The Gee Bee Super Sportster, the Granville Brothers of Springfield, and the Summer the Most Dangerous Airplane of the Golden Age Won the Thompson Trophy

In the summer of 1932, five brothers from Springfield, Massachusetts built the fastest propeller aircraft on Earth in what amounted to a converted garage. The Gee Bee Model R-1 won that year’s Thompson Trophy at 252 miles per hour - a closed-course record that redefined what aviation engineers thought was possible. It also killed pilots at every stage of its operational life, and the men good enough to survive it knew exactly why.

What Was the National Air Racing Scene in the Early 1930s?

Air racing in the late 1920s and early 1930s was not a niche event. The National Air Races, held annually in Cleveland, Ohio, drew hundreds of thousands of spectators and occupied the front pages of newspapers with the same energy given to heavyweight boxing championships. Speed records, altitude records, and distance records fell every few months. Aviation was the defining technology of the age, and the pilots pushing its limits were its celebrities.

The centerpiece of the National Air Races was the Thompson Trophy, named for Cleveland industrialist Charles E. Thompson, who funded the prize. Unlike straightline distance races, the Thompson was a closed-course pylon race: pilots flew a circuit at full power, low to the ground, banking hard around each turn, lap after lap. The crowd saw every pass. Everything happened right in front of them. It was, by any honest measure, the greatest spectacle in American sport during those years.

Who Were the Granville Brothers?

Tom, Mark, Bob, Edward, and Zantford Granville - Zantford went by Granny - grew up with aviation on their minds and grease under their fingernails. By the late 1920s they had established a small aircraft manufacturing operation in Springfield, Massachusetts. The shop had no wind tunnel, no formal engineering department, and no corporate backing. What it had was practical knowledge accumulated through building aircraft by hand, testing them, crashing some, and building again.

They called the company Granville Brothers Aircraft. The planes were called Gee Bees - from the initials G.B. Early production was unremarkable: Sportsters, biplanes, the kind of machine tied down at a grass strip on a Sunday morning. They entered regional competitions and won some. Then they decided to pursue the Thompson Trophy with absolute commitment, and everything changed.

How Did the Gee Bee Model Z Win the 1931 Thompson Trophy?

The brothers’ design philosophy was blunt: the Thompson went to the fastest airplane on the course, and speed was a function of power and drag. Build the smallest possible fuselage around the largest available engine. Reduce every surface area that wasn’t directly contributing to lift or control. Make the whole machine as aerodynamically clean as a thing with landing gear and a cockpit could possibly be made.

The result was the Gee Bee Model Z, which looked unlike anything else on the ramp at Cleveland. The fuselage was fat and round, optimized entirely for enclosing the engine. The tail was stubby. The cockpit was pushed far aft. Standing beside it, spectators reportedly laughed. Then Lowell Bayles climbed in, started the engine, and flew the Thompson course in September 1931 at 236 miles per hour, beating a strong field that included the fast machines from Jimmy Wedell’s Louisiana operation and setting a new closed-course speed record.

Overnight, Granville Brothers Aircraft was famous. Here were five brothers from Massachusetts, working out of a shop that most established manufacturers would have dismissed as a garage operation, and they had just beaten the best racing aircraft in the country.

What Made the Gee Bee Model R-1 So Extreme?

The brothers took the Model Z’s philosophy and pushed it further. The Model R came in two versions; the R-1 was the more extreme machine. It was built around a Pratt and Whitney Wasp Senior engine initially rated at approximately 800 horsepower, though estimates of actual race-day output - with the engine modified and tuned for competition - run as high as 1,200 horsepower. The fuselage was rounder than the Model Z’s. The tail moment arm, the distance between the wing and the tail control surfaces, was critically short. The cockpit offered a pilot just enough room to operate the controls, with the enormous engine cowl blocking nearly all forward visibility on approach.

Landing was an event in itself. The narrow landing gear track made crosswind landings demanding. The control response, a consequence of that short tail arm and the engine’s torque, was quick, twitchy, and unforgiving. The aircraft didn’t tolerate inattention at any phase of flight.

What Happened to Lowell Bayles?

In December 1931, Bayles took the new Gee Bee out for a world speed record attempt over a measured course near Detroit. He completed his first run. The speed was extraordinary. He set up for the second pass. What happened in the following seconds has been debated ever since - a fuel cap may have come loose and struck the windscreen - but the outcome was not. The aircraft hit the ground and Bayles was killed instantly.

