higher time.
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And I guess then I'll have to come back, and then you'll have to come
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back, until one of us gets killed.
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And it kind of played out like that.
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The whole thing is playing Russian Roulette, where one
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guy is topping the next guy.
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They're all at risk, and you'll see that some fatalities along the way.
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These are the eight players.
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Donald Campbell, the classic.
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He's the son of Malcolm Campbell, who set the records in the 30s.
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He went the classic route.
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He read the rule book and followed it to the letter.
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Thought if I use a turbine engine instead of a piston engine, I'll get
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a lot more power, 4, 000 horsepower.
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But it's a four wheel drive.
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Tremendous amount of effort.
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Kind of the same people who did the BRM 16 cylinder project.
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You remember how well that went in F1, right?
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Tremendous amount of industry involved, tremendous amount of money involved,
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tremendous amount of everything involved.
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Mickey Thompson, the classic American hot rodder.
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I'm sure you all know Mickey Thompson's name.
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Hot rodder, drag racing, speed runs at Lake Muroc and at Bonneville.
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Had a lot of experience in that.
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He built the car he called the Challenger 1.
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He tried for Chryslers, because he thought the Hemi's were the best way to go.
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And he got Pontiac to give him four big engines.
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Probably not quite as good a choice, but that's what he had.
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Four wheel drive again.
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Very low, very streamlined car.
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Craig Breedlove, one of the biggest names in there.
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Another hot rodder from L.
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A.
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He built a car up called the Spirit of America which had a J47 jet engine.
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In those days, the late 60s, they were scrapping the early generation
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of jet aircraft and these were available at the scrapyards.
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Didn't know this, but these guys knew where they could find them
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at scrapyards and they would go to the scrapyards and they would
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get these engines for 500 bucks.
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Driving onto Erie on the I 90, you see a jet fighter up on the pylon there.
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Well, there was one being installed in Oregon.
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One of these guys found that out and he says, you know, it'll be
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very heavy to mount that plane up there with the engine in it.
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I'll do you a big favor.
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I'll take the engine out of there and I'll take it away for you even.
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You won't have to build a strong pylon to build on.
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So he got a complete engine, undamaged, all the ancillaries, basically for doing
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him a favor to take this scrap away.
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The J 47 had a lot of power.
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It's 5, 000 pounds thrust and it's a three wheeler.
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So on two counts, there's no way he can get an FIA record.
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It's thrust, not wheel driven, and it's only three wheels.
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Later, in 65, he built up a second generation car, which had three times more
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powerful engine than a J79, and it was a four wheeler, and he set a record in that.
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Now, Walt Arfons from Cleveland, from Akron, he and his brother
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Art, they actually had a feed mill.
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You'd take in your grain, and they would grind it up into chop to feed your
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animals, and they'd mix in supplements.
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And that was their business.
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They also had a hardware side to it.
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Well, they got into drag racing with the V 12 aircraft engines like the
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Allison and we're doing demonstration runs with the Allison engine.
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That's about a thousand fifteen hundred horsepower engine and
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we're doing that and then they got into doing it with jet engines.
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Just demonstration runs basically.
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I think they would go, they get paid money by the promoter.
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And they would go and do it.
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These involved him taking the salt flats and seeing how far they could
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go if they could really let them out.
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So, Arfons had two different versions.
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He had the Wingfoot Express, which was an evolution of the drag strip car.
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And Tom Green drove that.
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Arfons had a heart attack, or supposedly had.
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He had some kind of problem and decided he shouldn't drive.
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So he had Tom Green drive the Wingfoot Express.
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Later on, he went to a rocket powered car, and it's Bobby
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Totro, you see in the photo here.
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Ardar Franz's younger brother was working with him, and they were
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building these drag strip cars.
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Because it was a promotional thing, the fix was in, of course.
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And the fix was supposed to be that Walt won.
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However, they were staging this supposed competition, that once Walt had won...
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Art was supposed to back off.
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Well, I guess art didn't buy into the fix.
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And so art kept competing with him.
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At any rate, there was a falling out.
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So even though their houses were side by side in Akron, they basically
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never spoke again and they just went and did their own thing.
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I think that's part of what fueled their rivalry on the assault.
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Now he started out with what he called the anteater, which was
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clearly a drag racing evolution.
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It had the V12 Allison, 28 liters supercharged somewhere between
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a thousand 1600 horsepower.
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But that was really a drag racing car.
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And then he went from there to, uh, another drag racing car with a J 47 jet.
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He was the first to get the J 79 jet, which was much more powerful.
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All the series just has green monster number 17.
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Actually, they were all called green monster.
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That was in the era of the fastest car.
