Land Speed Record, Part 4; Into the Jet Age

The Land Speed record now moved into the realms of science fiction as first turbine power and then jet and rocket power became the motive force. The move was made possible by the demise of the large aero piston engine as a means of propulsion for aircraft as wartime experiments with jets moved swiftly towards post-war commonplace at breath-taking speed.

Breedlove and his Spirit of America, seemingly in the
street outside his house!

What was more important was the fact that jet power provided sufficient thrust to overcome the increasing penalties of air and surface drag that were becoming the biggest barriers to raising the LSR as speeds rose towards the sound barrier.

Not everyone was convinced that this was the right way to go. Before his death in 1952, John Cobb opined that ‘a jet-propelled vehicle would not be a motor-car; it would be a sort of aeroplane dragging its wheels along the course.’ He was not alone in dismissing the significance of the jet. Americans Mickey Thompson, Art and Walt Arfons and Athol Graham all persevered with the piston engine in the 1950’s, with no great success, although another American, Dr. Nathan Ostich, gave a glimpse of the future with his turbojet-engined (and unsuccessful) Flying Caduceus.

And this is how it ended up!

Everyone was still looking at wheel-driven cars as being the rightful holders of the LSR. The last such vehicle to hold the record was a resurrection of the great pre-war record names; Campbell and Bluebird. Donald, son of Malcolm, took up from where his father had left off, first taking the Water Speed Record several times in the 1950’s before turning to the Land Speed Record.

Bluebird CN7 was the most technically complex car yet. Powered by a Bristol-Siddeley Proteus aircraft-type gas turbine, it was monocoque in construction and had four-wheel-drive through enormous, tyred 4ft 4ins wheels developed by Dunlop.

The problem with CN7 was its over-long gestation period. Ironically it was constructed by Rubery Owen, that unwieldy conglomerate of companies that had taken so long to get the BRM V16 racing car to the circuits. Just as the V16 had arrived as the formula for which it had been designed was abandoned, so the CN7 arrived just as jet-power became the must-have; Bluebird CN7 was immediately outmoded.

Walt Arfon's Wingfoot Express

Campbell persisted, however and finally dragged the car up to a speed of 403.1mph in July 1964 at Lake Eyre in Australia. But it was a hollow victory, for Craig Breedlove had taken his jet-propelled tricycle Spirit of America to 407mph the year before. The reason that Campbell’s record still mattered was because the FIA only recognised wheel driven records and, in any case, because it had three wheels, Spirit fell into the motorcycle category. Eventually, however, the FIA created a new pure-thrust category so, while Campbell held the wheel driven record, the outright LSR was Breedlove’s.

The stage was now set for one of the most remarkable periods of the LSR when the record changed hands a total of 11 times in just over two years. Breedlove had started the ball rolling in 1963, making a mockery of Campbell’s attempt the following year. Even had he not, by the beginning of October 1964, a mere 3 months’ after Campbell’s nightmare in Australia the matter was put beyond any doubt as Tom Green, driving Walt Arfons’ jet-powered (and four-wheeled) ‘Wingfoot Express’ travelled through the measured mile at 413.20mph (664.96kmh). Walt and his brother Art were estranged, which must have made it all the more galling for Walt when, only three days later, Art shattered Walt’s record with 434.02mph (698.46kmh) driving his ‘Green Monster’.

Art Arfon's Green Monster

Then Breedlove came back in the middle of that same October and went 468.72mph (754.31kmh) to put them both in their place. He knew there was still more speed in the car, however, and just two days later duffed up the Arfons brothers properly with 526.28mph (846.94kmh); a massive increase. Mind you, all wasn’t well that ended well; as he left the measured mile he deployed his braking parachutes only for nothing to happen. His wheel disc brakes burned out completely and failed and the Spirit of America, after slicing through a telegraph pole, ended up nose-down in a brine lake, the cockpit completely submerged. Fortunately Breedlove escaped and swam to safety.

Still they weren’t finished! At the end of October Art Arfons took his car out one last time before the weather closed in and reached 536.71mph (863.72kmh). That might have been it for 1964, but certainly not for this titanic battle.

Tyre technology was reaching its absolute limit, as Green
Monster demonstrates. This was a twofold problem as,
without tyres, there was no tyre company investment
(Breedlove had huge support from Goodyear)

Over the winter of 1964/65, Breedlove secretly built a completely new Spirit of America, the Sonic 1 with which he intended to reach 750mph (1206kmh) and break the sound barrier. It is remarkable that he was able to build the car in such a short space of time and even more remarkable that, in early November 1965 he calmly re-took the record with 555.48mph (893.93kmh).

