Springfield (Mass.) Airport and Granville Brothers Gee Bee Package for FS9 & Golden Wings 3

This package includes detailed scenery of Springfield Airport in Springfield, Massachusetts as it appeared in the early 1930s, when the planes built there by the Granville Brothers dominated the National Air Races. The Package includes three flyable aircraft: the Model R-1 Super Sportster in the configuration flown by Jimmy Doolittle when he won the 1932 Thompson Trophy closed circuit pylon race; the Model R-2 Super Sportster in the configuration flown by Lee Gehlbach in the 1932 Bendix Trophy cross country race, when he finished in the money despite an oil leak that forced him to fly the final leg without the cockpit enclosure or windscreen in place; and the Model Q Ascender, built and flown briefly in late 1932 to investigate the canard (tail first) configuration. Springfield Airport is AI-ready and the three flyable aircraft also work as AI.

Springfield Airport and the Gee Bee Models R and Q were built by David Wooster and Mick Morrissey with research assistance from the staff of the Springfield Science Museum and from Mike Speciale, Executive Director of the New England Air Museum, and Dick Gilchriest of the NEAM’s Gee Bee R-1 replica project.

This package was developed in FS9 and Golden Wings 3. The scenery is compatible with stock FS9, FS9 with USA Roads and FREEflow New England, stock Golden Wings 3, Golden Wings 3 with FREEflow New England, and probably with Ultimate Terrain. The planes will probably work in FSX and the scenery probably will not.

To ease downloading for the bandwidth-challenged, this package has been broken into three parts: the Springfield Airport scenery, the Super Sportsters and the Ascender. Each part will work by itself, but of course the intent is that they be used together.

INSTALLATION

If you haven’t already done so, unzip the three archives to a temporary folder.

Place the Springfield Airport folder into your FS9 or GW3 Addon Scenery folder. Start FS9 or GW3, go to Settings, Scenery Library, and Add Area. Browse to the Springfield Airport folder in the Addon Scenery folder, select it and click OK. Close FS and when you next start it, Springfield Airport will be present.

Place the two Gee Bee Model R and the Gee Bee Model Q aircraft folders into your GS9 or GW3 Aircraft folder. They will show up on the Select Aircraft menu under manufacturer = Granville Brothers, Type = Gee Bee Q Ascender and Type = Gee Bee R Super Sportster. The Model R will show two versions, Variation = R-1 and Variation = R-2.

Note that the R-2's sounds are aliased to the custom sound set in the R-1 aircraft folder. If for some reason you only want to keep the R-2, replace its sound folder with the one from the R-1.

Place the contents of the Effects folder into your FS9 or GW3 Effects folder.

You may place the gauges from the three planes into your main FS9 or GW3 Gauges folder, or you can leave them in the panel folders.

Components to make a post-WW2 Springfield Airport are included in the package. The differences are that the static Model R parked in front of the Granville hangar doors and the antique cars parked around the airport in the 1932 version of Springfield Airport are absent, the Granville Brothers name has been removed from the signs, and the period signage on the building o the south of the Administration Building has been removed.

We made this version because Mick has two sims, Golden Wings and "FS1954," and he wanted an early 1950s version of Springfield Airport as it may have appeared when he was a toddler living a mile or two from the airport. While we don't think many people would be interested in a post-Granville Springfield Airport, it's included here for another reason. Using the post-war scenery with the Golden Age textures will produce a 1930s Springfield Airport without the parked cars or the static Gee Bee Model R. This should reduce the frame rate hit for those whose computers have trouble handling complex add-on scenery.

For a post-WW2 Springfield Airport, open the scenery sub-folder in your Springfield Airport scenery folder and remove the following files:

Save them in a safe place in case you want to use them some time in the future!

Then go into the Options folder, open the Spfld Post WW2 Scenery folder and copy the following items into the Springfield Airport scenery folder:

Then open the Spfld Post WW2 Textures folder in the Options folder and copy the contents to the Springfield Airport textures folder. As with the scenery files, save the original files in case you want to use them in the future. You can then delete the two folders with the optional R-1 and R-2 textures for the static Gee Bee Model R, since they are no longer needed.

For a less complex 1932 Springfield Airport, substitute the same files in the scenery folder, but retaining the original texture folder. If you want to clean up your installation, you can go into the Springfield Airport texture folder and delete all the textures that are associated with the static Model R and the parked cars. (You can recognize them easily by their file names, or by looking at the contents of the texture folder in thumbnail view.) You can then delete the two folders with the optional R-1 and R-2 textures for the static Gee Bee Model R, since they are no longer needed.

We initially used stock FS9 navigation light effects on the R-2 and we found that on some systems (Mick’s but not David’s) there was a very intense and completely inappropriate side effect that illuminated the surfaces surrounding some (not all) of the lights as if a powerful external light source was shining on them. Inquiries in the SOH forum revealed that a number of others (not everyone) had the same issue with a number of aircraft. The cause was never discovered, but we tried using different nav light effects and finally found a set that worked properly with the R-2 on Mick’s (and presumably anyone’s) system.

That set of effects is included in this archive in the "effects" folder, and they are meant to be moved into your FS9 Effects folder, as indicated in the Installation section. We have no idea where these effects came from! They are not on the FS9 installation CD-ROMs, so we know they’re not stock effects and must have come with some add-on aircraft. At this point there is no way to determine which one.

After much soul searching and consultation with others in the forum, we decided that it would be acceptable to release these effect files with our package, in the same spirit that many aircraft modelers release gauges by unknown authors with their panels. All we can do is offer our thanks to whoever wrote these effects and offer to update this file with proper credit if the author should identify him- or herself.

THE FLYABLE PLANES

The 3D model of the Gee Bee Model Q Ascender incorporates some guesswork and speculation, since very little information about it has survived, and some of it is contradictory. For example, sources offer two different figures for the plane’s length and there’s disagreement of a few feet - quite a lot for a little airplane like the Ascender. No interior photos or drawings seem to exist, so the panel of the Model Q is completely speculative. We do know from accounts of Mark Granville’s accident in the pane that it had no seat for the pilot, who had to sit on the fuselage framework. Clearly this plane was never intended for long flights, and we considered this when creating the minimalist panel. The colors of the Model Q were taken from book jacket artwork that’s known from written remarks to be generally correct, though we can’t vouch for the exact shades of green or orange. We’re sure that the markings, copied from both the artwork and from several photos, are complete and correct.

The Ascender’s flight model is completely speculative. With no information available about things like the angles of incidence of the wings and the canard stabilizer, the airfoil used on the canard, the actual length of the plane, the washout of the wings and so forth, and with no pilot reports available to provide commentary about the handling, authentic flight dynamics were out of the question. If you get too slow it will pick up a wicked rate of sink, and if you stall it the nose will drop sharply. Keep your speed steady and some power on until the wheels touch the turf.

The 3D models of the Model R-1 and R-2 Super Sportsters are as authentic as we could make them, and we think that’s very authentic indeed. They depict the planes as they were configured for the National Air Races in September 1932. At that time the R-1 and R-2 were externally identical except for their race numbers, the R-2’s more tapered cowling covering its smaller engine, the arrangement of the tailwheel, the presence of navigation lights on just the R-2, and a few differences in the placement of some minor markings required by the addition of the lights to the R-2.

The flight models are not as authentic as the visual models, and no attempt was made to make them completely authentic. The Model R Super Sportsters were touchy, twitchy, extremely difficult planes to fly. Even Jimmy Doolittle, one of the greatest pilots in history, didn’t feel that he was fully in control of the R-1 at racing speeds, and the highly competent and experienced race pilot Jimmy Haizlip couldn’t land the R-1 without rolling it up in a ball. In the interest of flyability we thought it would be OK if our virtual R-1 and R-2 were a bit easier to fly than the real planes were. (They’re still not real easy…) More effort was put into providing authentic performance than handling, and we think their performance is reasonably correct. Held at full throttle in level flight, they take a little while to get up to their top speeds. We suppose that was true of the real R-1 and R-2 too.