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Then there were the Summers brothers, Bob and Bill classic hot rodders,
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classic Bonneville speed merchants.
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Bob was the driver and they built.
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Four engined car with seven liter Chrysler Hemi's.
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So they showed up in the middle of it and created some excitement
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because they were quite different.
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They were in the middle of all these jet cars.
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A fellow by the name of Ethel Graham, a mechanic in Salt Lake City.
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I think his wife's name was Zelda.
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He had a car similar to the Anteater with a V12 Allison.
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Dr.
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Nathan Austy is a physician from L.
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A.
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He had a J47 jet, the flying Caduceus.
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Caduceus is the doctor's symbol with the snakes around it.
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A driver by the name of Glenn Leasher, shown on the right here.
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The owner in the center, Romeo Paladimes.
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He had a J47 jet car called the Infinity.
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It looks pretty crude.
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Notice he had the wheels fared in.
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And that's the cockpit right out the front.
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That's the drag racing style.
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1959.
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Mickey Thompson shows up with this really pretty car, the Challenger.
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They got up to 363.
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Remember, 400 is the goal.
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So the fact that it's only one way doesn't matter.
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He's not fast enough.
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Athol Graham shows up.
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He does 344 with the Alice edition.
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Pretty crude looking car.
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1960.
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Athol Graham comes back.
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He had the car painted red, but you wouldn't know it there.
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That's what was left of it after he flipped it a number of times.
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And he really didn't have any proper roll cage or seat belts or anything.
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That was the end of the line for Athol Graham, but not for the car.
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Here's Ostich.
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He showed up 237.
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Nowhere near 400.
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Arfon shows up in his anteater, open cockpit, 223.
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Again, nowhere near 400.
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Other than that funny seat out at the front, it looks good, but it
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doesn't get enough speed out of it.
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Thompson comes back.
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It was speed week at the end of August 1960.
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He shows up, he did a 354.
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I think it was one way.
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Again, nowhere near 400.
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The next week, Ostiches comes back, 259.
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Nowhere near 400.
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But Thompson, basically the same week, four days later,
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he's back and he hits 406.
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6 miles per hour.
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Better than 400.
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Meets the FIA rules.
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Wheel driven car.
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Four wheels.
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Unfortunately, when he turned around and came back, he never completed the run.
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So he gets out of the car and he says, Uh, I broke a driveshaft.
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Every book but one reports it that way.
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I broke a driveshaft.
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Well, if he just broke a driveshaft, why didn't he fix it and run the next week?
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Well, he didn't.
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One author, most recent author, and the one I think has done the best job, says
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that he actually blew an engine, and that he just told the reporters that he broke
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a driveshaft not to embarrass Pontiac.
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And Pontiac, I don't think we're giving them any more support, and
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that was kind of the end of it.
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He didn't have another engine to drop in there, and I think that's the
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reason why he only did it one way.
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Goodyear blows all the trumpets for this 406.
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6, but it's not an FIA record.
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It's not a two way record.
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So, it's nothing.
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Campbell shows up, 50 vehicles, huge entourage like an invading army.
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He goes out on the salt.
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They think he got up to about 300 miles per hour.
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The car lost control, flipped over.
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Car was written off.
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He was lucky to survive.
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Project was done.
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All that BRM style money, all those British companies.
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And it was embarrassing because you've got Thompson, he's there
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with a station wagon and a trailer.
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And you've got Campbell with a whole entourage.
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Military people, you know, from everything.
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And he just goes out and wrecks the car.
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It was really embarrassing.
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Even though Thompson didn't beat the old record, he kinda did.
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So, 61, the orphan shows up at speed week, he does 313, and the
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old anteater, nothing special.
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That year the salt was bad, in the winter time it rains, and the water
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comes up, then the water evaporates, and it comes down, it gives you
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a new, flat surface come summer.
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And that's why the speed week's in August, once you get to August,
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then you've got the surface, and the surface will last until the rains come.
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This time, the rains came...
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early September, and that was it.
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The salt went soft and rough, and they just couldn't do any more runs.
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So that year, basically, 61, the thing got rained out.
21:07
I think 2013, the thing called the Bonneville Nationals in October were
21:12
just wiped out for the same reason.
21:15
At any rate, 61 was the last year.
21:17
So we come to 62.
21:19
Thompson decided he's coming back.
21:21
He's got another engine, I guess.
21:23
In the meantime, he's been doing some drag racing on the water.
21:28
He's had a crash.
21:29
He's broken his back.
21:30
He's had a whole bunch of vertebrae fused.
21:32
So we don't know quite why.
21:35
Whether it was the rough course or his broken back.
21:37
Or something wrong with the car.
