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Old planes are bad ass -- the Gee Bee R1 -- BangShift style!

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  • Old planes are bad ass -- the Gee Bee R1 -- BangShift style!

    A little out of our normal wheelhouse but I think you'll dig the story!

    That which you manifest is before you.

  • #2
    Goes to show how much it was in the spotlight back then... I remember cartoons having planes copied off this look..
    Great read.. A TRUE HOT ROD!

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    • #3
      Well now, you have found my favorite golden age air racer. Crazy little plane with a HUGE engine. The other Gee Bees were cool too, but the R1/R2 is the coolest. That one has the R2 tail, if I remember correctly.

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      • #4
        A keen eye for sure! The plane in the lead photo is the R2 which is designed for distance racing over the full tilt sprint of the Thompson Trophy race where Doolittle ran it. The R2 ran a smaller Pratt and Whitney engine that was better on fuel economy although slower at full bore.
        That which you manifest is before you.

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        • #5
          Great job of it Brian, that's a sensational read!
          Charter member of the Turd Nuggets

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          • #6
            Stupid computer screwed something up. The smallest winged jet I know of is the F104, it has 196 sqft of wing, the R1 has 75sqft. Sure the F104 is 10x as heavy as the R1, but still that is a damn tiny wing.


            Brian, the only reason I am this heavy into cars is because I couldnt afford airplanes. Also being the the AF I learned to tell different models from each other because I saw so many planes every day. If you can tell as 66 GTO from a 67 then you can tell the difference between the R1 and R2.
            Last edited by Thumpin455; December 11, 2012, 01:47 PM.

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            • #7
              that is some crazy stuff there..

              a silly nickname growing up was "the bg".. it was not about the music group.
              I was silly fast and small.

              the bg.
              stupid nicknames.. I was deciphering that old italian grandpa for years.


              being a junior, that is my first name and middle initial..that one grandpa used to make up a nickname and chuckle.

              "little bewshy" was the other one. it was not until the net I learned that "bewshy" was the sound of the name of the guy who invented turbos, and how he spoke english. I am not actually small as an adult..but that guy got a kick out of how fast a little kid can run around apparently.

              anyway, doolittle and the story, good stuff to read up on. I learned only some of it formally, enlisting in the air force training in 1992. I vaguely remember his passing, while enlisted, but sure we must have had a half flag day at a minimum.
              Last edited by Barry Donovan; December 11, 2012, 02:53 PM.
              Previously boxer3main
              the death rate and fairy tales cannot kill the nature left behind.

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              • #8
                We saw the re-creation in the video at Miramar, maintaining level flight at perhaps 50 ft up...on it's side. With all that power and angled at about 20 degrees, the fuselage alone was enough to fly on. Who needs wings anyway?

                Enjoyed the story.
                ...

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                • #9
                  That damn thing is cool!
                  Thom

                  "The object is to keep your balls on the table and knock everybody else's off..."

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                  • #10
                    A zillion horsepower, stubby wings. That's all about wing load, from what little I know about aerodynamics. And very little do I know.

                    I learned enough to know you don't try a barrel roll while flying an electric-powered radio controlled sailplane. That stresses the wing from the top instead of the bottom, and SNAP! Long fluttering fall to the ground. It smashed into the ground about three feet away from Yank's Mustang at the makeshift airfield where his wife Murph was sitting peacefully reading a book.

                    And I know a tiny bit about about airspeed from the gas powered stunt plane. Airspeed, not ground speed. Flying that fully symmetrical wing RC plane downwind on a VERY windy day, it came but overhead even faster than I'd ever seen it. So I backed off on the throttle out of ....fear? I dunno, slow it down. That just LOOKS too fast.

                    Wrong thing to do. Made the base leg turn and then into the upwind turn and the thing just fell out of the sky. Airspeed . Lack of it. Pilot error. It fell so far out into the woods it took us two separate day trips to find in.

                    And my SC friend Yank is building a real plane in this garage. A two-place kit, it'll take him years, some bucks at a time to get it together.

                    And I caught a news story a few years ago where a kit plane just like it crashed and killed the pilot and his passenger. I sent him an email in anguish - "Yank, PLEASE do not fly that plane you're building, I don't want to hear you get killed that way."

                    Yank sent back....he knew all the specifics of that incident. The guy had taken the same kit and shortened the wings, against the manufacturer's advice, to make it go faster. Thereby increasing the wing load. And crashed it going faster, pilot skill or not.

                    All that to say, Brian's account of the hotrod plane is enthralling, thinking about the guys back then playing with speed and forces they didn't even know anything about. With nobody to even tell them, "Don't DO that to it, it'll crash." And like Brian pointed out in the story, lots of pilots DID die, building the performance database. Okay, he got killed, we know that won't work. What's next?

                    That's just amazing, that whole story.
                    Last edited by pdub; December 11, 2012, 04:18 PM.
                    Charter member of the Turd Nuggets

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                    • #11
                      Paint scheme is similar to SO-CAL speedshops, eh??..........
                      Neat airplanes.
                      I noticed the pilot used a severe slip to keep his left main gear in a place where he could get a better estimate of his altitude and runway alignment.....yawed that big nose out of the way........worked too.
                      Ed, Mary, & 'Earl'
                      HRPT LongHaulers, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.


                      Inside every old person is a young person wondering, "what the hell happened?"

                      The man at the top of the mountain didn't fall there. -Vince Lombardi

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                      • #12
                        Ed, you're a trained professional in this arena...would you take a turn in that thing?
                        That which you manifest is before you.

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                        • #13
                          Uhhhhh.......that would be an honor.......I'd sure have to spend some time in some sort of trainer with tons of power, and a tail dragger configuration first..........and lots of taxi time before going airborne with it.
                          I think it would be sort of similar to jumping out of the family sedan into a funny car.......you'd need a bit of practice.
                          And I'm not sure I would, even then.......
                          Last edited by oletrux4evr; December 11, 2012, 08:46 PM.
                          Ed, Mary, & 'Earl'
                          HRPT LongHaulers, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.


                          Inside every old person is a young person wondering, "what the hell happened?"

                          The man at the top of the mountain didn't fall there. -Vince Lombardi

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Neat perspective! Thanks Ed!
                            That which you manifest is before you.

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                            • #15
                              Anybody who as never flown anything that says he/she can fly is.....well ya kbow, family site...insert your description here..

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