Both of the Super Sportsters and the Ascender work as AI planes if you wish to use them that way.

THE STATIC GEE BEE MODEL R SUPER SPORTSTER

The Model R-1 parked by the hangar doors is a static scenery object, not an AI plane. Don’t sit there waiting for it to fire up and taxi out for a flight. It ain’t gonna happen.

If you’d like, you can replace the static R-1’s livery with the colors and markings of the R-2, using the alternate textures provided. The 3D model, however, is the R-1 in its 1932 configuration, with its bigger cowling than that on the R-2. Sets of R-1 and R-2 textures for the static Model R are in the Options folder inside the main Springfield Airport folder.

To change between the R-1 and R-2 liveries, go into the Springfield Airport folder, then into the Options folder, and simply COPY the textures from either the "static R-1 textures" or the "static R-2 textures" folder into the "texture" folder, overwriting what’s there. Be sure to copy and not move so that you’ll always have a copy of both sets of texture files to use if you want to switch back and forth.

You might like to do that if you’re a stickler for detail and you want to fly the flyable R-1 without seeing another copy of the one-off R-1 parked in front of the hangar.

HOGAN’S POND

The small body of water down the hill from the south boundary of the airport was called Hogan’s Pond. By the late 1950s the pond had been drained and all that remained of it was a tiny stream running mostly through a cement pipe. Our Hogan’s Pond is not "real" FS9 water; it’s painted land. We found that we could make a real water Hogan’s Pond but it looked terrible and didn’t match the nearby streams and rivers, or we could make a fake pond that looks fine. Since the pond was so small and there’s no likelihood that anyone ever flew anything from it on floats, we decided that looks trumped function. In fact, the Granvilles did test some of their planes on floats, but they took them down town to the Connecticut River for that. Nothing but a helicopter on floats could’ve gotten into or out of tiny Hogan’s Pond, and they didn’t have helicopters in those days.

NAVAIDS

Springfield Airport has a rotating beacon that lights from dusk until dawn and a Terminal NDB with the name Springfield Airport, the identity SPF, frequency 334.0 and range 37.5 miles.

AI TRAFFIC AT SPRINGFIELD AIRPORT

Springfield Airport is AI-ready, but since there were so many distinctive planes that flew from Springfield Airport, and since most of them were only there for very limited times, no AI package is provided with this scenery. To create an AI scheme that depicts Springfield Airport and uses Gee Bee planes accurately for any specific time frame you’d have to use different planes for pretty much whatever year you wanted to depict.

It’s true that having the static R-1 in its 1932 configuration sort of places our Springfield Airport in the second half of 1932, but the Model R Super Sportsters were around for a few years in various configurations. If you don’t look too hard you can pretend it’s the R-1 or R-2 in 1933 configuration, or the R-1/R-2 composite in 1934 configuration, or the long-tailed Model R ‘Intestinal Fortitude" in 1935 configuration. Anyway, the static Model R is parked in a sort of out of the way place, off the flight line and between the Granville Building and the Administration building. If you don’t want it to be late 1932, or (by squinting) any time from late 1932 to mid-1935, then just ignore it. Pretend it’s not there. We thought about taking it out but we like it so we left it in. We hope you like it too.

So you’re on your own for an AI scheme. Sit yourself down with Traffic Tools and your favorite AI flight plan editor and have at it!

The airport is AI ready. There are eight parking spaces; seven along the flight line and one next to the Benton-Bayles Flying Service building, on the south side. The northernmost space is not coded; the next four have the Parking Code GEBE, and the others are not coded.

Springfield Airport was a grass field with no real runways, but the shape of the field suggests two pairs of opposing directions that would be optimal for take-offs and landings by larger planes. There are invisible (in our systems anyway!) runways there for AI use. (You, of course, in your flyable plane, will take off and land in whatever direction is into the wind.)

Any light civil aircraft of the 1930s would be a good choice as an AI aircraft, depending on what year it is in your sim, and perhaps some planes that weren’t so light. We don’t recommend big (for the day) airliners; in the 1930s Springfield was served by American Airways and possibly other major carriers, but they flew in and out of Bowles Airport in Agawam, across the Connecticut River, where the runways were paved and the residential areas didn’t crowd the airport like they did in Springfield.

Many famous flyers visited Springfield; it wouldn’t be inappropriate to have the stock FS9 Vega in either Wiley Post’s or Amelia Earhart’s livery in your AI scheme. "Slim" Lindbergh came to Springfield at least once, but it’s seems not to be recorded what plane he flew in. Certainly not the Spirit of St. Louis, which was a museum piece by the time Lindbergh came to Springfield. Frank Hawks visited Springfield; we don’t know if he was flying his Northrop Gamma "Sky Chief" (Paul Clawson’s model) but he might have.

One summer day in 1932 it was front page news in the Springfield Union that a Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk from the Navy’s Lighter Than Air Unit had visited Springfield when its pilot came to meet with Granny Granville. J R Lucariny’s F9C works as AI and would be appropriate as a visitor to Springfield in 1932.

You should have no trouble coming up with some appropriate AI traffic for Springfield Airport for whatever time you wish to depict. It’s mainly the Gee Bee planes you use that will determine the time frame of your AI scheme.

OTHER VIRTUAL GEE BEE PLANES FOR SPRINGFIELD

There are two obvious choices that anyone who downloaded this package probably has in their hangar already. If you don’t have them, grab them today! They are the fantastic Gee Bee Model Z "City of Springfield" by Warwick "Wozza" Carter & Garry Smith, winner of the 1931 Thompson Trophy Race, and the outstanding Gee Bee Model R6H "Q.E.D." by Tom Eads with four paints depicting the plane as it appeared when flown by Jackie Cochran, Lee Gehlbach, George Armistead and Francisco Sarabia. The Jackie Cochran livery would be most appropriate for flying at Springfield, since that’s how the plane was painted when it was built, tested and delivered. Wozza’s Z and Tom’s R6H are both available at FlightSim.com and possibly at other download sites.

There’s not much else. Long ago Chris Benson released a Gee Bee Model D Sportster and a Gee Bee Model Y Senior Sportster for FS2002 and CFS2 that work is FS9/GW3 without even losing their props. I got them at Sim Outhouse, but they aren’t available there now; attempts to download them produce a "File Not Found" error page. Apparently they didn’t survive one of the server replacements of the past couple years, so if you don’t already have them you probably can’t get them now. They were low-poly models with low-resolution skins meant for on-line racing, and they weren’t up to today’s standards of detail and authenticity. They’re mentioned only so those who may have downloaded them, stashed them away and forgot about them might be reminded to dig them out. They’re good choices for AI because the Sportsters and Senior Sportsters were around for the Granville’s entire tenure at Springfield.

Besides those planes mentioned above, all there seems to be is another R-1 model. Frankly, it’s not nearly as authentic as the one in this package, and it wears a completely bogus Model Z paint job. With the R-1 and R-2 in this package and Wozza’s Z, you’ll have no need for that other R dressed as a Z.

HOW AUTHENTIC IS SPRINGFIELD AIRPORT?

Mick grew up within walking distance of Springfield Airport and had his first airplane ride there as a toddler before it was closed and the property became Springfield Plaza. Since he discovered Flight Simulator in the waning days of FS2K he wished for a scenery of Springfield Airport, and there’s never been one. An add-on for Golden Wings Two (FS2002) purported to include Springfield Airport, but what it actually contained was a totally fictitious rendition in the location of Westover Air Force Base, which isn’t even in Springfield and which wasn’t built until 1940. Considering how many developers favor the Golden Age period, and the significance of the Granville Brothers, who built the Gee Bee racers there, it seemed remarkable that nobody ever made a scenery of Springfield Airport.