21:39
He tried to blame it on the car, but he couldn't get up to speed.
21:43
That's the end of the line for Thompson and speed records.
21:46
I'm sure y'all know that there's a lot more story to Thompson after
21:50
that, but not here in the salt flats.
21:52
Hostage is back.
21:54
He gets up over 300 miles an hour, we think.
21:56
Wheel was torn off.
21:57
That's the end of it.
21:59
He's got to go back and fix the car.
22:01
Here's Arfonz in his Cyclops.
22:03
This is a drag strip car.
22:05
Look at that fake rocket on the side.
22:07
That's not for speed.
22:09
That's just for you guys at the drag race to say, wow, look at that.
22:12
But it's just a fake rocket on the side, open cockpit at the front.
22:15
Cyclops, cause he had a headlight in the front because the
22:18
shutdown areas of the drag strip sometimes weren't very well lit.
22:21
And he's just brought it out.
22:22
He got 330, which isn't anything special, but it is the fastest
22:26
ever for an open cockpit car.
22:29
In speed records, people claim all kinds of speed records.
22:32
We're trying to talk about the absolute here.
22:35
Breedlove shows up.
22:36
He's got his car ready, 62.
22:39
The car's undriveable.
22:41
He can't control the car.
22:42
He can't keep it on course.
22:44
He can't steer it.
22:45
They were steering it by having two brake pedals, one for each of the back wheels.
22:50
That was basically the method of steering it.
22:51
After that, there's a little fin at the front that was supposed to steer it.
22:54
It just didn't work.
22:55
And Brelav went out, didn't get going very fast at all, and
22:58
said, I, that car's undriveable.
23:00
Well, the designer, Ron Schapel, said, The problem isn't the car, it's you!
23:05
You're chicken.
23:06
And a tremendous conflict arose between Breelove and Schaepel.
23:10
And Schaepel got all the volunteers, it was all volunteers, who were
23:14
working on the car, on side with him, and you read about it now and you
23:17
think, I don't know why the project didn't just fold at that point.
23:21
I think the reason it didn't fold was that at the very end of the week, they
23:24
found that there was a bad problem with the bearing, and the front wheel was
23:28
kind of flopping this way, and there was another problem with the steering,
23:31
the way the steering was set up, it didn't, the wheel didn't turn as much
23:34
as they thought it was, and so they demonstrated at the very end of the week
23:38
that they could go faster, but remember, you rent the salt for a week, end of
23:42
your week, somebody else gets the salt, the weather can come in, and you can
23:46
get chopped off, so he ran out of time.
23:47
But now Goodyear had seen the potential and Goodyear really got on side.
23:52
Breedlove spent about three months sitting in boardrooms meeting with
23:56
engineers from Goodyear and they worked out a redesign of the car.
24:00
The fin at the back and made that front wheel steering, abandoned that the rear
24:05
wheel brake, getting ready for next year.
24:07
Glen Leashier had Infinity, a fatal crash.
24:11
So, that's two fatal crashes.
24:13
People seem kind of incensed about this.
24:16
I guess they towed this up by the highway, dropped it there, and may still be there.
24:20
Every time you come in to do a speed run, you see the wreckage of
24:23
this car from this fatal accident.
24:25
Good way to start off your week at the Sol.
24:28
Now, in November, Art Arfons, who had that Cyclops drag strip
24:32
car, Found a J 79 jet engine.
24:36
This has three times the thrust of those J 47s.
24:39
Power's the name of the game, isn't it?
24:41
He was working on it, and he discovered that it was scrap.
24:45
It had ingested something, maybe a bolt, or a wrench, or a rock.
24:50
Anyway, it had ingested something, and a bunch of the blades had been broken.
24:53
So he took it apart, took out the damaged blades, sort of moved
24:56
them around so they were balanced.
24:58
Not all the blades were there, but he put them in balanced.
25:01
So I'd run, he calls GE, it says You got a manual for that engine?
25:04
I got a J79.
25:06
You got a manual for that?
25:07
Next day he gets a call from the government saying, What
25:09
do you do with this engine?
25:10
This is a classified engine.
25:12
Nobody outside the government, outside the military is supposed to have one of these.
25:15
We're sending a truck up there to pick it up right now.
25:18
So he kind of just ignored them and...
25:21
Anyway, he managed, he built the engine, got it going, and eventually
25:24
other seals, you'll see some other J79s trickled onto the market from various
25:29
scrap dealers, but he was the first.
25:31
I guess what had happened was they had written it off as un air, not
25:34
airworthy, so they just scrapped it.
25:36
And he got it for 500 bucks from a dealer, and I think eventually he got two others.
