The Gee Bees of Springfield 1990 Documentary

people in springfield really don't realize what took place here back in the early 30s these men were really pioneers aviation they were our spacemen at the time all of us used to hang around at the airport we were kids we watched what they did and we didn't realize the times the impact it was going to have and and we hate to see the story get pushed out of shape because it's a great story all that donna said is very true but for me the spirit of enterprise that the granville brothers and her associates demonstrated is really important it illustrated in a hostile economic climate with no government subsidy or funding from anybody that a small group of people could and did shake the aviation world crowd's watching a real show today starting with jimmy doolittle the human bullet little plane belongs to the springfield air racing association built by the granville brothers in springfield in the next few minutes we expect to make an attempt on the world speedwriting well the first time that i knew they were in springfield was when uh zanford ranfield flew his gb biplane into springfield because he heard that there was going to perhaps be an opportunity to get some backings when they needed that this whole area was booming at the time that the granville's actually arrived chapman valve had big contracts making valves for the navy both submarines and surface ships rolls royce was being made here and and they had they were announcing at that time enormous increases in orders for cars and in in their profit margins and so forth good morning this is july 26 1978 and don foster moral ring and myself tom nalen are in the backyard at the home of bob and eva granville in cornwall maine morning bob good morning eva good morning don and i and several others got together to try and save whatever memorabilia or information could be saved firsthand from the survivors of the period there aren't too many people left today who were directly involved in these aircraft back in the early 30s obviously and we kind of think we better do this now at the time that we moved in it was a the remains of a dancehall it had a nice hardwood floor which was nice to work on just an open building and the first thing we did was set up a line shaft supposed to have power around the tools and uh brought some captains in and built some offices along the front of it and started purchasing a few second-hand tools to work with in addition to what we brought from boston we brought everything that we had boston the tate family is very interested in aviation a socially prominent wealthy family here and they they actually negotiated and brought the granville brothers to this airport which had already been had already been purchased and developed by the by the tate family and they sort of recruited the granvilles here who actually did their work first at what's not logan in east boston this was a very prosperous period for springfield at the time they actually arrived it changed quite dramatically soon thereafter the production of the biplane was kind of curtailed with the crash in november of 1929 the stock market crash and the decline of the economy which dried up the market for private airplanes but the people that they could continue to sell airplanes to were young wealthy young students um for example people that were flying in the harvard flying club the model x was important because it was the first of the low wing sportsters built at springfield to compete specifically in the cirrus derby or all-american derby of 1930. it was mostly bob hall's idea he he thought it'd be a great thing to do and got everybody enthused he was our chief engineer at the time all right so in 1930 then the model x was uh built for low bales to fly in the cirrus or all-american derby right how did he make out he met out very well i know when bales returned he landed at westfield so that the springfield flyers could come over and escort them home that's right and that really put the name gb in on the aviation map don't you yes it did suddenly did also low bales everybody knew all bales in the country after that very nice guy i spent a lot of time with him because he was an instructor at boston airport when we were at the flying school down there and uh so and then when he was flying the ford tri motors why they used to come into boston for service and i i used to service up their detroit motors for him lowell bales and i were very were very good friends well bale's very good i took some flight instruction from him he was strictly a racing pilot and aerobatic pilot he didn't care too much about giving flight instructions to students he got to uh no patience he was on on on the go all the time you know on the away if you didn't do it quick enough he wanted to do it what happened to prompt the company to get into the big time the national air races well it was still just a matter of money that it was quite a lot of money the national air races and granny and bob hall between them decided we ought to have some of it when it was really decided to build the city of springfield we only had a little over two months before the race the springfield air racing association had to be formed in order to raise money to build this airplane granville brothers didn't have any money and i'm sure that the tates weren't particularly interested in putting up a lot of dough on such a fly-by-night idea as this one was so i had to go out and organize the springfield air racing association and then go out and sell stock in it the people did buy shares in fact i bought a couple myself in the in the racing association the springfield people did because they knew the people the pilots here and it's you know it's just like a family deal i design the airplane in the morning and go out in the afternoon and pound the pavement to all the big companies in springfield and say hey come on buy some shares 100 bucks this year and sold about five thousand dollars worth which was enough to build this airplane and the reason it was enough is because we got so much from the manufacturers without having to pay for it like the engine pratt whitney lent us the engine right when he primarily loaned these engines for public relations and advertising purposes after all if a wasp engine won the thompson trophy which was the great uh speed classic at that time that people all over the country were interested in in watching or hearing about it must be a good engine mod tape through the model y which was a two seater designed