The Gee Bee Model R, the Granville Brothers' Flying Barrel, and Jimmy Doolittle's Two Hundred Fifty-Two Mile-an-Hour Gamble Over Cleveland

In 1932, Jimmy Doolittle flew the notoriously dangerous Gee Bee Model R to victory in the Thompson Trophy race at Cleveland, averaging just over 252 miles an hour around the pylons. Built by the five Granville Brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts, the stubby, barrel-shaped racer was among the fastest landplanes in America - and one of the deadliest. Doolittle beat it fair and square, then immediately retired from air racing, calling it the most dangerous airplane he had ever flown.

What Was the Gee Bee Model R?

The Gee Bee Model R was a purpose-built racing airplane created by Granville Brothers Aircraft, a small outfit run by five mechanically gifted brothers from New Hampshire who set up shop in a rented dance hall in Springfield, Massachusetts. The company name came straight from the family: “Gee Bee” spells out the initials G-B, for Granville Brothers. The oldest brother, Zantford Granville, went by “Granny.”

Their goal was the Thompson Trophy - a closed-course pylon race with no handicaps and no excuses, where the fastest airplane simply won. In an era when the National Air Races drew crowds larger than the World Series, that trophy was the crown jewel of American aviation.

Why Did the Gee Bee Look Like a Flying Barrel?

Most racing airplanes of the early 1930s tried to be sleek and delicate, knifing through the air. The Gee Bee did the opposite. Working with an engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Granvilles reasoned that the biggest source of drag on a racer was the big radial engine up front. Their solution: wrap the entire fuselage around the engine and let it taper back like a teardrop.

The result was a stubby, barrel-chested airplane with tiny wings and a cockpit shoved far aft - the pilot sat almost on top of the tail. Up front was a Pratt & Whitney Wasp radial engine producing around 800 horsepower, crammed into an airframe barely 20 feet long. Painted in a bright yellow-and-black scheme, it looked like a hornet, and it flew like one too.

Two were built: the Model R-1 and the Model R-2. On paper, they were the fastest landplanes in America.

Why Was the Gee Bee So Dangerous to Fly?

The same shape that made the Gee Bee fast made it a monster in the air. With nearly all the weight concentrated up front in the engine, wings that were far too small, and a very short fuselage, the airplane had almost no natural stability. Pilots described flying it like balancing a broomstick on a fingertip - except the broomstick was traveling three miles a minute and would kill you the instant you looked away.

Landings were worse. The long nose and far-aft cockpit meant that when the pilot flared to land, he could see nothing over the cowling. You came down final approach fast and blind, feeling for a runway you couldn’t see, in an airplane that wanted to swap ends the moment it slowed down.

The Gee Bee earned a reputation as a killer, and it earned it the hard way. Men died in these airplanes.

Who Was Jimmy Doolittle Before the Tokyo Raid?

Most people remember James Harold “Jimmy” Doolittle for leading the 1942 raid on Tokyo, launching 16 B-25 bombers off the deck of an aircraft carrier. But by the time he did that, he was already one of the most famous pilots in the world - and the Gee Bee was a big reason why.

Doolittle was not just a gifted pilot; he was also a serious scientist who held a doctorate in aeronautical engineering from MIT. Small, wiry, and tough - a former boxer - he had already completed the first coast-to-coast crossing of the United States in under 24 hours. He had also made the first flight to take off, fly a pattern, and land entirely on instruments inside a covered cockpit, a feat that arguably did more for the future of airline travel than any air race. He understood, in his equations and in his hands both, exactly what made an airplane behave the way it did.

How Did Doolittle Win the 1932 Thompson Trophy?

In the last week of August 1932, Doolittle brought the Gee Bee Model R-1 to Cleveland, Ohio, where a crowd roughly 100,000 strong packed the airport. True to his method, he didn’t just jump in and firewall the throttle. He flew the airplane, felt out its temper, and learned exactly how far he could push it. He later called it the most dangerous airplane he had ever flown - and this from a man who flew everything.

On September 1, 1932, Doolittle took the Model R up for the Shell Speed Dashes, the straight-line runs, and set a new world landplane speed record at just under 296 miles an hour - nearly 300 mph in an airframe of steel tube, wood, and fabric.

Then came the Thompson Trophy itself, flown low around pylons where every turn tried to sling the airplane outward into the ground. Doolittle flew it like a surgeon: smooth, precise, always thinking one turn ahead and leaving himself just enough margin. When it was over, he had won the Thompson Trophy at an average speed of a little over 252 miles an hour - around pylons, not in a straight line, without a single mistake.

Why Did Doolittle Quit Air Racing at His Peak?

After winning the Thompson Trophy, Doolittle did the smartest thing anyone ever did with a Gee Bee: he walked away. He announced his retirement from air racing right about then, famously remarking that he had yet to hear of anyone engaged in this work dying of old age.

That decision stands out because the entire culture of that golden age was built on nerve - pushing the airplane and yourself while the crowd roared. Here was the greatest of them all, a man who could out-fly and out-think anyone, and his final verdict on the fastest airplane in the country was essentially: this thing will kill you, and I’m going home.

What Happened to the Gee Bee and the Granville Brothers?

The Gee Bee did not fade away quietly. Both the Model R-1 and R-2 eventually came to grief, claiming more good pilots. The Granville Brothers’ company went under during the Depression, and Zantford “Granny” Granville himself later died in a crash in another one of the company’s designs.

For decades, the Gee Bee was remembered mainly as a deathtrap - beautiful, fast, and lethal. But the story didn’t end there. Years later, Bill Turner and, later, airshow pilot Delmar Benjamin built flying reproductions of the Model R-2 from the original drawings and photographs. Benjamin didn’t just taxi his for the cameras - he flew it at airshows across the country for years, performing loops, rolls, and hammerheads in the airplane everyone said no sane man could fly.

That tells you something important: the Gee Bee was never truly unflyable. It was simply, utterly unforgiving. It demanded everything a pilot had, every second, and punished anything less without mercy. In the right hands, it was a thoroughbred. In any other hands, it was a loaded gun.

Why Do We Still Talk About the Gee Bee?

The Gee Bee is the purest distillation of aviation’s golden age - raw ambition and enormous horsepower stuffed into too little airplane, with men chasing speed for the sheer glory of it and danger riding in the cockpit beside them. They flew those machines because no one yet knew where the limits were, and the only way to find out was to push until something said no.

Doolittle found the edge, looked right over it, and backed away. The little yellow hornet made him famous, and the wisdom to quit while he was ahead may be exactly what let him live to fly into the history books again a decade later - off the deck of a carrier, headed for Tokyo. Not a bad legacy for a beer keg with wings.

For further reading, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has excellent material on the era, and Doolittle told the story himself in his memoir, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again.

Key Takeaways

• The Gee Bee Model R was a barrel-shaped racer built by the five Granville Brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts, designed to minimize drag by wrapping the fuselage around an 800-horsepower Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine.
• Its front-heavy design and tiny wings made it extraordinarily fast but dangerously unstable, earning it a reputation as a killer.
• Jimmy Doolittle won the 1932 Thompson Trophy in the Model R-1 at an average of just over 252 mph, and days earlier set a world landplane speed record near 296 mph.
• Doolittle called it the most dangerous airplane he ever flew and retired from air racing immediately after winning.
• The type killed several pilots and helped sink the Granville company, but modern reproductions flown by Delmar Benjamin proved it was unforgiving rather than truly unflyable.