25:40
I think he actually had a total of three that he used to cannibalize for parts.
25:44
He said he had 5, 000 total in the three inches in cost, obviously not in time.
25:50
Now we're over into 63.
25:52
The season is in Australia and Campbell after his bad experience in
25:56
Bonneville said, Oh, the salt's no good.
25:58
And that's true.
25:59
The salt is degrading.
26:01
The length of the salt run gets less.
26:03
And as I've already told you, if it rains, then you can lose
26:06
a season like they did in 61.
26:07
So he said, I'm going to do a search around the world.
26:10
And he ended up in Australia.
26:11
Remember, this is a Commonwealth country, so I think that was probably another
26:14
incentive for them to go to Australia.
26:16
So they went to this place called Lake Eyre, or Lake Ear, which
26:19
was way, way out in the middle of the wilderness of the Outback.
26:23
He went out to Australia in 1963.
26:25
Despite this Lake Ear supposedly not having had any rain in
26:29
human memory, it rained.
26:31
And the whole season was rained out.
26:32
It was flooded so much, they were lucky that the car didn't get flooded.
26:36
They only just barely...
26:38
Got it loaded onto a trailer and got it out on a high
26:40
ground before the floods came.
26:42
Later July is a bit early in Bonneville, but there's Walt Arfons.
26:45
Now he's got his drag strip car.
26:48
He used a J46.
26:49
I'm not an expert on these aircraft engines, but that's a Westinghouse engine.
26:53
Similar in power, maybe a little bit more power than a J47G.
26:57
He, for whatever reason, probably because that's what the scrap
26:59
dealer had, had this J46.
27:02
And he enclosed the cockpit, which seems like a good idea to me,
27:05
and he closed the front wheels.
27:06
So he got over 300 miles an hour, but what good is that?
27:10
Breedlove, now he's back, new rear fin and the front wheel steering, and he
27:14
did some test runs on the Salt in July.
27:17
August 5th, 63.
27:19
This is an important turning point.
27:21
Remember, land speed record has stood since Cobbs in 47,
27:26
just under 400 miles an hour.
27:28
He does one run at 388.
27:30
He does the other run at 428.
27:33
37, which gives him a 407.
27:34
45 mile per hour average, over 400 miles per hour.
27:38
This is a big event, a really big event in this chronology.
27:42
But it's not an FIA land speed record.
27:45
Three wheels, Thrust engine, it's not FIA.
27:48
However, the FIM, the motorcycle equivalent, said, You got three
27:52
wheels, you're a motorcycle.
27:53
You belong to us.
27:54
We don't have a problem with thrust engines.
27:56
We'll give you the land speed record.
27:58
Question is, who cares whether it's FIA or not, right?
28:01
Particularly those of you Americans.
28:03
In Canada, I kind of feel caught in the middle of this, but You Americans.
28:08
Who cares?
28:09
He beat Cobb.
28:10
He's the fastest in the world.
28:12
And so they're saying, in the eyes of the world, he had the land speed record.
28:16
There's Campbell back in Australia, fighting away, struggling on Lake
28:20
Erie, not getting any speed run, having spent millions and millions.
28:24
Now Breedlove has beat that record.
28:26
And I remember the feeling like, what a loser that Campbell is.
28:30
That's it.
28:31
You know, Breedlove's done it.
28:32
This car is so beautiful on top of everything else.
28:35
At least in my opinion, it's the most beautiful of all the cars.
28:38
Well, later on, a guy by the name of Henry Malbach had rebuilt the city of Salt Lake.
28:43
It's now named the Graham Special.
28:45
It only reached 293 miles per hour, so that's kind of useless.
28:49
I think that was more had to do with his relationship with, uh, Graham's
28:52
widow than anything else, but that's probably for another time and place.
28:56
Osty shows up with his car.
28:59
He can only get it up to 350 miles per hour, even though Breedlove with
29:02
the same engine had gone over 400.
29:05
Ostrich can only get up to 350 miles per hour.
29:07
Perhaps the open wheels were creating more drag.
29:10
Perhaps this junk engine wasn't as good as Breedlove's junk engine.
29:14
Whatever, he couldn't come close to Breedlove's speed.
29:17
And I should at this point say, I think most of you realize that when
29:21
you're talking about top speed, to increase speed, the drag increases
29:25
exponentially, not linearly.
29:28
So if you go twice as fast, you have sort of four times the drag.
29:31
So, it increases exponentially.
29:32
So, as you get going faster and faster, you hit a wall.
29:36
So, the difference between 350 and 407 is huge.
29:40
It's huge.
29:41
It's not just, like, that percentage difference in the speed.
29:44
Huge difference.