It seemed less remarkable when Mick started researching the project. Reference material was not thick upon the ground! There were a few low-resolution photos from the archives of the Springfield Newspapers, reprinted in June Granville’s book Farmers Take Flight, and a few very low detail maps and charts found on the web. There was Mick’s fuzzy recollection of the Tait hangar, which survived the construction of Springfield Plaza and which Mick had been brought up to believe (incorrectly) was the Granville hangar, and a very sparse Granville Brothers display at the Springfield Science Museum. That was about it.

There are books about the Gee Bee airplanes and books about the Granville Brothers, and articles and web pages about the Taits and their airline, New England & Western Air Transport, and especially about Maude Tait and her air racing exploits. But all these sources contained only a handful of poor quality photos of Springfield Airport.

There were hundreds, probably thousands, of photos taken of the Gee Bee racers, but apparently none of them were shot at Springfield Airport! A thorough search of the Springfield Library and Museums, the web, and books about the Gee Bee planes revealed uncounted pictures of the Gee Bees taken at the National Air Races in Cleveland or at Bowles Airport in Agawam, across the Connecticut River from Springfield, where the Granvilles did most of their test flying, or at other locations on the air racing circuit. Not one shot of the Gee Bee airplanes showed Springfield Airport in the background!

A search for the planes and facilities of the Tait’s airline, New England & Western Air Transport, was only slightly more productive. We found one photo that showed one Springfield Airport building, the Administration Building, at a distance, and it showed that the funky wind T that Mark Granville built on the roof was more three-dimensional than we’d first realized. All the other shots we could find of NE&WAT’s planes were taken in other locations.

We began the project with the idea that all there was at Springfield Airport was a hangar and a windsock. David will smile (Mick hopes!) at the recollection that our extremely complex and detailed scenery of Coast Guard Air Station Salem, Mass, also started out with Mick telling him, "David, it will be easy! It was just a hangar and a windsock!" Several months later, after rebuilding the world of FS9 around Salem Harbor clear down to bedrock, recreating Winter Island, redrawing the coastline, and erecting about a dozen detailed buildings, we had our CGAS Salem.

Springfield wasn’t quite that complex. There was no shoreline to correct, although we did have to re-channel a stream and dig and flood a small pond. We had to level the field and make a fairly steep hill on one side of it, build the roads and streets around the field and get them to follow the terrain. We wound up with seven detailed buildings, a rotating beacon, a wind T and, of course, a windsock.

Thanks to USA Roads and Google Maps we were able to replicate the airfield precisely in size, shape and location, since the boundaries of today’s Springfield Plaza are still those of the old airport. We were able to do the same with the streets immediately surrounding the airport, since they haven’t changed since before World War Two. We limited ourselves to the airport’s immediately adjacent streets because it was impossible to come up with a scheme that would blend in perfectly with stock FS9 roads, stock GW3 roads, USA Roads and Ultimate Terrain. We’ve seen that our scenery fits in pretty well (though not perfectly) with the stock FS9 roads, the stock GW3 roads, and FS9 with USA Roads, and that last part suggests that it should look pretty good in Ultimate Terrain too. If you look closely, whatever terrain configuration you have, you can see a few small streets that shouldn’t be there around the edges of the airport, especially in Golden Wings or stock FS9, but all the streets that should be there are there. The overall effect looks pretty good as you pass over the airport boundary on take-off or landing - especially if you’re paying attention to your flying!

The airport diagrams we found on the web, small scale though they are, provided the exact locations and "footprints" of the buildings.

Photos in June Granville’s book, and better quality copies seen at the Springfield Science Museum, provided the shapes and relative sizes of the buildings and some information about their finish. We are convinced that all the buildings are completely authentic in size, shape and location and that they are all probably authentic in finish, though there is some uncertainty about a few details.

The Tait hangar, across the field from the rest of the buildings in the northeast corner, survived the construction of Springfield Plaza and was still standing at least into the 1970s and possibly into the 1990s. Mick saw it uncounted times in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, his high school girlfriend’s father owned the building and used it to store and repair boats. Mick distinctly recalls that it was made of concrete blocks and was painted in a color sometimes referred to as "industrial yellow," a very common color for commercial and industrial buildings in the Springfield area in the 1930s and to a lesser extent still today. A couple of anonymous "old geezers" at the Springfield Science Museum who were familiar with the building from years before Mick was born confirmed that they couldn’t recall it ever being a different color. We all agreed that the wooden door frames and window frames were painted the same color as the concrete block walls, but that they’d darkened more than the walls as the paint weathered.

We’re not quite so certain that the Tait hangar’s outbuilding, believed to be a furnace shed, was made of cement bricks (not the bigger blocks that the hangar was built of) but we’re pretty confident. We do know that it was the same color as the hangar. The window and door arrangements were taken from photos studied at the Springfield Science Museum. Their resolution was marginal but we’re pretty sure we interpreted them correctly. They showed the sizes, shapes, styles and locations of the windows and doors on three sides of the building, though some of the smaller doors aren’t 100% for certain. It’s odd but certain that the main hangar door faces east, away from the airfield. Nobody seems to know why it was built that way. There were no photos showing the north side of the hangar and Mick couldn’t remember for sure if it was the same as the south side; we had to assume that it was, and it probably was.

The New England & Western Air Transport lettering over the hangar door is artistic license. No photo is clear enough to reveal such lettering, but we thought it seemed appropriate and reasonably likely. Nobody remembers such lettering being there by the post-WW2 years, but NE&WAT went out of business in 1929, so it might well have been overpainted or weathered away by then. If the lettering was present, it most likely looked just as it appears, since the style of characters was taken from an airline brochure and from the lettering on their planes, as was the logo.

Although the airline was only in business a few months and didn’t survive the stock market crash of October 1929, the Taits remained involved in aviation through the 1930s. They maintained ownership of the airport and were the Granville’s landlords throughout the brothers’ presence in Springfield. Maude Tait (later Maude Tait Moriarty) was one of the better-known female pilots of the 1930s and she raced Gee Bee airplanes with great success.

We considered painting up the stock Ford Trimotor in New England & Western livery, but that proved impossible due to mirrored textures in locations that carried some of the most prominent markings. Anyway, the Tait’s sold off their Fords after the airline failed, so they wouldn’t have been there during the 1930s. Despite that, the Taits’ continued involvement in aviation led us to think it appropriate to park a few cars by their hangar.

We believe the Granville factory/hangar is completely authentic, though we’re not 100% certain in detail. As indicated above, we’re confident of the size and shape of the building. We saw photos in varying degrees of clarity of the west, south and east sides of the building and we were able to get the windows and doors correct. As with the Tait hangar, the north side is speculative. The few interior photos of the building do not suggest that there were hangar doors on both sides, and since the building wasn’t designed as a hanger, and had the hangar doors added later, it seems unlikely that the Taits went to the expense of adding them on both ends of the structure. So the north side of the building is completely speculative, but we think it makes sense and is believable.

The shape of the building, with the upper story inset from the main side walls, makes it highly unlikely that the building was built of brick, as photos seem to show at first glance. If it was, the walls of the smaller upper story would be much too heavy to be supported by cross beams and would require inner walls or rows of very closely spaced pillars beneath them to hold them up. We can’t say that there weren’t any inner walls or pillars, but there’s no sign of then in the few interior photos we found. Since the building was designed as a dance hall, presumably with maximum open space inside, we doubt that there were inner walls or rows of pillars spaced closely together.

