The Granville Brothers, the Gee Bee R-1, and the Race Plane That Defined the Golden Age of Air Racing

The Gee Bee R-1 was the fastest and most dangerous racing airplane in America when Jimmy Doolittle flew it to victory at the 1932 Thompson Trophy race in Cleveland, averaging 252.6 mph around a low-altitude pylon course. Built by five brothers from Springfield, Massachusetts, the Gee Bee embodied a single brutal philosophy: fit the largest engine possible into the smallest airframe imaginable and strip away everything else. The story of this airplane is the story of the golden age of air racing - its brilliance, its cost, and the lasting legacy it left behind.

What Was the Thompson Trophy Race?

The Thompson Trophy race began in 1930, funded by Cleveland businessman Charles Thompson, who put up both the trophy and the prize money for what became one of the great spectacles in American sporting history. The format was a closed-course pylon race: ten laps around a roughly three-mile course, flown at low altitude with hard banking turns around each pylon. Cutting a pylon meant a time penalty. Pushing too hard meant something worse.

Crowds of 100,000 or more packed the infield at the Cleveland National Air Races each year, watching airplanes move faster than almost anything they had ever seen. The pilots understood the danger completely and went anyway. That says something about the era.

Who Were the Granville Brothers?

Zantford Granville - known as Granny - was the oldest of five brothers from Springfield, Massachusetts and the driving force behind their aircraft company. The Granvilles began building airplanes in 1929, the same year the stock market collapsed around them.

Their design philosophy was almost recklessly direct: fit the largest engine available into the smallest possible airframe, reduce drag everywhere it could be found, and give the pilot just enough room to work the controls. The resulting airplanes looked unlike anything else flying - stubby, round-fuselaged, with massive radial engines in cowlings so tight the propeller appeared to emerge directly from the fuselage. The wings were short enough and thin enough that aerodynamicists who studied the numbers quietly changed the subject.

The Model Z and the Death of Lowell Bayles

The Granvilles’ first racer, the Model Z, immediately commanded attention. At the 1931 Thompson Trophy, pilot Lowell Bayles put it on pole and won at 236 mph - a speed that exceeded the top performance of most U.S. military fighters of the era, even in a dive.

In December 1931, Bayles took the Model Z up near Detroit for an official timed attempt at the world land speed record for aircraft. At roughly 300 feet above the ground, a fuel cap broke free from the engine cowling. At over 200 mph, that small piece of hardware struck the windshield with enough force to knock Bayles unconscious. The airplane went straight in. Pieces of the Gee Bee scattered across a debris field 300 yards long. Lowell Bayles was 27 years old.

Why Was the Gee Bee So Dangerous to Fly?

Every pilot who flew the Gee Bee understood its core problem intuitively. The airplane was short - which meant the moment arm between the center of gravity and the tail surfaces was short. Controls that felt heavy when responsiveness was needed, and twitchy when stability was wanted.

Power on, the airplane wanted to snap roll to the right. Power back at low speed, it became genuinely unpredictable. Stall characteristics were unforgiving by any standard. One pilot described flying the Gee Bee as a constant argument with a very strong-willed machine - an argument the pilot had to win on every single exchange.

There was no relaxing in the Gee Bee. There was no letting the mind wander, even for a moment.

The R-1 and R-2: Built for One Race

After the loss of Bayles, Granny Granville went back to the hangar. The next designs were the R-1 and R-2 - two airplanes, slightly different in detail, built for a single purpose: the 1932 Thompson Trophy at Cleveland.

The R-1 was the faster of the two. Its Pratt & Whitney Wasp Senior engine produced approximately 800 horsepower in racing trim. Wingspan was barely 25 feet. Gross weight sat around 3,000 pounds - a power-to-weight ratio that allowed the airplane to climb with startling aggression and carry that energy hard around a pylon course.

Shell Oil sponsored the R-1 entry. The pilot they selected was James Harold Doolittle.

Jimmy Doolittle Before the Tokyo Raid

Most people know the name Doolittle from April 1942 - the raid on Tokyo, when 16 B-25 Mitchells launched from the deck of the carrier USS Hornet in a one-way mission four months after Pearl Harbor.

But in 1932, Doolittle was already a legend. He held one of the first doctorates in aeronautical engineering ever awarded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had won the Schneider Trophy - the prestigious international seaplane race - in 1925. He had set speed records across multiple continents.

And on September 24, 1929, at Mitchel Field on Long Island, he had done something that permanently changed aviation. Flying a biplane fitted with a full set of flight instruments - including a radio altimeter and directional gyro - with a canvas hood over his cockpit blocking all outside view, Doolittle took off, flew a complete circuit, and landed entirely by reference to instruments alone. A safety pilot rode in the rear cockpit with strict orders not to touch the controls unless absolutely necessary.