29:45
So, he's just nowhere near.
29:47
And that's why these cars, with the big, huge thrust engines, were good
29:51
cars, because they had a lot of power.
29:53
But this one never worked and he gave up.
29:55
So, Maulbach comes back.
29:57
He crashes at about 300 miles per hour.
29:59
That was it.
30:00
Give up.
30:00
So 64 is the first of the two big years.
30:04
Campbell's goes back to Lake Erie, try again.
30:07
Once again, rain.
30:10
How unlucky can this guy be?
30:12
Course is soft.
30:13
Now April's the season for him.
30:15
And they frig around, frig around.
30:17
And they're basically on the verge of giving up.
30:19
The season is pretty well run out.
30:21
Again, look at all the logistics there.
30:23
Season is basically given out.
30:24
And he says, I'm gonna do one last run.
30:27
Gonna make one last attempt.
30:29
So he goes out and he does 403.
30:32
1 mile per hour.
30:34
Breedlove was not FIA recognized.
30:36
This is faster than Cobb's speed.
30:38
So he's got the FIA land speed record.
30:42
Well, as they say, that buck might buy him a cup of coffee.
30:46
Interesting thing at that time was in the U.
30:48
S.
30:49
That was like, ho hum, who really cares?
30:52
And whereas in Britain, they were waving the flag like crazy.
30:55
Woo hoo hoo!
30:56
Over this 403.
30:58
And Breedlove doesn't exist.
31:01
Walt Arfons comes back with that Wingfoot Express.
31:04
This time he gets up faster than Breedlove.
31:07
Thrust engine, remember.
31:08
It's not an FIA record, but he sets a new speed record.
31:12
That's recognized, well...
31:14
What, by the American public, by USAC, but who's going to quibble?
31:18
Our Fonz comes back, now he's there with his J79.
31:21
This is the powerhouse.
31:23
This is just a monster engine with four wheels strapped onto it.
31:27
That's it.
31:28
And a little cockpit on the side.
31:29
So he gets up, remember Walt got 413 and got this unofficial LSR.
31:35
Art gets to 434, again thrust, so nobody's recognizing it.
31:40
Nobody but everybody, but the eyes of the world, he's the lead speed record.
31:44
Two days later, he has a blown tire, as you see, and so that ended his season.
31:49
Car didn't crash.
31:50
There's October the 7th.
31:52
His week on the salt ends, Breedalove gets the salt.
31:55
On October the 13th, he does a 4.
31:58
68 mile per hour average speed.
32:00
That is a FIM because it's three wheeler land speed record.
32:04
The next day he goes out and on the second run, he loses his chutes.
32:10
He can't break, he ends up in a dike of salt water.
32:14
But he had a recorded speed, so he said it's...
32:16
time, speed of average 526, which was an F I M motorcycle land speed record.
32:23
The car is destroyed.
32:24
Now, if you go to Chicago, the science technology museum, you'll see the car
32:28
there because Goodyear paid them to rebuild it enough to put it on display.
32:33
And it's still there in Chicago.
32:35
At about the same time, the FIA each year has an annual
32:39
meeting of all the member clubs.
32:41
ACUS is the U.
32:42
S.
32:42
club.
32:43
And they set the rules for the next year.
32:45
And at that time, they recognized reality that they were looking like fools.
32:49
And said, okay, what we're going to do is we're not going to change the
32:53
rules, we're going to add to the rules.
32:54
So we still have the rules, as they always were.
32:57
But we're going to add another category called special vehicles.
33:02
So thrust driven.
33:03
So that could be rocket, it could be jet.
33:05
Otto Anzon, who was a young kid, a protege of Athol Graham, worked on
33:10
rebuilding the city of Salt Lake.
33:12
He rebuilt it, and he did a speed, but not a very good speed.
33:15
And then he died of leukemia.
33:16
I think in Salt Lake City, this was a big one of those ongoing newspaper stories.
33:21
But other than that, he didn't do much.
33:23
So, we're in 64.
33:25
October 14, Breedlove has set a land speed record over 500 miles per hour.
33:32
Whoop de do, whoop de do.
33:34
You'll see over there, there's a great big model of the car.
33:37
Goodyear commissioned this model, and the idea was they're going to sell it in
33:41
all the Goodyear stores across America.
33:43
The box says, Breedlove has set the new land speed record 526.
33:46
277 miles per hour, fastest man in the world.
33:51
October the 14th, rush it into production.
33:53
Those days we made things in the U.
33:55
S.
33:55
They get it into production and I've got one of them.
33:58
October 25, two weeks later.
34:01
Art comes back with his green monster, with the big J 76 jet, see how it's
34:07
just a jet edge with four wheels.