We think the building was finished in fake brick shingles. There were three versions of fake brick asphalt shingles in very common use in those days, all depicting bricks of different colors and the lines of mortar between them in light or dark gray. One version depicted red bricks in several shades of red, with the occasional black brick thrown in for variety. Another had "industrial yellow" bricks, and the third, most common version, had bricks in several shades of gray. Although the surviving photos aren’t very high resolution, the higher quality version of one of the Springfield Newspapers photos copied in June Granville’s book shows that the finish was too light to be the red version of the shingles, and not uniform enough to be the "industrial yellow" version. That leaves the multi-toned gray, of which most of the tones were fairly light. We feel pretty confident that the gray fake brick shingle finish of our Granville hangar is authentic.

The signs are completely authentic on the airfield side of the building. Without a clear and detailed photo of the street side, we could only assume that the signage on both sides was pretty much the same. We made it the same for lack of any reason to make it different.

The finish of the two outbuildings is more speculative. We know the windows and doors are correct on a couple of sides, and they’re guesswork on the other sides. The actual finish is educated guesswork. Cement blocks seemed appropriate for the furnace shed and seemed to match the photos. All we could really tell about the finish of the other outbuilding is that it was a dark color. Dark red clapboard seemed plausible when compared with the photos, but that’s a guess.

You might wonder about those funny looking objects on the north and south ends of the first story roof on the airfield side of the Granville building, the things that look like big loudspeakers. We wondered too, and we finally decided that they were big loudspeakers. As you’ll read in the History section, Springfield Airport started out as a park and the Granville building started out as a dance hall. We think the dance hall had loudspeakers on the roof to blast music out into the park in the hope of attracting potential customers to come inside. They probably had no use at the airport, but there was no reason for anyone to go up on the roof to remove them.

Like the other main buildings, we feel very confident about the size and shape of the Administration Building, but less certain about the details and finish. There’s only one photo that shows any detail, and the high-resolution version at the Springfield Science Museum suggests fake brick shingles, and it looked pretty much like the finish of the Granville building, so we used the same gray fake brick shingles as we put on the Granville building. We’re not as confident of our accuracy, but we think we probably got it right.

We only had a photo showing one side of the building, and it doesn’t show it very well. We think we got the windows and doors on the airfield side right. We could only assume that they were fairly similar on the street side, though perhaps with not as many windows, especially in the cafeteria area, where we presumed that the kitchen was on the street side so that customers could enjoy the view from the many windows on the airfield side.

The north and south ends of the Administration building are speculative. We assumed many windows in the cafeteria end and fewer at the office end. The big Administration Building sign is definitely authentic and we think the Cafeteria and Administration signs above the doors are authentic, but we’re not sure. The Coca-Cola signs at the cafeteria end are speculative.

The most speculative building is the one to the south of the Administration Building. As with the others, we’re confident about the size, shape and location, but everything else is guesswork and artistic license. It’s only visible in one photo seen at Springfield Science Museum and it’s not very clear. All that can be determined is that it was a small, bungalow-type building with very light-colored walls, almost certainly white, and a very dark roof that we decided was probably black. The photo shows the windows and door on the south side of the building. We assumed that the north side was probably similar. The east and west sides are speculative, as is all the signage. We know that the Benton-Bayles Flying Service was located at Springfield Airport, and since there didn’t seem to be room for it in the Administration Building, we thought maybe it was in the little white building. We don’t know if Mr. Benton kept the company in business after Lowell Bayles was killed in the fall of 1931.

There’s some evidence that Texaco was the brand of gasoline sold at Springfield Airport, as indicated by the logo on the gas pumps. There’s a photo that shows two pumps by the Granville building’s outbuilding, and a photo that shows one pump by the storage tank near the Administration Building. We did not find a photo that showed all three pumps in both locations at the same time, but we put them all in anyway. That might be right. We just don’t know.

The decorative shrubbery on the airfield side of the Administration building and the fencing around the "font yard" on the airfield side of the Administration building and on the airfield side of the Granville building is authentic. It’s possible that the fencing extended further, perhaps around the entire perimeter of the field, but we couldn’t find any evidence of that. In the interest of a lower frame rate hit we decided to stick with what we knew was definitely there for fencing. Also in the interest of frame rates we made the mesh of the fences bigger than true scale. We think it was a worthwhile compromise.

That thing that looks like a hitching post in the parking lot was really there. We don’t know if anyone ever hitched any horses to it…

The styles and locations of the vintage automobiles parked around the Administration and Granville buildings were copied from a photo. Their colors are completely speculative, since it was a black & white photo. If you look closely you’ll see that they’re all various versions of the 1932 Ford Model A. The photo wasn’t clear enough to show if this is correct or not. We were able to find some reference material on the 1932 Ford Model A line-up so we went with it.

Mark Granville built the wind T on top of the Administration Building in the very early 1930s, and it responds to the wind in the sim. So does the windsock in the white circle to the south of the Tait hangar. The rotating beacon just west of the Tait hangar is also authentic. It flashes at night, though the airport has no other night lighting.

The post-WW2 version of Springfield Airport is considerably more speculative, since little information seems to have survived about its appearance after the war. We know that the Tait hangar was still there because it stood for decades after the airport closed. Beyond that, all we could do was guess that the other buildings were still present and that the Granville name had been removed from the signage by then. We also guessed that the Benton-Bayles Flying Service was no longer operating and removed that signage from the little white building south of the Administration Building. Although Mick went for his first airplane flight at Springfield Airport in the early fifties, he was only about four years old and has no recollection of what the airport looked like.

HISTORY

In 1922, at age 21, Zantford Granville, who would become known to the aviation world as "Granny" (but was "Zant" to his family and friends) called Tom, the oldest of his younger brothers, to come and run the successful auto repair shop he’d established two years earlier in Arlington Mass. Zantford, the eldest of five brothers from a New Hampshire farm family, had been bitten by the flying bug. He took a job doing mechanical work at the East Boston Airport, working for free in exchange for flying lessons. The rate of exchange was twenty-five hours of work for each one-hour lesson. Granny earned his pilot’s license in 1923.

By the time Zant lost his job in 1926 he knew enough about airplanes to open his own aircraft service and repair business. It offered customers a unique aeronautical "road service." Granny designed and built a portable machine shop on the chassis of an old seven-passenger car and he would drive to meet pilots forced down away from an airport. He would repair their planes on site so they could fly them out. Planes damaged beyond on-site repair could be dismantled and hauled or towed back to the shop. The business did well enough that Zant called the next oldest brother, Ed, down from New Hampshire to help work the business.

In 1927 Zantford came up with another idea. Since legal difficulties prevented the erection of new buildings at the East Boston Airport he established his business there by converting a large truck into a complete portable aircraft service shop, a much larger version of his earlier "road service" rig. Business picked up enough that he called the next brother, Rob, down to help.

A year later a syndicate approached the Granville Brothers Air Service about building a flying boat from scratch. The prospect of that work led to the last brother, Mark, being called down from New Hampshire.

The flying boat wasn’t completed because the sponsors ran out of money, but the Granvilles still wanted to build Boston’s first locally produced airplane, and they now had a facility to build it in.

Zant designed the Gee Bee Model A, a biplane that seated two people side by side in a wide single cockpit. The plane looked a lot like a side-by-side version of the tandem-seat Fleet Finch. The Model A was built with impeccable craftsmanship and it was loaded with innovative construction methods, aerodynamic techniques and safety features. It could be mounted on wheels, floats or skis. In the pre-dawn gloom of May 4, 1929, Granny Granville took the prototype Gee Bee Model A up for its first flight. It was a resounding success.

