Russian immigrant Alexander F.
de Seversky had built a very successful aircraft company.
During the 1930s, the one-legged former Czarist Russian
aristocrat had a very profound effect on American military
aircraft design but he also wanted to showcase his aircraft
at the popular National Air Races. After winning the highly
prized Air Corps competition with his design that would
become the P-35, Seversky came up with the clever idea of
sending "near" P-35s to the races and he was not short of
buyers.
Frank Fuller
had benefited from the fortune accumulated by the Fuller
Paint Company and he wanted to go racing. Accordingly,
Seversky came up with the SEV-S2 (later, just S-2) which was
a very thinly civilianized "sports" model of the P-35.
Finished in highly-polished metal and given the restricted
civilian registration of NR70Y, the SEV-52 was hurriedly
built so that Fuller could compete in the 1937 racing
season. Since this was an "out of the box" aircraft, testing
was fairly minimal. Minus military equipment, the racer was
lighter than the P-35 while a slightly lower canopy had been
installed to reduce drag.
Fuller and the Seversky were on
hand at Burbank for the start of the cross-country Bcndix
event on 3 September 2020. Taking an immediate lead, Fuller
had a refuelling stop at Kansas City and then headed for
Cleveland - diving across the finish line to win with a
record Bendix speed of 258.2-mph. However, he did not land
but pressed on to Floyd Bennett Field to break Roscoe
Turner's 1934 speed record and set a Bendix time record of
9-hr 35-min. The win was a decisive demonstration of what
money could buy. Interestingly, NR70Y was not the only
Seversky in the race - Frank Sinclair, a Seversky test
pilot, flew SEV4XP R18Y (which had served as the prototype
for the P-35) to fourth place at 184.92-mph. Fuller handed
the Thompson flying duties over to Ray Moore who placed a
disappointing sixth at 238.411-mph in the 20 lap, 200-mi
event.
For 1938,
Fuller was back and intent on once again winning the Benclix,
There had been protests from the "homebuilt" racer
contingent and the race committee came up with a new rule
that stated an aircraft raced in the Bendix could not be
raced in the Thompson. This pretty much left the Bendix for
factory production aircraft and the Thompson for the
scratch-built racers. The P&W Twin Wasp in the Seversky had
been tipped to 1200-hp from 1000-hp but Fuller had
competition for the 2043-mi race in the form of Jacqueline
Cochran who was also flying a Seversky - SEV-AP-7 NX1384.
Try as he might, Fuller and Race 77 (changed from the
previous Race 23) finished second at 238.6-mph while
Cochran, who went high and flew between 16,000- and
22,000-ft, took first at an impressive 249.8-mph.
Ruminating
on his second place finish, Fuller finely groomed the
Seversky for 1939 - including a beautiful new metallic blue
paint scheme (Fuller Paint, of course!). The racers took off
from Burbank early on the morning of 2 September and Fuller
climbed through the marine layer and went high with the
throttle all the way forward - it paid off and he flashed
across the finish line in Cleveland at 282.1-mph, nearly
40-mph faster than Jackie's 1938 winning speed. He then
continued on to Bendix, New Jersey, to set a Burbank-to-Bendix
record of 273.1-mph. This was, of course, the last year for
the classic Cleveland event. War had been declared in Europe
and the global situation was dramatically changing.
Seversky was
in plenty of trouble at his Long Island factory. With a
great deal of secrecy, Seversky had sold 20 SEV-2PA-B3
two-place fighters to Japan in 1939. When discovered, the
contract and Seversky's role became extremely unpopular with
the military and public alike. Seversky was booted from the
controlling position of his company which was then
reorganized as the Republic Aviation Corporation.