by bob hall montate was a daughter of one of the tate brothers the founders of the airport she was an excellent aviatrix and took to flying like a duck to water she owned a gb biplane and she was frequently seen in the air over the pioneer valley and soon became very skilled and one of the foremost and prime female flyers in new england i don't know how she got interested but i know when she did she stayed with it and she she loved it and she was very good very good she got married that stop was there a feeling among the gb people that you could build an airplane to win that race did you really believe that you could beat the best in the world i think so the best in the world really wasn't too good in those days i mean not too speedy and the success we'd had with the sportsters and the senior sports to which it turned out to be a really good airplane it looked quite possible i know a lot of people didn't believe that a low wing airplane could could take a tight pile on turn and they they figured the biplanes would have a big advantage on that and everybody thought doolittle would probably win the race you remember that celebration oh yes i remember very distinctly the airplanes all come in and there was a my mob at springfield airport and then the city put on a banquet that night it was really big doings everybody that was able to made a speech granny granny made a pretty good speech given the credit to the boys who worked their heads off to get the airplane built in time when we got back from cleveland we were able to pay the pricing association 100 dividend and have a pile of money left over because we came home with seventeen thousand dollars [Music] in late fall or early winter of 1931 after the big success at cleveland the grambles decided to go after some absolute speed records france had held the the speed record for land planes for eight years and uh so the city of springfield was re-engined with a big 750 horsepower wasp i remember we put it in and bale's test stopped it and and after his desktop granny who always was a very conservative man he asked ball to take it up well up and find out whether whether it could take the beating or not before he'd done the racing with it or made any world speed attempts and bales took it and was gone for a couple hours and he came back all smiles and he said she'll hold together you don't have to worry a bit about that i remember that very distinctly maude tate and lowell bales went out to wayne county airport in detroit where maude was going to join bales in trying to attempt a new speed record for lady pilots and even though she exceeded the existing record she didn't break it by the amount required to set a new record and was frustrated in her bid bales did indeed set a new world land plane speed record but the timing equipment failed on one pass and the tri had to be aborted and the speed wasn't recognized so early in december he went back alone and the granville's always felt that it was significant that bales went out there alone without any grand any granville personnel the defective timing equipment was repaired and can you tell us what happened then well i think that it was the third attempt when the timing equipment went out and he had to he had to do it again it was cold rough weather it really wasn't the same time he had a door december 5th 1931 right yeah that's right and i think it was on the very last lap of the course something terrific happened right nearly he was just approaching the the marker when she seemed to explode so lowell bales was lost to springfield aviation into the ground he was killed instantly he always said that when he went he wanted to go quick and he certainly did they had a movie camera set up at that pylon and they had taken beautiful pictures of it they had absolutely clear pictures of it and granny run those pictures over and over and over trying to find out what the cause was and they were they were great friends and there's been a lot of people said that granny only only cared about speed and had no thought for the safety of his pilots but that was absolutely a fabrication because nobody ever tried harder to build an airplane that a man wouldn't get killed and then granted it this is the only airplane crash that has been documented from the instant the airplane came apart to the point that hit the ground and disintegrated uh if you think back you can't even during world war ii you can't think of an incident where an airplane has been documented from beginning to end and as a result any time throughout the years an airplane crash is needed for any movie or for whatever purpose that was the crash that was shown along with that came a bad rep all the accidents uh as far as i've been able to determine for were really human error either pilot error or mechanical or some some mechanics error of course the public says oh the airplane's bad airplane crashed you know somebody got killed they don't always look into all the facts i do feel that the db racers have an unfair reputation after the uh tremendous win 1931 in the return of all the money to the stockholders of the springfield air race association you'd probably think that they were on easy street now but the sale of airplanes didn't pick up chief engineer and designer bob hall left the granville brothers and the reason he left is that the grandma brothers couldn't afford to pay him the 75 dollars a week that he felt he needed with hall gone the refinement of the design went to pete miller who added a lot of innovations of his own and really uh created a another very improved version of the airplane i stress analyze the r1 and r2 for a factor of 14 whereas the navy and the army air force were using factors of 8 or 10 granny wanted the airplane perfectly safe for any pilot and again they were revolutionary in design they weren't the run-of-the-mill racing planes they were streamlined to the nth degree they had been put through wind tunnel tests to prove out their design and they were good sound racing airplanes but they still needed money and a fellow named russ boardman a noted long-distance flyer came and uh invested significant amount of money six thousand dollars into the springfield air racing association and became its head he also demanded the right to fly the r1 in the upcoming national air races but he wasn't the racing pilot right and and fate stepped in when the r1 was ready to go to cleveland i was at balls finishing the the tail work and was told that when it was ready to fly the column back there which