Now they needed an even bigger facility, one big enough for not just the construction of a single airplane, but for a production line. A hundred miles to the west, in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts, someone with just such a facility was looking for an airplane manufacturer.

The four Tait brothers, James, Harry, Frank and George, were the owners of Springfield’s largest ice cream & dairy business. These brothers had also been bitten by the aviation bug and in 1929 they formed the Springfield Airport Corporation. They acquired Fisk Park, located between the vaguely defined Springfield sections of Hungry Hill and East Springfield, and turned it into Springfield Airport. They built a big hangar in the northeast corner of the field and a small terminal / administration building on the west side. They bought a small fleet of Ford Trimotors and established the New England & Western Air Transportation Company Inc., an airline serving Springfield, Boston, Hartford, Albany and New York City.

Along with Fisk Park the Taits had acquired the Venetian Gardens, a large dance hall on the Liberty Street side of the field just north of the new administration building. With the addition of hangar doors it could be turned into an airplane factory if a manufacturer could be found to move into it.

When the Granvilles contacted the Springfield Chamber of Commerce to inquire about the availability of facilities, the Chamber referred them to the Trait brothers. In July Granny flew out and showed the Model A to the Taits. In August the Granville Brothers Aircraft Corporation was formed with Granny as President, the other four Granvilles as partners, James Tait as Treasurer, Harry Tait as a member of the Board of Directors and James Moriarty (who would later marry James Tait’s daughter Maude) as corporate counsel.

By September the Arlington auto garage and the Boston aircraft business were closed and all five Granvilles were in Springfield. In October the stock market crashed and by November the Great Depression was in full swing, the Tait’s airline had failed and former potential customers for Granville airplanes were doing their flying without the assistance of aircraft, making one-way flights out the windows of Wall Street skyscrapers.

With the market for small private airplanes in the gutter and with no prospect for improvement, the Granvilles needed another way to drum up business. Granny decided that even if there was no more hope of a mass market for private planes, there would probably always be a small niche market for sporting aircraft for wealthy sportsmen. He and Bob Hall, a college-educated engineer hired to compliment Granny’s self-educated genius with his professional knowledge and training, designed the Gee Bee Model X Sportster, a small single seat monoplane that delivered high performance on modest power and was "ideally adaptable for sport, speed, business or pleasure."

The Granvilles equipped the Model X with a Cirrus engine to make it eligible for the Cirrus-sponsored All American Air Derby, a thirteen-day, 5635 mile endurance run from Detroit to New York, Texas, California and back to Michigan. When it was flown in the summer of 1930 it was the longest air race ever held anywhere in the world. The Sportster was flown by Zant’s close friend Lowell Bayles, a former barnstormer and Ford Trimotor pilot for the Taits’ New England & Western Air Transport and a partner in the Benton-Bayles Flying Service located at Springfield Airport. Bayles brought the Sportster in second out of ten finishers. Half of the prize money went to the company directly and Bayles’ half went to the company when he used it to buy the Sportster. The money kept the company afloat and the Granville’s name and reputation were established on a national scale.

During the following few years a number of Sportster models were developed, differing mainly in their powerplants but also in the details of their landing gear and other features. The two-seat Senior Sportsters were made with retractable front windscreens and covers for their front cockpits so they could be raced as more streamlined single seaters. The Gee Bees did very well in class racing and over the years they actually won more money than the big unlimiteds that the Granvilles are mostly remembered for. But for 1931 the Granvilles, Hall and Bayles wanted more. They felt ready for the big time.

In 1929, when the Granvilles had just joined the Taits in Springfield and before the stock market crash destroyed their business plan, Doug Davis broke the military’s decade-long stranglehold on American air racing by winning the Thompson Cup (not yet the Thompson Trophy) at the National Air Races in the Travel Air Model R "Mystery Ship." The following year Matty Laird solved the mystery and Charles "Speed" Holman took the Thompson in the Laird "Solution." The Gee Bee team thought they just might be able to capture the Thompson Trophy for 1931.

Neither the Granvilles nor the Taits had the kind of money it would take to develop a competitive racer for the world’s most hotly contested unlimited race for landplanes. To raise funds they set up the Springfield Air Racing Association with James Tait as President and other local business leaders as the other officers. Stock in the Association was sold for $100 per share. Civic pride and enthusiasm was such that over $5000 was raised, a miracle then in the depths of the depression. It was nowhere near enough, but major corporate contributions made it possible to complete the plane. Pratt & Whitney lent an engine, Indian Motorcycle (located in Springfield) sandblasted parts, and Curtiss provided a propeller.

Lowell Bayles flew the Gee Bee Model Z Super Sportster "City of Springfield" to victory in the 1931 Thompson Trophy race. Three months later, in Detroit, triumph turned to disaster when Bayles was killed attempting to set a new world speed record in the Model Z. Post-accident analysis indicated that the probable cause was the fuel filler cap coming off and smashing through the windscreen, causing Bayles to lose control at high speed and low altitude.

For the 1932 National Air Races the Granvilles and the Springfield Air Racing Association planned a double-edged effort. The new Model R Super Sportster would be built in two versions. The R-1 would be optimized for pylon racing and would attempt to repeat the Model Z’s success in the Thompson Trophy race. The R-2 would be optimized for cross-country racing and would vie for the Bendix Trophy race from Burbank, California to the National Air Races at Cleveland, Ohio.

The R-2 differed from the R-1 mainly in having a smaller engine and greater fuel and oil capacity. It also featured navigation lights, the addition of which required the relocation of some markings in the tail area. The R-1 and R-2 also differed in the mounting of their tailwheels, the R-1’s being steerable and the R-2’s fixed. Since the R-2 used the same powerplant as the 1931 Thompson-winning Model Z and was more aerodynamically advanced, it was expected to do well in closed circuit pylon racing as well as in cross country racing.

After the 1931 races Bob Hall, who had a big part in the design of the Model Z, left the Granvilles to start his own company, Springfield Aircraft, located at Bowles Airport in Agawam, across the Connecticut River from Springfield. Some sources state that Hall quit in a huff because he didn’t think he received enough credit for his work on the Model Z, but first hand sources do not support that assumption. June Granville, whose writing was based on family records and the recollections of her father and the other Granville brothers, records that Hall parted on good terms, had no hard feelings, and just wanted to have his own company. Since the Granvilles did most of their testing at Bowles they were in constant contact with Hall, and they helped each other out regularly despite the fact that Hall’s Springfield Bulldog and the Granvilles’ Model R were meant to be direct competitors at the upcoming National Air Races. For a time, while the Model R was based at Bowles for testing, Hall shared hangar space with the Granvilles.

Russell Boardman, an experienced race pilot and a major stockholder in the Springfield Air Racing Association, was to fly the R-1 at Cleveland. After screening applications from all over the country, the S.A.R.A. selected Lee Gehlbach to fly the R-2 in the Bendix contest.

Two weeks before the National Air Races Russ Boardman was injured when he spun a Model E Sportster into the trees on the perimeter of Springfield Airport and the R-1 was without a pilot. As it happened, about that time the retractable gear malfunctioned on Matty Laird’s modified Super Solution, forcing Jimmy Doolittle to make a wheels-up landing. The damage couldn’t be repaired in time for the races, leaving Doolittle without a ride for the Thompson Trophy race. Zant Granville contacted Doolittle, who came to Springfield, took off in the R-1 and departed directly for Cleveland without even landing to clinch the deal. The most famous pilot and plane combination in the history of air racing had been matched up.

History records that Doolittle and the R-1 triumphed in the Thompson race. Through no fault of his own, Gehlbach didn’t do so well in the Bendix. A broken oil line forced him to land at Chanute Field in Illinois. Unable to make the repair, he removed the cockpit cover so he could see despite the leaking oil. This allowed him to finish the race but slowed him down so much that he came in fourth, last among the finishers but still in the money. Gehlbach also flew the R-2 in the Thompson and finished fifth, again in the money.