Arfons was also at Bonneville with Breedlove and, five days later, went 576.55mph (927.84kmh). However, during the run, Green Monster was damaged when one of his Firestone tyres blew out. Breedlove was heavily sponsored by Goodyear who were naturally ecstatic when, a week later, he became the first man to exceed 600mph, recording 600.60mph (966.54kmh).

Spirit of America; Sonic One

It had been the most incredible 24 months of intense activity which had seen the record pushed up nearly 200mph; an unprecedented explosion of speed. It had been a game of speed roulette and was incredibly dangerous, as Art was to prove a year later as Green Monster, travelling at over 600mph, smashed itself to pieces after a wheel bearing had seized. Miraculously, Arfons survived unharmed and discharged himself from hospital a few hours later. They made them different in those days!

Towards the Sound Barrier

At the height of the Breedlove/Arfons duel, another Goodyear sponsored project was a portent of things to come. Art Arfons’ brother, Walt, had built a new Wingfoot Express, this time powered by a series of dry powder JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off) rockets. Driver Bob Tatroe had worked up to 475mph before it caught fire when the rockets fired wrongly and that was the end of it but it was a neat precursor to the car that would hold the LSR from 1970 to 1983.

In a way, it could be argued that the Blue Flame was the LSR car of the post-war period most deserving to take the record because the team behind it, Reaction Dynamics, built not only the chassis, but the rocket motor that powered it. It used Hydrogen Peroxide and was intended to use Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), hence backing from the American Natural Gas Industry, but in practice, LNG was never used.

Blue Flame

Blue Flame was a beautiful, pencil slim projectile, 38-feet long, running two wheels very close together at the front and the rear wheels out rigged 7 feet apart. Despite a few teething problems, in a short two months late in 1970 at Bonneville, Gary Gabelich, NASA trainee and drag racer, succeeded in raising the record to 622.41mph (1001.639kmh).

And so we come to the modern era and introduce the name of Richard Noble, who has done so much to keep the LSR alive and, what is more, in the hands of the British.

Noble had envisaged a three part attack on the LSR. Thrust 1, as he called it, would be a starter vehicle, to gain experience driving a jet car and to generate publicity and credibility. Thrust 2 would be much more powerful and complex and would serve as a high-speed demonstrator vehicle to attract backers for Thrust 3, the record car.

Thrust 1, a ‘cathedral on wheels’ in Noble’s own words was built on a shoestring, largely by Noble himself and powered by an ancient Rolls Royce Derwent jet engine. Running at 200mph at an RAF airfield, a wheel bearing seized and the car rolled itself to destruction, Noble emerging unscathed.

Thrust 2 at Black Rock Desert, Nevada

They sold the remains of the car for scrap (and went to the pub to drown their sorrows) and made the momentous decision to jump straight to Thrust 3 – the actual record car. Noble assembled an amazing team around him and while they performed miracles in the design and construction of the car, Noble fought a bitter battle and performed equal miracles to find funding through sponsorship. That he and the team succeeded in both disciplines is one of the inspirational stories of the late 20th century and the upshot of it all was that, after two years of failed attempts at Bonneville and with money evaporating faster than jet fuel on the desert floor, the team finally took the LSR at a speed of 633.47mph (1019.44kmh) at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, USA.

As Noble said; he had done it ‘for Britain; and for the hell of it.’

And so we come to the record that still stands today, that Noble is trying to beat once more with Bloodhound; the first supersonic record; 763.035mph; faster than the speed of sound! Set in 1997, RAF fighter pilot Andy Green was now driving, but Noble was once again the driving force behind the attempt, inspired by reports that Breedlove was readying a car to attack his record (he would peak at 636mph in his Spirit of America – Sonic Arrow). Once again he assembled an amazingly small team around him and set forth once more to raise the money. This time he not only had to battle corporate apathy but also engineer’s scepticism who argued it just couldn’t be done safely.

Thrust SSC; through the Sound Barrier

This was truly entering uncharted territory and for the first time, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was used to predict the airflow over, around and under the car. The simple fact was that no-one knew what would happen to the shock waves formed as the car went supersonic, especially as there would be a nasty desert floor to interrupt its progress away from the car.

Finally, on October 15th, a sonic boom was heard in the town of Gerlach, 10 miles from Black Rock. Just under an hour later, a second boom was heard; the team had done it, shattered the record and the sound barrier at the same time. ‘We bloody did it; thank God it’s over,’ was Noble’s fitting, and exhausted, epitaph.

Where to now? Well, now we are where we came in with this series of stories; BloodhoundSSC and the race for 1000mph. Whether or not they will succeed no-one can say, although the engineers believe it can be done and Andy Green and Richard Noble also have faith. This is going to be one hell of a story and I, for one, will be right there to watch it first-hand. If you know what is good for you, you’ll be there too.