A worker does a final paint touchup before the Gee Bees debut in the San Diego Air & Space Museum. A worker does a final paint touchup before the Gee Bee's debut in the San Diego Air & Space Museum.
(Robert Bernier)

Bring Back the Brute

A GeeBee racer in flyable condition? Don’t do it.

  • By ROBERT BERNIER
  • Air & Space Magazine, March 01, 2009

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    (Page 2 of 2)

    Another challenge was the lack of a large oven to soften plastic for the canopy. Retired Air Force Master Sergeant Vito Altieri came up with a low-tech solution. He placed a plywood mold of the canopy into a modified 55-gallon steel drum and put a flat sheet of plastic atop the mold with weights along two edges. Altieri sealed off the open end of the steel drum and inserted a heat gun into a lid opening. When he turned on the gun, the 400-degree air softened the plastic, and the weights and gravity did the rest.

    Visitors touring the Gee Bee construction project wondered why the volunteers put so much effort into making the reproduction airworthy if the museum had no intention of flying it. The volunteers believe no job is worth doing unless it’s done right. Said Allan Palmer, “If you’re not building the airplane using original plans, materials, and techniques, you’re building a coffee-table ornament.”

    By the spring of 2007, most of the construction work was completed and the racer was moved to the hangar annex to be painted. The volunteers, most of whom were in their 80s and 90s and were veterans of museum restorations and reproductions, including the Spirit of St. Louis twice, milled about the space the airplane once occupied, impatient for another job. We’ve got a few more years of work on a reproduction of a Boeing P-26 Peashooter, restoring a Vought F4U Corsair, and dealing with wood rot on a Wright Flyer reproduction. 

    Robert Bernier, a former Navy pilot, flies for American Airlines.

    1 2

    ON A SPRING DAY IN 2001, I met several other volunteers in the basement of the San Diego Air & Space Museum, surrounded by a stack of construction drawings. Bob Greenaway, a retired Navy machinist mate, was spearheading the museum’s building of a Gee Bee R-1, using original plans from the New England Air Museum in Connecticut, which had built its own reproduction in 1990 with help from Pete Miller, the airplane’s co-designer.

    In the early 1930s, the five Granville brothers, led by Zantford, enjoyed a modest success with the design of a small biplane, but the Great Depression killed off business. To spur innovation, oil companies and aircraft suppliers offered prizes at air races across the country. Zantford gambled the company’s future by building airplanes capable of winning that cash. Working with Pete Miller, a young aeronautical engineer, Zantford created a radical airplane. Sporting tiny wings, a fuselage shaped like a tear drop to minimize drag, and a Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp engine, the R-1 was designed to approach 300 mph at a time when Army Air Corps aircraft could barely reach 200 mph.

    Setting up shop in an abandoned Springfield, Massachusetts dance hall, the Granville brothers and about a dozen employees built the R-1 and its sister ship, the R-2, in 90 days. The R-1 was designed to win the 1932 Thompson Trophy pylon race, and with Jimmy Doolittle at the helm, it did; the R-2, with a smaller engine and increased fuel capacity, was designed for the Bendix Trophy cross-country race.

    We had chosen to build a Gee Bee during a museum volunteer meeting. In 2000, Allan Palmer, at the time the museum’s executive director, wanted a rare, colorful airplane that would attract visitors. The volunteer craftsmen, mostly World War II veterans old enough to remember the glory days of America’s air racers, enthusiastically chose the Gee Bee R-1. No original R-1 or R-2 exists; most of the Granvilles’ racers crashed.

    To save time and money, the Granvilles used some off-the-shelf parts for the racers. Ford Model T steering rods were used in the aileron controls, shift knobs from a 1928 Chevy proved handy on the throttle quadrant levers, and a 1931 Indian motorcycle throttle handgrip became the R-1’s control stick handgrip.

    On a limited budget, we had to be as resourceful as the Granvilles were. Three of us launched the project by hand-planing long lengths of spruce and gluing them together to form the laminated fore and aft spars of the Gee Bee’s wing, just as the Granvilles had in 1932.

    All aircraft sheet metal work was done by hand in-house; the wheel pants and wing root fillets were shaped by hammers and mallets around wooden molds; the engine cowlings were shaped around concrete molds. Faithful to the original design, the wings consisted of laminated-spruce spars, mahogany plywood ribs, and laminated-spruce wingtip bows, the curved end of the wing. Craftsmen fabricated wing hardware on donated metal-working machinery, some of which dated to World War II. The wings were constructed to airworthy standards, but all the intricate workmanship was lost to view when the wings were covered in a 1/16th-inch mahogany plywood—remarkably thin, yet we still had to soak it in water to render it pliable enough to conform to the wing structure.

    Prior to World War II, flying wires—external bracing that supports the wing—were common, but a set for our reproduction would have cost $5,000. Dutch Foltz, a 93-year-old craftsman and former Ryan Aircraft tool-and-die maker, worked with other volunteers to fabricate a set of streamlined stainless steel Gee Bee flying wires on the museum’s equipment.

    Another challenge was the lack of a large oven to soften plastic for the canopy. Retired Air Force Master Sergeant Vito Altieri came up with a low-tech solution. He placed a plywood mold of the canopy into a modified 55-gallon steel drum and put a flat sheet of plastic atop the mold with weights along two edges. Altieri sealed off the open end of the steel drum and inserted a heat gun into a lid opening. When he turned on the gun, the 400-degree air softened the plastic, and the weights and gravity did the rest.