That year, like the year before, Gee Bee planes and their pilots won a number of lesser contests to compliment their Thompson wins.

For 1933 there were a number of changes made to the R-1 and R-2. he R-1 got a bigger engine and the R-2 got the engine that came out of the R-1. Both planes had additional area added to the lower sections of their rudders, resulting in a curious and distinctive profile. The R-2 lost its navigation lights and received a whole new wing with a new airfoil, increased area and flaps.

With Doolittle retired from racing, Russ Boardman was again the pilot of the R-1. Russell Thaw was to fly the R-2. In 1933 both the R-1 and the R-2 would compete in both the Bendix and Thompson races. The National Air Races were in Los Angeles in July that year, so the Bendix was run from New York to LA. Thaw incurred minor damage when he landed the R-2 for fuel at Indianapolis and while he waited for repairs to be made, Boardman arrived in the R-1 for his fuel stop. When he took off Boardman lost control of the R-1 and crashed fatally. Thaw witnessed the crash and was so unnerved that he withdrew from the race. The R-2 never made it to Los Angeles and only a single Model Y Senior Sportster was left to uphold the Granville name in the Los Angeles Nationals.

The National Air Races were scheduled for another round in September 1933, the traditional Labor Day extravaganza in Cleveland. Jimmy Haizlip, one of the country’s most experienced and successful racing pilots, was recruited to fly the R-2 at Cleveland. In August he and his wife Mae, an accomplished race pilot herself, came to Springfield to fly the Model R. Haizlip took the R-2 up from Bowles Airport in Agawam, where the Granvilles did most of their testing, and he handled the Super Sportster well enough in the air, though he reported that the first time he touched the rudder he was thrown across the cockpit and slammed against the door. When he tried to land it, he rolled it up in a ball.

The S.A.R.A. had decided to rebuild the R-1, and after Haizlip wrecked the R-2 it was the final chance for a Gee Bee to compete before the end of the 1933 racing season. The fuselage was repairable and the R-2’s original wings, which were identical to the R-1’s wings, were available in storage. The plane, which would become the Model R-1/R-2 Long Tailed Racer was named "Intestinal Fortitude." In some documents it was referred to as the Model R-3 International Sportster. It received an 18-inch fuselage extension, a new and larger rudder, a smaller, more streamlined cowling with rocker arm bulges, increased fuel capacity and a tailskid in place of the earlier wheel. Roy Minor, an experienced Hollywood stunt pilot, was to fly it. On his last text flight at Bowles before departing for the Nationals he landed hot, ran out of runway and skidded the R-1/R-2 into a ditch, ending the season for the S.A.R.A and the Granvilles. As it turned out, it was the end of the Springfield Air Racing Association and the Granville Brothers racing efforts.

In January 1934 the Granville Brothers Aircraft Corporation was closed and its assets sold at auction, but that wasn't the end of the Granville name in the aircraft business. Zantford Granville, Howell "Pete" Miller and Donald DeLackner opened an engineering consulting firm in New York City. Their first project wasn't an airplane; it was a racing car for the Indianapolis 500. The "Atlanta" was a teardrop-shaped three-wheeler with a huge fin, fully enclosed wheels and a closed cockpit for the driver. It was expected to reach 140 miles per hour powered by a standard Ford V-8. The project died when Eddie Rickenbacker, President of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, dropped by the firm's office, saw the design and pointed out that race rules defined an automobile as a four-wheeled vehicle. He probably didn't bother to mention that the rules also called for open wheels and cockpits.

Granny Granville only survived the dissolution of his original aircraft company and the establishment of his new consulting firm by about a month. On February 12th, 1934 he was delivering a Gee Bee Sportster to a buyer when he approached Memorial Airport in Spartanburg, South Carolina, for an intermediate stop on the trip. Just as he was about to touch down, a construction laborer carelessly and stupidly walked out across the runway right in front of him. Granny pulled up sharply to avoid hitting him, stalled and crashed fatally.

Later that year the surviving Granvilles reunited with Howell "Pete" Miller and other former Granville Brothers employees to produce one more Gee Bee racer, the Model R6H "Q.E.D." Though it was designed and built under the Granville, Miller & DeLackner Company name, it was really the last true Granville Brothers aircraft. It was a two-seater built for Jackie Cochran’s use in the famous MacRobertson England to Australia race. Lee Gehlbach flew it in the 1934 Bendix race as a test but trouble with the cowling prevented a strong finish. Cochran made it as far as Rumania before she dropped out of the MacRobertson race. At different times she gave contradictory reasons for her failure to continue the race, leading some to speculate that she just found the flying too grueling. He plane passed through a few other owners, winding up as Francisco Sarabia’s "Conquistador de Cielo."

In 1936 Pete Miller, Mark Granville and Frank Hawks started the New England Aircraft Company to build the "Time Flies," which some have called a Gee Bee without the Gee Bee name. The plane was built in the old Granville Brothers building at Springfield Airport, but with only one of the five brothers involved in the project, the Granville connection was somewhat tenuous. Hawks used the plane to set a round trip record between Newark and Miami, but he finished the flight with an extremely poor landing and seriously damaged the plane. That fiasco led the Gruen Watch Company to withdraw their sponsorship, and that was the end of the career of the "Time Flies," which was retired to a garage at Hawks' home in Connecticut. After Hawks' death the plane was rebuilt as the HM-1 attack bomber, in the hope of selling it in the South American market, but no buyers were found. Note that the designation used the letters HM, presumably for Howell Miller, and not GB for Granville Brothers.

The surviving Granville Brothers and their talented engineering staff remained in the aviation manufacturing business. Most of the brothers wound up working for various divisions of United Aircraft (later United Technologies), where they rose into supervisory and management positions. After WW2 Rob went back to New Hampshire and farming while the others remained in the aviation industry. They all died of heart attacks, a family legacy, at ages ranging from 49 (Mark) to 71 (Rob.)

Springfield Airport continued in operation into the fifties, but it was living on borrowed time. Its fate was cast with the construction of Westover Field (later Westover Air Force Base), a large military base located just a few miles away in Chicopee Falls that opened in 1940. Westover's main runway aimed straight as an arrow at Springfield Airport, its extended centerline passing through the Granville Hangar. Aircraft arriving or departing Westover would pass directly over Springfield Airport at just a few hundred feet altitude. During the war, with little or no civil traffic at Springfield, this wasn't a problem. In the last 1940s, with civilian activity resuming at Springfield and with MATS C-54s and C-121s based at Westover, there must have been conflicts. When the runway was extended in preparation for Westover's conversion to a SAC base with B-52s and KC-135s in residence, the end was in sight.

By the mid-fifties Springfield Airport was closed and by the end of the decade it has been developed into Springfield Plaza, which has been hailed as the world's first suburban shopping center.

WERE THE GEE BEES KILLERS?

Over the years the Gee Bee racers have achieved a degree of notoriety approached by no other aircraft. Three Model E Sportsters, all of the Super Sportsters, both of the Model Y Senior Sportsters and the Model Q Ascender crashed, most of them fatally. Granny Granville himself was killed flying a Model E Sportster. Perhaps it’s not surprising that some writers accused the Granvilles, and Granny in particular, of being obsessed with speed and willing to sacrifice safety to get it. Others, though not attacking the Granvilles’ integrity, suggest that the Gee Bees may have had safety issues because they weren’t very skillfully designed. Granny Granville’s lack of an engineering degree may have influenced that theory.

A review of the facts seems to indicate that criticisms of the Granvilles’ attitude towards safety and Gee Bees’ handling qualities have little basis in fact, except possibly for the handling of the Model R-1 and R-2 Super Sportsters.