i did after dope it dried we didn't bother put the numbers on or anything we were just going to fly it as soon as it was ready and boardman had his car there and he was going to drive all over but granny said to him why don't you take the sportster and go with that yeah i was standing right on the ramp in front of the buildings where they used to roll the airplanes out and he took off with one of the small sportsters he started to spin in but he being such a very good pilot he stopped the spin almost immediately but it reversed it went in the opposite direction and he corrected that very fast faster than perhaps some people could and came out of it but he didn't have quite enough room to clear the ground if he'd had another 50 feet i think he'd have cleared it but he didn't so he plowed right in today one that dumped over by the airport well as soon as baldwin was able to talk granny went down to his home down on the cape after a few days and he stayed down there a couple of days with him and they apparently took the situation over and to find out what who we wanted to get for pilots and granny come up with legal back and and uh jimmy do a little do a little heaven just cracked up his lead solution a few days before was out of an airplane and so it was a good situation for both parties we were excited we knew he was a grand pilot and we believed he had a master's degree and a doctor from mit and he was well-versed in arizona dynamics and we considered him to be the eighth pilot now here was a it was a great pilot with no airplane then here was a great airplane looking for a great pilot doolittle came to bowls airport inspected the airplane climbed in and i'm told he flew right straight to cleveland didn't even that's right take a short test time less than two hours later we got a telegram from him and it had just a few words on it said landed cleveland okay [Music] crowds watching a real show today starting with jimmy doolittle the human bullet a new record 293 miles an hour the high speed is expected to be in the vicinity of 300 miles an hour the landing speed about 90. in spite of the high speed range and the high speed of the plane it handles very well in the air and on the ground within the next few minutes we expect to make an attempt on the world speed bracket after winning everything in 1932 again at the thompson trophy races and bringing that thompson trophy back to springfield for the second consecutive year um the grambles had an entire year for which to prepare for 1933. so they modified both successful airplanes the r1 got a larger engine very few other modifications they knew it would handle the engine it was fine and the r2 which gelback had flown to fourth place in the 1932 races took the engine from the previous year's r1 and as race time approached there was a lot of confidence in springfield that we could do it again with the loss of russ boardman they're their major financial backer and a president of the springfield air racing association the gravels really took it on the chin again yeah about all we had left is dents and there was no way of paying them off and that our stuff was all sold off at a sheriff's sale and we just went out hoping to be able to get back again in the spring and so about november we closed down completely and went looking for jobs but then early in 1934 the curtain really rang down with the loss of zanford granville while delivering a sportster to the south that was another needless accident where some nut run across the runway in front of him and he stalled it trying to avoid him and was killed pete miller told me that zanford granville was probably the greatest intuitive engineer he ever knew uh he didn't have terrible lot of education but he had an awful lot of common sense and he and pete made a grand combination working together pete had the education and granny had the ideas there's a lot of them i wouldn't say pete didn't have ideas too but between them they made a great team in march of 1978 we decided to send invitations to people we thought might be interested in in helping with a project like this in attendance there were the director and the physical the curator of physical science from the springfield museum and they showed interest in creating a permanent exhibit there at the museum we started to gather material for the museum and um we've been pleased with the results the significance of the of the gee bees to the area i think points up sort of the entrepreneurial spirit that used to be here in the valley it used to be a center of machine tools and here we had a small group of people who really put on an industry started an industry that had an impact upon the whole world and you know you hear about success stories happening here and here's a perfect example of just a few guys a small company and yet they had an impact on an industry which was made springfield the center of the aviation industry at that time and had repercussions all around the globe the economy here was falling apart industries were cutting back we're running at losses people even officers of companies were taking voluntary salary cutbacks so so we were surrounded by losers and in that these winners stood out more dramatically and and and shown more i think because of the fact they were they were beating the depression and they wore their goggles and their helmets and all i think they were dashing figures sort of like the horse calvary in napoleon's time or the space people today maybe maybe even more so because the backdrop had become gray and grim and these people stood out against it i think that was a bad time for the grand brothers to start if it had been any other time they really would have gone to town as they they did anyway considering what they had to go up against the name gb there seemed to kind of out was outstanding you know what i mean it was on everybody's mind or something you know with the workforce rarely numbering more than 20 they set world speed records and carried the city of springfield to the the pinnacle of the aviation world and we were very proud of that that's it [Music] one of the best times of my life i'll tell you because it was really gratifying to be able to do what i wanted to do was design airplanes and i had no interference and granny was a great leader and i i enjoyed my few years with the granville brothers and uh i'll never forget them [Music] so you

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Length: 27min 52sec (1672 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020