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"Marshalling to Start"
by Don Connolly
At the 1932 National Air Races in Cleveland (27 August - 5 September), aircraft are seen being marshaled to the starting line of the Thompson Trophy Race across a sodden infield. In the foreground, the Hall "Bulldog'' Racer, and to the right, the ultimate winner of the Thompson trophy, Doolittle's Gee Bee Model R-1. Also shown is the Gee Bee Model R-2, the other Granville entrant and Wedell-Williams Racer #92 flown by Jimmy Haizlip.
The Thompson Trophy Race was a closed-circuit, pylon-marked contest, similar to the earlier Pulitzer Race of the 1920s, with one major exception. Rather than planes competing one at a time, the Thompson was a horse race in the air: Pilots started together and jockeyed for position. The high-speed, low-altitude race, which made tight turns around the pylons, was an exciting event for spectators -- not to mention for the pilots. As one Thompson racer noted: "It was a toss-up whether everybody was going to get to that first pylon alive." Of the major trophy races, the Thompson was the most popular.
Although the military had dominated the earlier Pulitzer and Schneider races, civilian pilots and homebuilt planes tended to excel in the Thompson contests. In 1929, Doug Davis shocked everyone when he piloted a Travel Air Model R "Mystery Ship" to victory over the best the military had. Even though Jimmy Doolittle, an army aviator, won the 1932 race, he did so in a privately manufactured plane--one of the infamous Gee Bees. Notably, Doolittle had established a new world speed record for landplanes in the same aircraft a few days before his victory.
Some of the Thompson's other noteworthy pilots included Roscoe Turner, Jimmy Wedell, and Benny Howard. Turner did the unthinkable when he won three Thompson Races, a feat that no one ever matched. Jimmy Wedell, a Texan who supposedly built his first racer from a chalk outline he had made on the floor, won the 1933 contest. Benny Howard, the maker of the DGAs "Damned Good Airplanes," flew his own Mister Mulligan to victory in 1935. That same year, Howard became the only person to win not only the Thompson, but also the Bendix, the National Air Races' other major contest.
The 1932 Thompson Trophy Race Results were as follows:
1. Jimmy Doolittle, Gee Bee R-1
2. Jimmie Wedell, Wedell-Williams 44
3. Roscoe Turner, Wedell-Turner
4. Jim Haizlip, Wedell-Williams 44
5. Lee Gehlbach, Gee Bee R-2
6. Robert Hall, Hall Bulldog
7. William Ong, Howard Ike
The Planes
Hall-Springfield Bulldog Gee Bee Model R-1 Gee Bee Model R-2 Wedell-Williams 44
(Number 92)
2002 Wings Publishing
