JAMES G. HAIZLIP
PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA
April 27, 2020
Mr. Henry Haffke
Vineland, New Jersey 08360
Thank you for your letter of April 17 and the fine photo of
your flying model of the Gee Bee Racer. It is a beautiful
replica and looking at it takes me back to those days many
years ago at Cleveland and Springfield when
a few of us were in and around the original
full-scale articles. Reading of your childhood I am tempted
to reminisce at length about the first
time I met the Granville Brothers and their
sponsors, the Tait Family; one
cold damp Sunday afternoon at the original Springfield
Airport in May of 1930 when I had
been requested by our Eastern Division of the Shell Oil
Company to represent the Company by flying our Shell
Travel Air Mystery S in the
coming week's New England Air tour. During the next eight
days I became well acquainted
with the Granvilles, especially Zantford who was nearer my
age, and Lowell Bayles who, at the time, was
emerging into a pretty sharp
pilot. Since from your account you were in the three-year
old age bracket at the time much
of the detail of that event must have escaped your notice.
Some good write ups of the day-to-day activity appeared in
the Boston Transcript of that week, written by one of their
better reporters who accompanied the Tour. For my part, I
returned the little Travel Air to our home base at St.
Louis, but continued to meet Zantford and his brothers at
the Cleveland and Chicago air races during the next
three years.
About my brief but memorable experience flying the Gee Bee
No. 7; were I to repeat my
introductory flights in the light of what I learned later
I'm sure the outcome would be
different. Unmistakably, it was a good airplane. I can
see now that had I been less sure of myself in
believing that I could jump into
a strange single seater with slightly less than what we
regarded conventional
configuration, and start right away demonstrating sideslip
landings over obstacles, the airplane and I would
have had a longer and less
embarrassing association.
Actually, by the time I was making my third landing that
warm windless July morning at
Bowles Agawam Airport after ferrying No. 7 up from
Roosevelt Field, Long Island,
where Russell Thaw had left it. I had adapted, so I
thought, to the slight handling differences the
other experimental racers that I
had flown, and was prepared to shoot a few more landings of
the kind I might have to make
should it be necessary to get into a short field.
I had been on the ground at Burbank Airport the summer
before and watched Lee Gehlbach
make four passes at the north/south runway before almost
overshooting on his final landing. That scene had
lingered in my mind and I think
that a bit of cockiness on my part prompted me to try to
prove that all that space wasn't
necessary just to land. My considerable flight time in
the Travel Air S in the summer of '30 and my Wedell-William,
experience two years later
spliced on to many dozens of sideslip landings with
Nieuports and Moranes during the
war years in France, made me a devotee of that form
of getting a small airplane into a short field. My
short stature made a sideslip a
good way to have a clear look at the ground right down to
the last few feet below the
wheels. The essential move at the
last before touch down was to
rudder into any drift resulting from the sideslip so that
both wheels (and the tail skid,
in the case of a three-point landing) would be
moving straight with the ground racing below. That
was a carry over from the days of
no brakes with which to correct a possible ground loop.
This time at Springfield, I decided to use the least
possible length of field for this particular landing. The
no-wind condition would be a good test. My big mistake, as
I relive the moment was that I hadn't practiced stalls and
a few kicks back and forth without the trailing edge flaps.
Those had been recently installed
when the Wasp Junior had been replaced with the
big Wasp. As I've told on more than one occasion,
everything went smoothly over the
boundary trees, with the airspeed comfortably above stall
and the airplane and I were
speeding just above the sod at an indicated 110mph when I
gave a final and maybe too
vigorous kick to the right rudder to correct the last
leftward drift.
Had the airplane and I been a few thousand feet up I would
have just had a momentary
surprise and would have set about to learning some more of
its unique characteristics in a
nose high stall. But. like poor Russ Boardman in
No.11 at Indianapolis, we were too near the ground
for such a sudden surprise.
The rest is history: an all too short one at that. The
sequence as I recall it was that with the wheels no more
than two feet off the ground the left wing tip slapped the
turf with enough force to jerk the whole airplane sideways.
The forward ground speed, still at least 100mph, snatched
off both landing gear struts then
the right wing. By this time the propeller and
engine dug in and tumbled the rest of the wreckage
into a forward somersault This
disposed the entire empennage, the fuselage, gallons of
fuel and a cringing pilot came to
rest on the right side blocking the little access
door. During the sequence I hadn't been able to
reach the ignition switch, so my
immediate preoccupation was getting clear before the fuel
might flash. The space directly behind the pilot's seat was
an open array of fairing strips like the top of a large
unfinished willow basket. When I popped the
transparent canopy overhead to go out that way, I
couldn't squeeze through until I
unstrapped the three parachute straps and went out clean.
After a short dash to be in the clear in case of fire, I
took stock of the results. I had one scratched elbow where
I'd braced my bare arm against the
side of the cockpit, and a small nick in my forehead
where the flap control crank
below the instrument panel had met it as I ducked for
cover. The instrument panel, by
design placed far enough forward to miss the pilot's
head, hadn't touched me. A three inch welt across my
thighs like a heavy sunburn gave
proof to what had held me in the saddle. But as the fellows
dashed down from the hangar almost a half mile away,
it was a terribly crestfallen
pilot that had to tell Zantford Granville that he didn't
really mean to bend his nice
airplane.
My wife's experience with one of the smaller Gee Bees was
confined to one race at Cleveland
in 1931. Zantford came to us hurriedly one afternoon and
asked if Mary would fly one of their airplanes in a
Woman's Race. We were across the
field from the starting line and the race was due to start
in less than ten minutes. One of
the boys taxied the Gee Bee across while we
went by car. I showed Mary the ignition switch and
the throttle and reminded her
that after the race there was plenty of fuel to fly a
little familiarization before
landing which it turned out she didn't
need. She placed in the race ahead of the other
identical Gee Bee and turned the
airplane back to the Granvilles in perfect condition. That
year she had competed in seven
different race events for women and had flown six
different airplanes in them including one of her own
that she flew in the
Coast-to-Coast Derby. In all the contests she entered she
placed either first or second to
the delight and admiration of the other airplane owners.
Summing up the little bit I learned about the senior Gee
Bees, I'd say that they were
remarkable examples of forward looking design, but because
of the unusually large diameter
fuselage in proportion to its length, it had stall
characteristics that merited more study than the
urgency of the times and the
availability of funds permitted. In those days of
un-subsidized experimental
aircraft development, the builders working most of the time
without precedent or
example to follow had to have more than the genius that
some like the Granvilles and Bob
Hall displayed. They needed pilots who could keep up with
the advanced designs, since a pilot, no matter how
willing had no simulator to
practice on before he tried the finished article. Whether
he would admit it or not he was constantly having his
experience and skill challenged.
Altogether, it was stimulating and fun when you could win,
and for those of us who have
survived, a pleasant experience now that it has been
mellowed by time.
Mary and I wish you the best for your Gee Bee book and if I
can be of further assistance (within the limits of the time
at my disposal) let me hear from you again.
Sincerely,
James G. Haizlip