First it should be remembered that while Zantford Granville never formally studies engineering, he was something of a mechanical genius with numerous inventions to his credit, and he served an apprenticeship in aircraft service and repair while preparing for his pilot’s license and for some time after he earned his private ticket. He designed the Model A by himself, and no indication could be found that any Model A ever crashed or that the type drew any criticism about its handling. Once the Granvilles settled in Springfield they hired college-educated professional engineers like Bob Hall and Howell "Pete" Miller to apply their knowledge of stress analysis and materials strength to help translate Granny’s aeronautical concepts into reality as safely and efficiently as possible.

It should also be remembered that Granny Granville test flew his airplanes. Granny was a family man with a wife and children; he had no death wish and no desire to leave his wife a widow and his children fatherless. Those who worked with him have all confirmed that safety was Granny’s top priority.

One might still be forgiven for wondering why so few planes had so many crashes that killed so many pilots. A look at the crashes provides food for thought.

John Kytle was the first pilot to die in a Gee Bee. It happened while the Granville’s new West Coast distributor was returning from picking up a new Model E Sportster, making a series of promotional stops along the way. At an airshow in Atlanta an airmail pilot with a reputation for his aerobatic skills was allowed to try the plane. He was performing a series of snap rolls beginning at an altitude estimated at from 500 to 1000 feet, gradually losing altitude, when he spun and crashed. It was Kytle’s fourth airplane crash and experienced pilots who witnessed it commented that he was much too close to the ground for the kind of maneuvers he was performing.

It was the 1931 crash of the Model Z "City of Springfield" while attempting a world speed record, killing Lowell Bayles, that started the Gee Bee’s "killer" reputation. Every aviation enthusiast has seen the infamous newsreel clip of the Z splattering itself across the ground in a sheet of flame. The post-crash investigation indicated that the probably cause of the crash was the fuel filler cap coming loose and smashing through the windscreen, stunning Bayles and causing him to lose control. Nothing about this freak accident suggests that there was anything fundamentally wrong with the Model Z of the way it handled.

The pilot of the Model R-1 for the 1932 Thompson Trophy race was originally to be Russell Boardman, President and major stockholder of the Springfield Air Racing Association. He had to be replaced two weeks before the race after he was injured in the crash of a Model E Sportster. Boardman crashed on take-off from Springfield Airport. Published reports of the crash conflict. In "The Gee Bee Racers" Charles A. Mendenhall & Tom Murphy state that Boardman took off, spun left, recovered, spun right and crashed. They cite no witnesses who supposedly recounted the tale that way. In "Farmers Take Flight" June I. Granville writes that, according to witnesses, Boardman attempted a loop immediately upon take-off and didn’t have quite enough altitude to complete the maneuver. Rob Granville believed that Boardman could’ve completed the loop if he’d been flying the more powerful Model Y Senior Sportster that he was used to. This seems to have been a pilot error accident that casts no shadow on the plane.

Boardman’s injuries kept him out of the 1932 National Air Races and Jimmy Doolittle flew the Gee Bee R-1 to victory in the Thompson Trophy Race. At a banquet in Springfield in celebration of the Granville’s success at the National Air Races (Doolittle’s winning of the Thompson was only one of the Gee Bee victories that year) Doolittle spoke lovingly of the R-1 and what a fine, sweet handling ship it was. Granville supporters have made much of his remarks. But General Doolittle was an officer and a gentleman and he wasn’t about to appear at a banquet to celebrate his victory and speak poorly about the plane that made it possible! His comments in other contexts might be more illustrative of his real opinion.

After the race someone asked Jimmy how the R-1 flew. His reply was, "Don’t ask me, I never did fly that wild son of a bitch!" Later he said, "It was the trickiest plane I have ever been in. Flying it was like balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger." After returning the R-1 to Springfield after the races he told friends, "I landed, taxied it up to the line and gratefully got out."

In his autobiography "I Could Never Be So Lucky Again" he recounts that when he attempted his first pylon turn in the R-1 the plane snap rolled out of control. If he’d attempted the turn at racing altitude he would’ve been killed. Since the plane couldn’t make regular pylon turns, Doolittle ran the race by flying high above the course and following a wide, flat course around the race circuit, relying on the R-1’s great speed to allow him to outrun his competitors despite having to fly much further than they did on each lap.

The first thing Doolittle did after winning the Thompson Trophy was to announce his retirement from air racing. He remarked that he had yet to hear of any race pilot dying of old age, but the comment was disingenuous; at that time air racing had existed for less than twenty-five years and none of its participants were elderly. It seems that the R-1 scared Jimmy Doolittle, one of the greatest pilots in history, out of racing.

Mark Granville ushered in the New Year of 1933 by crashing the Gee Bee Model Q Ascender at Springfield Airport. He spun it in from about 100 feet and his injuries were serious enough to require hospitalization. They were surely aggravated by the fact that the Model Q had no seat for the pilot, who sat on a fuselage structural member. After Mark's accident the Ascender was known to the Granvilles as the "Ass Ender." Not enough is known about the details of the crash to speculate on whether the plane's flying characteristics were a factor.

Russ Boardman crashed another Gee Bee in 1933. This time it was the modified Model R-1 Super Sportster and he lost his life in the crash. Departing Indianapolis after a fuel stop in the cross-country Bendix Trophy race, Boardman lifted the R-1 off the runway and promptly snap rolled. The R-1 never changed direction, continuing straight along the runway heading, and never got up out of ground effect, about a wingspan’s height above the ground. Yet when it impacted on the runway it was completely upside down and going backwards, facing directly back towards its starting point. This description of the crash was provided by a Granville mechanic who was standing at the edge of the runway right where the crash occurred. The mechanic thought that Boardman might have horsed the R-1 off the runway a bit early, before it was quite ready to fly, and that an errant gust of crosswind had struck just as the wheels left the ground.

The airport’s weather station confirmed that the wind had shifted just as Boardman lifted off. It’s hard to imagine why he would’ve pulled the plane off the runway before it was ready to fly, considering that he still had half the runway ahead of him, but witnesses said it looked like he did just that.

It would appear that an unanticipated change in the wind combined with possible pilot error to instigate the R-1’s crash. But the outcome seems to have been much more drastic than what would be expected from horsing a plane off the runway a bit too soon, regardless of an errant gust of wind. Under the circumstances we might expect a plane to refuse to lift off, or perhaps lift off briefly and settle back down onto the runway. A gust of crosswind at the critical moment might introduce a bobble, and if its strength and timing were bad enough, it might even cause the plane to swerve off the runway centerline. A really bad gust might even result in a ground loop. But the R-1 snap rolled and with no change in direction and without ever getting more than a wingspan off the ground, turned completely upside down and backwards before it impacted the runway. This has to say something about the handling of the plane!

Boardman wasn't the only one to crack up a Model R at Indianapolis that day. Earlier, Russell Thaw had arrived in the R-2 and he ground-looped on landing, damaging a wing. He was waiting on repairs when Boardman arrived, refueled and attempted to leave. He saw the other Russell's crash and promptly withdrew from the race, refusing to even fly the plane back to Springfield.

