Gee-Bee

Along the highway rolls a grotesque vehicle like an automobile designer's bad dream. It looks like a coupe but has only three wheels, one centred in front. Its tail sticks out in a long bustle. The roof line of the coupe extends upward and rearward in curves like the back and neckline of a rearing seal. The "seal's" nose is the axis of a large propeller, shielded by a mesh guard.

Within the coupe the driver steps on his gas throttle; the propeller whirls noisily and the queer craft scoots along the road. ... At the airport the driver fetches a monoplane wing, bolts it into place just abaft the cabin door. A fuselage tail, with control surfaces, is hooked onto the coupe's bustle-like stern (see cut). The driver (now a pilot) steps on the same gas throttle as before, steers with the same steering wheel, prods the same foot-brake, kites down the runway, climbs to the sky.

Such a scene was not enacted last week but it was prepared on paper. The scheme was newsworthy because it issued not from a crackpot inventor but from a builder who, already famed for racing designs, promises this year to become a factor in commercial airplane manufacturing. He is Granville, of Springfield, Mass.

Zantford D. ("Granny") Granville, 32, is eldest of five brothers. After two years as a mechanic in the Chevrolet factory he started a garage in Arlington, Mass., took in Brother Thomas. That was in 1919. When the garage business was running smoothly, they formed Granville Bros. Air Service. All they needed was a plane and someone to fly it, both of which they hired. Their education progressed. They established a repair service at Boston Airport, did so much business that soon there was room for Brothers Edward, Mark, Robert. In time, all but Tom got pilots' licenses.

By 1929 the Brothers Granville had rebuilt so many crashes they were ready to build planes of their own. Zantford Granville was the designer, the four younger brothers craftsmen, mechanics. Their first product, the Gee-Bee Sportster, won the favor of Maude Tait Moriarity, woman racing pilot. She persuaded her father, James C. Tait, rich ice cream maker of Springfield, Mass., to back the Granvilles with a factory in Springfield.

With a total capital of $30,000 plus $18,000 borrowed, the Granvilles built & sold 25 ships in four years. The collapse of the private plane market left scant demand for sport ships like theirs, but also left plenty of time for experiments with racing designs. With his smart Chief Engineer Robert L. Hall (since resigned) Granville produced the Gee-Bee Super Sportster in which the late Lowell Bayles broke the U. S. land plane speed record at the National Air Races in 1931. It was in a new Gee-Bee that famed "Jimmy'' Doolittle broke that record and made a new world record (296 m.p.h.) in last year's races.

That latest ship accounts for Granville's new importance, and answers an often-heard question: "What good are air races?" The latest Gee-Bee is of radical design, a fat bumblebee of a plane with small wings and an enormous tail. Wags dubbed it "the flying silo." Last week Zantford Granville began construction of a barrel-shaped transport ship patterned directly after the racer. Its wing is larger but its fuselage is barrel-shaped, its tail big, its nose fat to hold a 700-h.p. Cyclone. With pilot & seven passengers it is supposed to cruise 197 m.p.h., hit a top speed of 230, land under 60.

New capital lately went into Granville Bros, (new name: Granville Aircraft Corp.). Alfred D. Chandler, longtime backer of Giuseppe Bellanca who quit him following a quarrel last year, turned to Granville. With Mr. Chandler went former Bellanca Vice President William B. Hurlburt.

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