He had been the brothers’ friend as much as their pilot. The company mourned through the winter while the racing season was still months away. When spring came, the question of what came next had an answer: the 1932 Thompson Trophy Race. The R-1 and R-2 were built. And there was a pilot willing to fly them.

How Did Jimmy Doolittle Win the 1932 Thompson Trophy?

Jimmy Doolittle arrived at the 1932 Thompson with more aviation credentials than almost anyone alive. He held a doctorate in aeronautical engineering from MIT, one of the first ever awarded in that field. He had won the Schneider Trophy seaplane race in 1925. He had been the first pilot to complete an outside loop. He was also, by training and temperament, a methodical man.

Doolittle did not walk in cold. He talked to everyone who had flown the R-1. He studied its handling characteristics. He understood precisely what the short tail arm meant for stability, what the narrow gear demanded on landing, and what it meant to manage that much power in an airframe that size. On September 3, 1932, he flew the R-1 around the Thompson Trophy course and won at 252 miles per hour.

252 miles per hour. Around a closed circuit. In 1932. With an open exhaust stack filling the cockpit with fumes and an engine producing power that most aircraft designers of the period would have considered excessive for an aircraft of that size. The newspapers carried the number everywhere. The record stood for years.

Why Did Doolittle Refuse to Fly the Gee Bee Again?

After the race, Doolittle told the Granvilles he wouldn’t fly the Gee Bee again. It was not said in anger. By all accounts, it was said quietly and with complete sincerity. He had won with the aircraft. He understood what made it fast and what made it dangerous. And he understood that the margins were too thin for the long run.

The airplane demanded perfection from its pilot on every flight, in every phase, from brake release to parking. Doolittle was good enough to know that no pilot performs perfectly on every flight. The odds would eventually catch up. So he walked away. That judgment was sound.

What Happened to the Gee Bee Program After 1932?

The Gee Bees continued to fly and continued to crash. Russell Boardman, a highly experienced racing pilot, was critically injured during a qualifying run. The aircraft were rebuilt multiple times, re-engined, modified, and combined into different configurations as race teams tried to keep the program alive. Each time one of them flew, the people watching held their breath until it landed.

In August 1935, Cecil Allen was killed at the Springfield Air Races while attempting to land when the aircraft went out of control. That was the end. Granville Brothers Aircraft had been struggling financially for years - the Depression had little patience for exotic racing machines - and after Allen’s death, the shop in Springfield closed. The golden chapter ended.

The aircraft didn’t kill beginners. It killed skilled, experienced aviators on days when skill and experience weren’t quite enough. That distinction tells you something specific about the design.

Does the Gee Bee Still Fly Today?

The original aircraft are gone, but there is one flying replica of the Gee Bee Model R in existence. It was built by Delmar Benjamin and Steve Wolf, who spent years studying the original aircraft to achieve accurate construction. Benjamin flew the replica at airshows for years - including Oshkosh and Reno - demonstrating its handling characteristics and keeping the story of the Springfield brothers alive. There is nothing else in the sky that looks quite like it.

The shape of the Gee Bee - the fat round fuselage, the tiny tail, the overwhelming engine cowl - is one of the most recognizable silhouettes in aviation history. Show it to any pilot and they know it immediately.

Key Takeaways

• The Granville Brothers built the Gee Bee racing program in Springfield, Massachusetts with no wind tunnel, no corporate backing, and no formal engineering department - winning through aggressive drag reduction and raw power.
• The Gee Bee Model Z won the 1931 Thompson Trophy at 236 mph; the Model R-1 pushed that to 252 mph in 1932, a closed-course record that stood for years.
• Jimmy Doolittle won the 1932 Thompson on September 3, 1932 and immediately retired from flying the aircraft, citing margins too thin for sustained safe operation - a judgment the aircraft’s subsequent accident history confirmed.
• The Gee Bee’s danger wasn’t in its complexity but in its absolute intolerance of imperfect execution: short tail arm, narrow gear, limited forward visibility, and enormous torque combined to punish any lapse.
• The program ended with Cecil Allen’s death in August 1935. A single flying replica, built by Delmar Benjamin and Steve Wolf, remains the only way to see the aircraft in the air today.