THE STUMPY PLANE

One of the most bizarre-looking airplanes ever produced (except perhaps for some really, really weird ones churned out by the Third Reich) was the Gee Bee, named after its manufacturer, Granville Brothers Aircraft of Springfield, Massachusetts. The Gee Bee consisted of a huge engine in a cowling with itty-bitty stubby wings and a miniscule rudder and cockpit attached almost like an afterthought.

It was designed strictly for racing. And, except for one peculiarity, it raced exceedingly well. Jimmy Doolittle, who later achieved fame for his daring air attack on Tokyo in 1942, flew a Gee Bee to win the 1932 Thompson Trophy race and then later used one to achieve a speed record for a land-based aircraft of 296 miles per hour (476 kilometers per hour).

The plane was, for its time, very fast and powerful and highly responsive. Its extreme responsiveness was responsible for the peculiarity mentioned in the previous paragraph--i.e. the fact that the aircraft was exceedingly dangerous and would crash without hesitation with the slightest over-control by the pilot. It also had a stall speed of 100 miles per hour (161 kilometers per hour), which was unusually high for a small propeller plane, especially of that vintage. Unlike most aircraft, the Gee Bee usually did not provide advance warning of a stall--it would instead suddenly turn nose down and plummet to the earth. After too many fatal crashes (including one which killed a Granville Brother), the remaining brothers got out of the Gee Bee business altogether.

Pilots who were skilled enough to handle the machine and survive were lavish with praise about it and its speed and maneuverability. They noted that it flew best when upside down (although this configuration was not utilized during landings--at least not intentionally).

One of these pilots is Delmar Benjamin, who built his own Gee Bee more than sixty years after Granville Brothers ceased production. You can watch him fly it here. For those of you with a more morbid turn of mind, a simple Google search will bring you a video from 1931 of a fatal crash of an original example.

By El Grafo (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
 or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
 via Wikimedia Commons