It was the first fully blind flight in recorded history, from takeoff to touchdown. Doolittle proved that flight instruments could be trusted, that a properly trained pilot could navigate in zero outside visibility, and that bad weather did not have to mean a death sentence. That is the man who strapped into the Gee Bee R-1 at Cleveland in 1932.

The 1932 Thompson Trophy Race

September 5, 1932. Labor Day. Ten airplanes lined up at Cleveland with their engines running. The R-1’s red and white paint scheme and round fuselage made it easy to spot - it looked more like a racing car that had grown wings than an airplane.

When the starter’s flag dropped, the R-1 left the grass at a speed that seemed wrong for something so stubby. Over ten laps, Doolittle averaged 252.6 mph - around pylons, at low altitude, in an airplane that punished any lapse in concentration without hesitation. He won by a comfortable margin.

Then Doolittle climbed out of the cockpit, stood on the wing, and announced he was done with air racing. Permanently. He said the Gee Bee was too dangerous to fly for sport - said it with the quiet certainty of a man who had calculated the risk and decided that particular equation was not one he intended to keep choosing.

That statement, from the man who had just won the Thompson Trophy, landed like a stone in a quiet pond.

He was right.

The Toll on Pilots and the Granville Company

In 1933, experienced pilot Russell Boardman - who had set a nonstop long-distance record from New York to Istanbul in 1931 - attempted to fly an R-1 at an air race in Indianapolis. He crashed on takeoff. He survived, barely. The airplane was destroyed.

That same year at the National Air Races in Chicago, pilot Florence Klingensmith suffered a control failure in her Gee Bee sportster at low altitude. The airplane rolled into the ground. Florence Klingensmith was 29 years old and one of the most gifted women pilots of her generation.

By 1934, the Granville Brothers company was collapsing under the weight of the Depression and mounting legal costs from accident lawsuits. In the spring of 1934, Granny Granville himself was killed in a crash during a routine delivery flight in a small monoplane. He was 32 years old. The company dissolved not long after.

What Air Racing Actually Built

The racing of the 1930s killed pilots who were skilled enough to know better and committed enough to go anyway. That needs to be said plainly. But the other side of that ledger demands equal honesty.

Every lesson learned at 250 mph around a closed course fed directly into the aircraft that went to war a decade later. Cowling designs. Engine cooling solutions. Propeller efficiency work. The understanding of what high-speed maneuvering loads did to an airframe. The accumulated data from those race meetings in Cleveland, Chicago, and Burbank helped save lives over the Pacific and Europe in the 1940s. A reasonably direct line connects those Springfield race planes to the Grumman Wildcat, the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, and the P-51 Mustang.

In 1932, Doolittle won a civilian race in a privately built airplane at a speed that exceeded most military fighters in the world. The civilians were teaching the generals something. Real innovation was happening in leaky hangars with cheap avgas and rules still being written.

The Gee Bee Today

A flying replica of the Gee Bee R-2 exists, built by Steve Wolf and flown for years by Delmar Benjamin on the air show circuit, including appearances at Oshkosh and Reno. Benjamin learned the airplane’s characteristics the way only a truly committed pilot can - its tendencies, its quirks, the things that must be known cold before the throttle goes forward.

He will tell you it is not a forgiving airplane. He will tell you it rewards preparation and punishes inattention. He will tell you that every flight is a negotiation with the design, and the design is not interested in casual.

Ninety years later, through a set of short round wings, a big radial engine, and a cockpit barely large enough to work in, Granny Granville’s philosophy is still intact: make it fast, strip away everything that is not speed, and trust the pilot to handle the rest.

Key Takeaways

The Gee Bee R-1 won the 1932 Thompson Trophy at 252.6 mph - a speed that surpassed the top performance of most military fighters in the world at the time
The airplane’s short fuselage created inherently unstable handling that demanded complete, uninterrupted pilot attention on every flight - there was no margin for distraction
Jimmy Doolittle, who had already completed the first fully blind instrument flight in 1929 and would later lead the 1942 Tokyo Raid, won the 1932 Thompson and immediately retired from air racing, calling the Gee Bee too dangerous to fly for sport
The Granville Brothers company collapsed by 1934, having lost founder Zantford Granville in a crash that spring at age 32, along with pilots Lowell Bayles, Florence Klingensmith, and others to accidents across the racing circuit
The aerodynamic and engineering knowledge generated by 1930s air racing fed directly into WWII combat aircraft - the golden age was not just spectacle; it was the research program that built the next generation of military aviation