From time to time Museum curator Terry Brennan will publish a piece on one of the collection’s more noteworthy aircraft. We begin the series with brief history of the Gee Bee Super Sportsters and the Granville Brothers Company that envisioned and created the original aircraft, a reproduction of which graces our gallery floor in the “Golden Age of Aviation” area.

Aviation fever took the United States by storm during the late twenties and the early thirties. Literally hundreds of backyard mechanics with little or no formal training in aircraft construction technology launched projects in the barn with visions of grandeur that more often than not resulted in failure. Attending a county fair and witnessing the successes of the Wright brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and barnstormers such as Ed Niburn, Clyde Pangborn, Roscoe Turner, and even Charles Lindbergh, was often all it took to nurture the seeds of excitement that the concept of flight had planted.

While most of us attribute advances in aviation technology to a very visible national government, the fact is that during and following the great barnstorming era, it was private companies and entrepreneurial individuals that provided the impetus that grew the industry so dramatically. Indeed, in 1932 for example, Walter Beech formed the Beech Aircraft Company and in short order introduced his famous Staggerwing personal business aircraft that could easily outrun the fastest of the military fighters at the time. In addition, pioneering efforts in aerodynamics, instrumentation, propulsion, and related disciplines, were almost always the province of the tinkerers out there with their own wild-eyed ideas.

As a consequence of the rapid improvements throughout the aviation technology spectrum, and unencumbered by the grinding of government bureaucracy, upstarts such as the Granville Brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts, by the fall of 1932 had steeled themselves to making their mark in the industry of cross country and pylon racing with a pair of remarkable aircraft known as the Super Sportsters. The brothers however began in a somewhat more humble fashion in 1929, manufacturing a small bi-plane designed by Zantford (Granny) Granville, dubbed the A model, and doomed to failure by an unrelenting economic depression. To be fair, the aviation industry nearly died during the early depression years, taking most participants down the tubes along with it.

As early as 1930, the Granville brothers took a different tact and began to pursue the glories of racing with the introduction of the X model, followed a year later with the model Y, known respectively as the Junior and Senior Sportsters.These aircraft were designed for racing but were sold to individual private owners as well. By 1932 however, 100% of the company effort was directed toward winning the Bendix cross- country and the Thompson Trophy pylon races.

Nicknamed the “barrel with wings” or the “flying silo,” the somewhat unusual appearance of the Super Sportsters was the result of wind tunnel testing and engineering analysis beyond anything done up to that point. Primarily the differences between the R-1 and the R-2 aircraft consisted of those components found forward of the firewall. The R-1, specifically designed for pylon racing was fitted with a Pratt and Whitney R-1340 of 800 horsepower while the R-2 employed a Pratt R-985 of 535 horsepower. The latter would provide a better balance of performance and economy necessary for cross-country successes-and with 302 gallons of fuel on board, it went a long way across the country between stops.

With only 100 square feet of wing area (slightly more than half that of a Beech Bonanza) the Super Sportsters carried wing loadings of between 32 and 37 pounds per square foot-nearly triple that of many light aircraft flying today. These wing loading figures provided for a very stable ride as one might expect, but they also contributed to the Gee Bee’s reputation for being a widow maker. Much higher takeoff and landing speeds are the aerodynamic results of high wing loading. When control surfaces are pared down to the bare minimum to gain a speed advantage the limits of controlled flight are narrowed proportionately. Yes, there were accidents when Gee Bee pilots occasionally stepped outside that controllability envelope and suffered the consequences as a result.

Different? Yes. Dangerous? Not necessarily. Not too many years ago a reproduction of the R-2 was built by pilot/craftsman Delmar Benjamin and flown at a hundred airshows around the country over the period of ten or so years. Benjamin knew the airplane and its numbers and flew more accident free hours in a Gee Bee Super Sportster than all others combined. He is in good company. Another man with similar success was none other than Jimmy Doolittle of Tokyo Raiders fame.

How fast were they? The R-1 was capable of nearly 300 mph at sea level. It was once timed over a closed course four way run at 296 and change. The R-1 also won the Thompson Trophy race in 1932 at an average speed of 252 mph around the pylon course. Bad luck befell the R-2 during the Bendix race the same year when it sprang an oil leak and forced pilot Lee Gehlbach down at Chanute Field in Illinois for repairs. The same airplane however, was entered in the Thompson race and qualified at 242 mph.Both airplanes were fast and both were equally as exciting to watch in flight.

This very colorful aviation saga was dramatically short lived. By 1933, following a series of accidents and sour business experiences, the assets of the Granville Brothers company were sold off. It was shortly later that Granny died in a crash while avoiding workers on the runway as he attempted to landed his model E--a tragic and fateful exclamation point to a fairy tale story of American ingenuity. From this history one thing is certain. The many fans of air racing and devotees of antique aircraft are intimately familiar with the Super Sportsters and the Gee Bee company. And fortunately, for those of us who care, that revered name and the airplanes associated with it, will survive in our memories long after those of many others in the game will have silently slipped away.