34:08
He comes back with that, he hits 536.
34:11
And now FIA recognizes the thrust, so it is an FIA record.
34:17
So where's Breedlove's record?
34:18
Breedlove overcomes.
34:19
So they supposedly they abandoned plans to sell that model and I bought
34:24
that my model paid a premium price for on the basis that this is going
34:27
to be worth a lot of money one day.
34:29
Well, I think they're rare.
34:31
Nobody cares.
34:32
I paid 200 for it about 20 years ago.
34:35
I saw one on eBay that sold for about 100 this year.
34:38
There's a handful of them out there, but there's not very many.
34:40
And in general, my experience with models is, I think that my model collection,
34:44
which I thought was going to be worth a fortune by now, and be an inheritance
34:47
for my grandchildren, they're worth about what they were retail originally.
34:51
But, I've given up on that.
34:53
I'm just gonna donate them to the center when I die.
34:55
So, Walt Arfons comes back.
34:58
He was having trouble getting up to speed.
35:00
This is the brother who doesn't talk to Art.
35:02
So he thought, I'll fix it.
35:05
Get some Jato rockets.
35:06
He strapped some Jato rockets.
35:07
USAC said, well you can't control those from the cockpit,
35:11
so we won't allow that car.
35:12
They wouldn't, it wouldn't go through scrutineering in effect.
35:14
He seemed like a good idea, but it didn't work for him.
35:16
And October, we're getting late.
35:18
The end of the season.
35:19
So 65.
35:20
Here he's back.
35:21
He's built a new car.
35:22
It looks like a torpedo.
35:24
You can only see about a dozen JATOs in there.
35:26
It actually holds 15.
35:28
Tremendous acceleration.
35:30
Instead of using a few miles of run up, you only use 9 tenths of a mile run up.
35:33
Well, there's a reason for that.
35:35
Because these rockets only lasted for 15 seconds.
35:38
The problem was, he'd get up to a tremendous speed, and then the
35:42
rockets had cut out, and then he was coasting for the rest of the way.
35:44
So, he claimed that he had got as fast as 500 miles an hour, but he only had
35:49
a recorded speed of 247 for the mile.
35:52
Now, one of the things is, a lot of these claimed top speeds were airspeed.
35:57
And it seems like, at Bonneville, the airspeed readings, and if you're into
36:02
aircraft, you probably understand this.
36:04
are all 10 to 20 miles an hour high.
36:06
They're just not reliable in the context of what we're talking about.
36:09
So only the timing from breaking timing lights is all that works.
36:14
That's September.
36:15
And he didn't get a decent speed.
36:17
Breedlove shows up, he's got a new car.
36:19
Four wheeler.
36:20
Now it's FIA, for what that's worth.
36:23
And he's got a J79 engine.
36:25
So that's the main thing.
36:26
He got up to 590 miles per hour.
36:29
He claimed, but he timed to 518.
36:32
Then the next time he got up to 534.
36:35
But there was a lot of damage to the bodywork.
36:37
This looked speed of sound, but it really wasn't.
36:39
There was, this was a really bad aerodynamic design.
36:42
Took it over to Salt Lake City to an airbase that was National Guard.
36:46
They worked on it and they told the commanding officer some cock and
36:49
bull story of what they were doing.
36:50
And they worked on it and fixed the body, did a lot of fixing to the body work.
36:54
Meanwhile, Waldorf Franz shows up and he's strapped 10 more rockets.
36:58
Somehow he's satisfied USAC this year.
37:00
The rocket bottles started falling off.
37:02
At least one of them pointed in the wrong direction, burned the car and so on.
37:05
But they were able to repair it.
37:07
So on October 22nd, they had another run.
37:09
And again, the rockets don't go long enough.
37:11
So even if you stage them, it just, it didn't work.
37:14
So we got up to 476, but now we're over 500 is our target.
37:17
Walt says, leave it, go.
37:19
Breedlove, now he's got his car modified.
37:22
In this picture, maybe you can see the louvers over the wheels, and
37:25
there's some dots, those are holes along the roof where he's done it.
37:28
You can see that the cowling at the jet engine's been replaced because
37:31
only half of his name is there.
37:33
So he got up to 555, a new land speed record in Sonic 1.
37:38
Okay, we're happy, right?
37:39
It's November the 2nd.
37:41
Season's over.
37:42
We've got the salt for a week.
37:45
Art is down in Las Vegas, just cooling his heels, ready to pounce.
37:49
So I said, okay, well let's get my wife in the car.
37:52
Puts Lee in the car.
37:54
Supposedly the PR said she'd never been over 75 miles an hour before in her life.