After Thaw, unnerved after witnessing Boardman’s crash, quit as the R-2’s pilot, the Granvilles recruited famed race pilot Jimmy Haizlip to fly the R-2, with its new wing equipped with flaps, for the rest of the 1933 racing season. Despite his extensive experience with touchy high performance racing planes, he reported that the first time he touched the rudder he was sent sliding across the red leather seat and slammed against the door. After tightening his seat belt and getting more familiar with the R-2 Haizlip attempted a landing. Sliding down final with full flaps he decided to impress the crowd with a spot landing right on the threshold of the paved Bowles Airport runway. He threw the R-1 into a steep sideslip, straightening out at the last second before touchdown. Apparently he either forgot or never knew that sideslips with the flaps down were strictly prohibited in the R-2. Instead of making a perfect three-point landing on his chosen spot, he went tumbling down the field, rolling the R-2 up into a ball of wreckage. Slideslipping the R-2 with flaps down was definitely pilot error, but one has to wonder whether a pilot of Haizlip's caliber might've gotten away with it in a more forgiving airplane.

Russ Boardman wasn't the only pilot to die while racing a Gee Bee during the 1933 racing season. The Granville's reputation took a serious hit when pretty young Florence Klingensmith was killed in a Model Y Senior Sportster at the Chicago Nationals. The plane had been modified and equipped with a much more powerful engine, and when Granny Granville heard what had been done to the plane he contacted the owner and explained that the Model Y wasn't built to carry anywhere near that much power and that he considered the new configuration dangerous. Perhaps because Bob Hall, who'd worked on the Senior Sportster's design, was involved with the modifications, Granny's warning went unheeded. At racing speeds the covering peeled off of a wing and Klingensmith died in the resulting crash. The extent of the modifications performed on the Model Y makes it clear that its crash were not due to any fault in its basic design.

Maude Tait's Model Y, the only other Senior Sportster, also crashed. Another pilot was flying it when the propeller threw a blade and the resulting vibration tore the engine from its mounts. The pilot survived. This accident was due to the faulty propeller, which wasn't a Granville product, and casts no shadow on the plane or its builders.

In the hope of salvaging something of the 1933 season the Granvilles repaired the fuselage of the crashed R-1 and gave it the original wings of the R-2, which had been saved when the new wings were installed and were identical to the R-1's wings. When they rebuilt the fuselage they added an extension of about two feet in front of the tail - perhaps an implicit admission that the original design had been a bit too short-coupled? The result was the Model R-1/R-2 "Intestinal Fortitude," also known as the "Long Tailed Racer." Roy Minor, an experienced race flyer and Hollywood stunt pilot, was to fly it plane for the rest of the season, but he never flew it in competition. While testing the plane Minor taxied the R-1/R-2 into a ditch, wrecking it and finally ending the season for the Granvilles and the Springfield Air Racing Association.

Cecil Allen bought the wreckage of the Long Tailed Racer and rebuilt it for the 1935 Bendix race. To increase its fuel capacity he added a large tank behind the cockpit, far behind the center of gravity. When he heard about this Howell "Pete" Miller contacted Allen and told him that the plane would be hopelessly unstable and wouldn't fly with fuel in that tank. He wrote to him several times and provided engineering data, explaining that the center of gravity must never be allowed to go further aft than 25% of the mean chord, and that when filled the new tank would put the CG beyond that limit, at 35% or even possibly 37%. Allen wouldn’t listen. The first time he took off with the new tank filled he lost control and crashed fatally. Another Gee Bee had crashed after being modified against the advice of its builders.

By then Granny Granville wasn't around to mourn him. Early in 1934 Granny lost his life in a Sportster he was delivering to a new owner. He was on short final, about to touch down at Spartanburg, South Carolina when a construction worker walked out onto the active runway right in front of him. When Granny tried to pull up he stalled and crashed. There is no reason to think he could've avoided the crash if he'd been flying a different plane.

The final crash of a Gee Bee involved the two-seat Model R6H International Super Sportster "Q.E.D." The R6H was built for Jackie Cochran to fly in the 1934 MacRobertson race from England to Australia. After an uneventful if undistinguished career in the hands of several owners it was bought by Mexican aviator Francisco Sarabia, who used it to set a Mexico City to Washington speed record in 1939. On the return flight, as soon as he took off he crashed into the Potomac River and was drowned. Investigation revealed that a careless mechanic had left a rag inside the cowling; it was sucked into the air intake, stopping the engine. Yet again a Gee Bee had crashed and its pilot was killed for reasons having nothing to do with the plane's design or handling.

Decades later a Gee Bee Super Sportster would fly again. Delmar Benjamin had a replica of the R-2 built and he flew it on the air show circuit, performing an impressive aerobatic display in it. He reported that the plane wasn't terribly difficult to fly, but it couldn't be trimmed for hands off flight. He said that the nose hunted from side to side, and that when he once took his hands off the controls to see how much the yaw would increase, after five oscillations his head was banging against the canopy and the plane was heading out of control. He also noted that the R-2 replica was very tricky in crosswind landings.

So… Were the Gee Bees killers? With the possible exception of the R-1 and R-2 Super Sportsters, the evidence says no. Aside from the Model R and the Model Q, which was an experimental type unrelated to any other Gee Bee, none of the Gee Bee crashes can be blamed on the design of handling of the aircraft. They all appear to have been solid, well designed and well built airplanes, and no criticism of their flying qualities has come down to us.

When we examine the Model R the picture isn't so rosy. The only pilot who ever flew a single-seat Model R Super Sportster and didn't crack it up was Jimmy Doolittle, possibly the greatest pilot who ever lived. Highly skilled and experienced race pilots like Russ Boardman and Jimmy Haizlip couldn't meet the challenge of the Model R. When Roy Minor, another highly competent pilot, taxied the R-1/R-2 into a ditch, it was partly because he ran out of airfield on landing due to the Long Tail's high touchdown speed, though wet grass after a rainstorm was a significant factor as well.

The fact that the Long Tailed Racer had a long tail seems like an acknowledgement that the original design was too short-coupled. Despite their protestations regarding the safety and handling of the Super Sportsters, the Granville family doesn't act as though they're completely convinced of their position. They provided information to assist the New England Air Museum build its R-1 replica only on the condition that the plane would never fly, and that they would not pass the information on to anyone who would attempt to build a flying example. (As it transpired, this stricture was violated, at least in spirit. Delmar Benjamin and builder Steve Wolf were allowed to photograph and measure the NEAM's R-1 replica in great detail when they were planning the construction of Benjamin's flying R-2 replica.) Jimmy Doolittle's reaction to the R-1, reported above, seems to seal the verdict that the R-1 was at best a tricky and difficult plane, and flying it safely was probably beyond the capabilities of the vast majority of pilots.

WEB LINKS

An excellent history of the Granvilles and their aircraft with many fine photos:

The U.S. Centennial of Flight page about the Gee Bee racers:

A brief history of the Gee Bees and the Thompson Trophy:

The Tait’s airline, New England & Western Air Transportation:

A brief aviation resume of Maude Tait:

RECOMMENDED READING

Available from the gift shop of the New England Air Museum <BR> (http://www.neam.org/)

Should be available from any of the big on-line booksellers, particularly those that specialize in aviation literature like Motorbooks or Historic Aviation.

LEGAL

These files are freeware and must remain so. The authors retain the copyright. <BR>

These files may not be distributed to or by AvSim, FSPlanet, Simviation, or SimNetwork.

These files are released without warranty of any kind. By downloading them you accept full responsibility for any consequences resulting from their use. The authors accept no responsibility whatsoever.

CREDITS

This package was designed and built by David Wooster and Mick Morrissey. <BR>

The author of the nav light effects is unknown but is deeply appreciated. <BR>

The staff of the Springfield Science Museum provided assistance with the research on Springfield Airport. We thank them for their time and effort. <BR>

The authentic 2D and VC panels of the Model R Super Sportsters are based on information and documentation provided by Dick Gilchriest of the New England Air Museum’s Gee Bee R-1 replica project team at the request of Mike Speciale, Executive Director of the New England Air Museum. Without their assistance we could not have built authentic cockpits for our Super Sportsters. We gratefully appreciate their assistance.

SUPPORT