The Gee Bee Model R, the Flying Beer Keg the Granville Brothers Built for Speed, and the Nineteen Thirty-Two Afternoon Jimmy Doolittle Wrestled It Around the Cleveland Pylons

In 1932, test pilot and aeronautical engineer Jimmy Doolittle flew the notoriously dangerous Gee Bee Model R to victory in the Thompson Trophy race at the National Air Races in Cleveland, and earlier that same meet set a world landplane speed record of 296 miles per hour. The Gee Bee, built by the Granville Brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts, was a radical, unstable racer nicknamed the “flying beer keg” that killed several pilots. Doolittle won, walked away at the top of his game, and helped prove aerodynamic lessons that would later shape World War II fighters.

What Was the Gee Bee Model R?

The Gee Bee Model R was an unlimited-class air racer built by Granville Brothers Aircraft, a small company founded by five brothers in Springfield, Massachusetts. The name “Gee Bee” came simply from the company’s initials - G.B.

The eldest brother, Zantford Granville - known as “Granny” - had started out repairing motorcycles and automobiles before catching the flying bug. The Granvilles were not wealthy engineers with wind tunnels and staffs in white coats. They had a hunch: to go fast, take the biggest engine you can find, build the smallest possible airplane around it, and get everything else out of the way.

They mounted a Pratt & Whitney Wasp radial engine producing more than 800 horsepower - a monster for the era. Reasoning that the fuselage could be no skinnier than that fat round engine, they shaped the entire aircraft like the engine: a stubby, blended teardrop that let the air slide right past.

Why Was the Gee Bee So Dangerous?

The Gee Bee Model R was brutally fast and brutally unforgiving. All that horsepower was crammed into a short, barrel-shaped fuselage with tiny wings and a long, empty tail, producing an airplane that was twitchy and unstable.

Pilots said it flew as if balanced on the head of a pin. If a pilot’s attention wandered for even a moment, the airplane could swap ends and hit the ground before he could react. The cockpit sat far back, nearly against the vertical fin, and the pilot could barely see over the enormous cowling.

Onlookers called it a “flying beer keg” and a “bullet with wings.” It looked as if it had been built backward. Several pilots died flying Gee Bees, and the airplane earned its reputation as a killer honestly. Everyone at Cleveland knew it.

Why Did Air Racing Matter in the 1930s?

In the early 1930s, the United States was deep in the Great Depression, yet air racing was one of the biggest spectacles in the country - bigger than baseball on some weekends. Hundreds of thousands of spectators poured into a field outside Cleveland every Labor Day for the National Air Races.

The centerpiece was pylon racing. Steel towers were set out in a rough triangle, and pilots cut as close to them as they dared, banking so hard in the turns that blood drained from their heads. The pilot who flew the tightest line at the highest speed won the Thompson Trophy - an unlimited, no-holds-barred event where builders could hang any engine on any airframe and go.

That kind of racing drew bold, unconventional builders like the Granville brothers out of the woodwork.

Who Was Jimmy Doolittle?

Before he became famous for leading a certain carrier-launched raid during World War II, Jimmy Doolittle was widely regarded as the finest stick-and-rudder pilot in America - and by many accounts, the world.

What set Doolittle apart was that he was also a scientist. He held one of the first doctorates in aeronautical engineering earned by a working pilot. When he looked at an airplane, he understood the forces, the mathematics, and precisely how close to the edge he was standing at any moment.

That rare combination - the nerve of a daredevil and the mind of an engineer in the same man - is exactly what the Gee Bee demanded.

What Happened at Cleveland in 1932?

Over Labor Day weekend in 1932, Doolittle took the controls of the Gee Bee Model R-1, the first of the type, at the National Air Races in Cleveland.

He fought the airplane around the Thompson course, laying it over on its side so hard in the turns that the airframe groaned, threading between the fastest possible line and being flung off into the dirt. Every lap was a negotiation with a machine actively trying to get away from him. He won the Thompson Trophy.

Earlier in that same meet, in that same airplane, Doolittle set a new world speed record for a landplane: 296 miles per hour - just shy of 300. To put that in perspective, most airplanes of the day were fabric-covered biplanes doing about 100 mph on a good day. Doolittle and the “beer keg” were pushing nearly three times that.

Why Did Doolittle Quit Racing?

After the trophy and the record, Doolittle didn’t celebrate recklessly - he retired from racing near the top of his game. He had done the math on his own survival odds, and the math told him to stop.

Doolittle reportedly said he had never flown an airplane that could kill you quicker, and that it was the sweetest and most vicious little airplane he’d ever handled. He chose to walk away with both his record and his life intact.

Many of his fellow racers did not. The golden age was glorious and beautiful, but it was soaked in the blood of brave pilots who didn’t know when to stop. Zantford “Granny” Granville himself was killed a few years later in a flying accident in a different airplane, far too young, as the Depression and a string of crashes finally caught up with his company.

How the Gee Bee Shaped Future Aircraft

The speed those racers chased around the pylons wasn’t just showmanship - every race was a flying laboratory. The cowlings that smoothed air over radial engines, retractable landing gear, low wings, and the core principle that shape is speed were all hammered out at places like Cleveland by men willing to bet their lives on a hunch.

A few years later, when World War II began, those same lessons appeared in the fighters: clean cowlings, tight airframes, and the understanding that a big engine on a small, clean airplane is a war-winner. In a roundabout way, the Gee Bee and its wicked sisters helped teach a generation of engineers how to build the aircraft that would matter most.

A faithful reproduction of the Gee Bee Model R flies and is on display in the United States today. If you ever get the chance to stand beside one, look at how small the wings are, how far back the cockpit sits, and how enormous the round nose is - then imagine holding it on a pylon turn at nearly 300 mph.

Key Takeaways

• The Gee Bee Model R, built by the Granville Brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts, wrapped a 800+ horsepower Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine in the smallest possible airframe, earning the nickname “flying beer keg.”
• The aircraft was extremely fast but dangerously unstable, and it killed several pilots during the golden age of air racing.
• In 1932, Jimmy Doolittle won the Thompson Trophy at the Cleveland National Air Races and set a landplane world speed record of 296 mph in the Gee Bee R-1.
• Doolittle - both a daredevil pilot and a doctorate-holding aeronautical engineer - retired from racing at his peak, calculating that the odds were no longer in his favor.
• Innovations tested in these racers, including streamlined cowlings and retractable gear, directly influenced the design of World War II fighter aircraft.