37:58
So she does 308 miles per hour, what they claim is a women's record.
38:02
There's no such official thing, of course, but that doesn't use up all the time.
38:06
So they called Shelby up and said, well, can we borrow one of your Daytona coupes?
38:11
So he ships it up and Breedlove and Tatrold, those two different drivers
38:16
for two different teams, right?
38:17
But they're both Goodyear.
38:19
So they get in the car.
38:20
They ran around in circles, 12 hours, 24 hours.
38:24
Well, you can imagine what this is doing to the salt.
38:28
So Art shows up and says, what the hell have you guys been doing?
38:31
You've been screwing me up.
38:33
You wrecked the salt.
38:34
What could I do?
38:35
So anyway, he goes out.
38:37
He claimed he did 625 by airspeed.
38:39
At any rate, he ends up with an average speed of 576, which
38:43
is a new land speed record.
38:44
So once again, Breedlove is screwed, right?
38:47
Remember, this is November the 2nd, pretty late.
38:49
He delays and delays.
38:52
But November the 7th, Arfons is on, but Arfons, his time runs out, and if
38:58
you're not using it, then you lose it.
39:00
Two days later, on November 7th, they didn't have much Firestone on the
39:03
car, but this is on Firestone's time.
39:05
Summer shows up with a Goldenrod.
39:07
This is four Chrysler engines.
39:09
Does 409 average, which is an official speed record for wheel driven cars.
39:14
Again, it's not the same kind of thing, but everybody recognizes
39:18
that there is such a record.
39:20
Breedlove, November the 15th.
39:23
That was really lucky that he could keep going.
39:25
But he's back on November the 15th.
39:26
And he gets in the car and he averages 600.
39:29
601 miles per hour.
39:31
That's it.
39:32
So he's the first to have reached 400, 500, and 600 miles per hour.
39:36
So that's the end of the season finally.
39:38
Breedlove's got the record.
39:39
Art is out of luck.
39:42
66, Art comes back, he's had problems with blowing the rear tires, too much
39:46
loading on the rear, so he went to dual rear wheels, but that had added
39:50
weight and drag, he was having trouble getting up to speed, November the 17th,
39:54
he was probably doing well over 600 miles per hour, the right front wheel
39:58
bearing broke, there was a massive crash at over 600 miles per hour, car was
40:03
destroyed as you can see, Arfon survives.
40:06
Amazingly, nobody thought there was going to be any ambulance needed.
40:11
Firestone had lost, pretty much lost interest in supporting any
40:15
more land speed record attempts.
40:17
They weren't going to sponsor our funds anymore.
40:20
Goodyear was pretty happy with 600.
40:22
They couldn't see anything to be gained in setting a record of 650.
40:27
Particularly when there was, nobody else was attempting it.
40:29
So, Goodyear said to Breedlove, that's the end of the funding from us.
40:33
Firestone, the same.
40:35
And so that was the end of that era.
40:37
There have only been three speed records set since that time,
40:40
and the most recent one in 97.
40:42
And that'll be it for today.
40:52
Certainly.
40:57
He popped the canopy, he, uh, he undid the belts, and he swam out.
41:05
He was underwater.
41:07
They didn't play up how close the thing that was.
41:10
They didn't, but they didn't play up how...
41:15
Well, that's Breedlove, I think, that he combed his hair.
41:17
But it was under his helmet, right?
41:20
Well,
41:24
it's actually Andy Green again.
41:26
Went to the website this morning, and found a list of seven different
41:29
possible people who are attempting it.
41:31
The most promising is the bloodhound.
41:34
Which is really an extension of the British efforts from the
41:37
Thrust II to the Thrust SSC.
41:40
Andy Green is slated to be the driver of this.
41:42
It's another one of those multi, multi million dollar
41:45
British efforts in that style.
41:47
George, there seemed to be a big boost in speed from 61 and then about 63 and 4.
41:53
I think they finally got their act together.
41:54
Those jet engines had so much power.
41:57
Just had so much power.
41:58
You figure, Thompson gets out there and does 400.
42:01
With four Pontiacs.
42:02
Jet engines had like, multiples, multiples of the power.
42:05
Just seemed like a big boost.
42:06
But it showed that Breedlove, if he could get the rest of the act
42:09
together, there was so much power.
42:11
And of course, with our Fonz, he had three times, again, as much power.
42:15
Now they've got even more.
42:16
Yes, sir.
42:17
What's the current record?
42:18
Where was it established?
42:20
Was it a thrust motor?
42:21
Two Jets.
42:22
A car called Thrust SC, supersonic, driven by Andy Green at Black Rock.
42:29
And it's Speed of Sound.