    Visitors touring the Gee Bee construction project wondered why the volunteers put so much effort into making the reproduction airworthy if the museum had no intention of flying it. The volunteers believe no job is worth doing unless it’s done right. Said Allan Palmer, “If you’re not building the airplane using original plans, materials, and techniques, you’re building a coffee-table ornament.”

    By the spring of 2007, most of the construction work was completed and the racer was moved to the hangar annex to be painted. The volunteers, most of whom were in their 80s and 90s and were veterans of museum restorations and reproductions, including the Spirit of St. Louis twice, milled about the space the airplane once occupied, impatient for another job. We’ve got a few more years of work on a reproduction of a Boeing P-26 Peashooter, restoring a Vought F4U Corsair, and dealing with wood rot on a Wright Flyer reproduction. 

    Robert Bernier, a former Navy pilot, flies for American Airlines.

     
    Comments

    I'm surprised that you made no mention of the Gee Bee R-2 built by Steve Wolf for Delmar Benjamin and first flown by Benjamin in 1991. Subsequently he flew the aircraft in airshows and put on quite an aerobatic performance. The aircraft was built using original drawings and specs.

    Posted by Paul Hedstrom on February 2,2009 | 09:07AM

    FROM THE ARTICLE'S AUTHOR: In response to Paul Hedstrom's posting of 2 Feb;I once saw Delmar Benjamin put on an amazing Gee Bee R-2 aerobatic display and mentioned it in the original version of the story. Because of article space constraints, that part was left out. The Granville Brothers were innovative engineers and craftsmen, who built a specialty airplane designed to go fast and win races. But, the airplane did have flight stability issues. Delmar Benjamin wrote about the challenges of flying the R-2 in "Gee Bee", a book he co-authored with Steve Wolf.

    Posted by Robert Bernier on February 3,2009 | 02:49PM

    Wonderful article Robert; I particularly enjoyed the details on the building process and how you and the group overcame the obstacles of recreating structures and supports that existed many years ago. The creativity expressed by the team with guide wires and canopies was interesting to read. Thanks for an enjoyable article on a worthwhile 'celebration of days gone by' project. Look forward to other contributions from you!

    Posted by Doug Bowie on February 5,2009 | 04:10PM

    Bob, you wrote a superb article. I know you have many more ideas and I hope this magazine publishes them. Since we both flew P-3's, how about some articles about that aircraft/mission now that it is in its final years in Naval Aviation?

    Posted by Ed Zumstein on February 12,2009 | 01:19PM

    Congratulations and best wishes for your Gee Bee project. It will be a WONDERFUL addition to the museum, it certainly will attract much attention. It was a significant aircraft in the time it flew in the 1930's and Del Mar Benjamin's R2 1932 replica was always an outsanding crowd pleaser at EAA's "AirVenture" for several years. Del Mar demonstrated that it was a great flyer and knew it's capabilities (and limitations. He told me that one of the earlier unknowns was that it was necessary to keep the landing speed fast because of those short stubby wings. It drew crowds of onlookers, while in the air and especially on the ground, as I'm sure yours will also. Can't wait to see it in the museum........keep up preserving aviation history, You guys are doing a great job. Don

    Posted by Don Jiskra Sr. on February 19,2009 | 12:41PM

    What kind of engine is in the museum's aircraft?

    Posted by Maury Cagle on February 19,2009 | 12:49PM

    This was a delightful article. I have been a Springfield, MA resident since 1966, a licensed civilian pilot since 1959, a former aeronauticle engineer and member of the E.A.A. and a licensed airframe & powerplant mechanic. I have a picture of the GB 1 hanging in my office. There is a full-scale model of it hanging in the downtown Springfield visiter's center (formerly the Basketball Hall of Fame building). Several times a week, I drive by the old Springfield airport and can "see" the test flights that had taken place all those years ago. Sadly, the airport no longer exists. Gone is the Granville Brothers' hanger which for many years was home to a local boat dealership named Pepin's,; you could still see where the runway once had been. Today, it is a large urban shopping center with no monument to that important part of aviation history that was made there.

    Posted by George Sachs on February 21,2009 | 07:47AM

    Reply to Maury Cagle's post of February 19,2009--Like the original Gee Bee R-1, the museum's reproduction R-1 is equipped with the "big engine", a Pratt & Whitney R-1340;versions of this engine were mass produced for military trainers during WWII.

    Posted by Robert bernier on February 22,2009 | 03:46PM

    I built one of these too--a plastic model back in the '60's! It was cool then and still is. What a leap forward in innovation and can-do attitude. That's what we need to solve the issues facing industries today. Hands on problem solvers, not committees and big government programs.

    Posted by Rand Echterling on February 28,2009 | 04:49PM

    Museum quality "models" are fine and have a purpose, but I much prefer aircraft that will fly, even if the flying does not push the aircraft's original envelope. To see these aircraft trundle down the runway, become airborne, make a few turns and passes and then watch them land is absolutely priceless. So far the "oldest" aircraft I have seen fly are a Fokker Triplane with radial engine and a Curtiss Canuck with an OX-5, but the sight and shows has been unforgettable.

    Posted by hoodoo on June 1,2009 | 07:53PM

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