09/04/2026
Before Jimmy Doolittle became famous for leading 16 B-25 Mitchells off the deck of USS Hornet (CV-8), he was already one of the most accomplished pilots in America.
On September 3, 1932, Doolittle climbed into one of the most extreme racing airplanes ever built, the Granville Brothers Gee Bee R-1 Super Sportster, NR2100, and set a new world landplane speed record over a three-kilometer course at Cleveland. His official FAI average was 294.42 mph, with one of his passes reaching 309.04 mph. Two days later, he would fly the same airplane to victory in the Thompson Trophy at an average of 252.686 mph.
This was Doolittle near the end of a remarkable peacetime flying career. He had earned an aeronautical engineering doctorate from MIT, won the Schneider Trophy in 1925, made the first complete “blind” flight using instruments alone in 1929, and won the inaugural Bendix Trophy in 1931. By 1932, he was working for Shell Oil while remaining an Army Air Corps Reserve officer, using racing and record-setting flights not simply for spectacle, but to help advance aircraft, instruments and high-performance aviation.
And then there was the airplane.
“Gee Bee” came from the initials of the Granville Brothers, five brothers whose small Springfield, Massachusetts, company turned to air racing as the Depression devastated the market for ordinary airplanes. Working with engineer Howell “Pete” Miller, they produced the R-1 specifically for the Thompson Trophy and the similar R-2 for the longer Bendix race. They were extraordinary machines: enormous engines wrapped in teardrop-shaped fuselages, tiny wings, small control surfaces and cockpits positioned far aft, all in the pursuit of reducing drag and increasing speed.
They were also notoriously unforgiving.
The Gee Bees have sometimes been portrayed simply as badly designed “killer airplanes,” which isn't entirely fair. At racing speeds they could perform extremely well, but their small wings produced high takeoff and landing speeds, and their proportions and limited control margins demanded considerable skill. There was very little room for error. Doolittle later described flying the R-1 as being like balancing an ice cream cone on the tip of your finger and called it the most dangerous airplane he ever flew.
The Granvilles paid heavily for their pursuit of speed. Both the R-1 and R-2 were lost in crashes the following year, and pilot Russell Boardman died from injuries suffered when the R-1 crashed during takeoff. Most of the Granvilles' racing aircraft would eventually be destroyed in accidents, and the company itself did not survive the decade.
Doolittle, however, knew when to walk away. After winning the Thompson Trophy two days after his speed record, he retired from air racing while he was at the top. He had won the Schneider, Bendix and Thompson trophies, a combination that cemented his reputation as one of America's greatest racing pilots. He increasingly believed that the technological benefits of racing no longer justified the lives being lost.
Ten years later, the world would know Jimmy Doolittle for something entirely different.