42:30
It's west of Bonneville.
42:32
So it's over, sort of, near, uh, Reno.
42:35
Somewhere over that direction.
42:36
You know, Bad Day at Black Rock?
42:38
Didn't you see the movie?
42:41
It's not salt.
42:42
It's a different kind, slightly different formation.
42:45
But it's Speed of Sound.
42:46
About 720, I think.
42:47
I'm just curious if Art Armstrong and Fred Breedlove were...
42:52
Quoted earlier that Art said to Breedlove that this is Russian Roulette.
42:56
You can see that for...
42:58
Our fawns, it came pretty damn close, and for breed love, in fact, even
43:02
earlier, that they were playing with death, and they were pushing each other.
43:06
This is all second hand.
43:07
My impression is, other than Walt and Art, where that was family, that was
43:11
a personal family thing, I think these people, like competitors out here in
43:17
the paddock at the Glen, They're all competitors, they're competitors,
43:20
but they're all in the same business.
43:22
They all have common interests.
43:24
You get them a hundred meters away from the paddock and they're friends.
43:27
You get them down to the Seneca Lodge and they sit and have dinner together.
43:30
I think it was very much that way with Breedlove and Art.
43:33
Was Donald Campbell's car thrust or wheel driven?
43:37
It was a turbine.
43:38
Was it wheel driven?
43:39
Like the cars that ran in Indianapolis.
43:41
Like the turbine cars that ran in Indianapolis.
43:43
It would be very similar to that.
43:45
I've got to defend the, uh...
43:47
But you were talking about the FIA.
43:49
I grew up listening to them.
43:51
Although
43:55
you talk about, you know, the amount of money they were spending, the difference
43:59
was, they were building cars to drive the wheels for the ladder speed record.
44:03
A jet engine, or a fighter plane, when all you were basically
44:07
trying to do was keep it on.
44:09
Which I know is not the way it was.
44:11
But that was the way it was reported in Britain.
44:13
That the original rules...
44:14
Was to have a car, which was, and that was the land speed record.
44:19
Now admittedly, they've now changed it, and of course the latest British
44:21
car is, is also a thrust, but that's why the money was involved.
44:26
Plus also British industry.
44:27
And remember, after the war, they didn't have the money.
44:32
There is a comparison.
44:33
I'm not taking anything at all away from breed level.
44:37
It was a different type of race, different color.
44:40
Yeah.
44:40
I did try to say one against the other.
44:43
This is an American audience.
44:46
And I'm speaking to an American audience.
44:49
I have been trying to remember how I felt in the 1960s.
44:52
In the early 60s about this.
44:54
I think most of us got our start in road racing.
44:56
As a Canadian in road racing, I read all the British magazines.
44:59
So I'm kind of an anglophile when it comes to racing.
45:02
And I'm kind of on that anglophile side.
45:04
I'm not trying to take anything away from what you said.
45:06
But it's interesting to hear the difference between...
45:13
To this day, the attitude towards the thrust projects and to the
45:19
bloodhound project in Britain is much different than here.
45:23
And it's a much different approach, but I'll tell ya, anytime some guy
45:27
can haul his car, like Thompson did, out to the flats, behind his
45:31
station wagon on a trailer, and, and Bess Campbell, who's got 50 vehicles
45:36
on the salt, It's embarrassing.
45:39
Just like the BRM project was embarrassing.
45:42
I'm not old enough to remember that from the day.
45:45
But I certainly, I'm enough of a historian of Formula 1 to know how
45:49
embarrassing that BRM project was.
45:51
I just got to finish and say I was at Silverstone when they were trying
45:55
to run the BRM and it never came by.
45:57
But it was embarrassing.
46:00
Had they not blown their horns so much?
46:03
You saw the newsreel, like, man, the newsreel, you would never
46:06
know that Bonneville ever existed.
46:09
Was that the age 16?
46:10
Yes.
46:11
No, no, not the age 16.
46:12
This was a V 16 from 1950.
46:15
We just tried to match the old four and a half litre, one and a
46:18
half litre and a half supercharger.
46:21
The BRM, the old BRM.
46:23
Yeah, so this.
46:25
Oh no, this was, it was the same as this.
46:27
It was all, all those companies come in and poured in a
46:30
tremendous amount of money.
46:31
It's also a matter of politics, the way you do things.
46:34
And even though it's industry, it's kind of a government, socialistic kind
46:38
of thing, what they did in Britain.
46:39
And here it's free enterprise, the little guy.
46:43
Uh, I'm in the middle of that.
46:44
I, I see both sides of it myself.
46:47
Alright, thank you very much.
46:48
Thank you.
46:48
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