Six Record Breakers

Air Force Captain Manuel J. Fernandez Jr. is an old hand at taking chances. In the dangerous skies over Korea, he took so many and took advantage of them so well that he accounted for 14 1/2 MIGs. To his annoyance, peacetime duty kept his adventures to a minimum. Last year Captain Fernandez discovered a new way to cut loose. He began to devote all his spare time to planning and practicing for the Bendix Trophy race, a 1,120-mile dash from George Air Force Base, Calif, to Will Rogers Field in Oklahoma City.

The rules for last week's contest gave Fernandez every opportunity to push his luck to the limit. Hungry for a supersonic record, race officials decided to give pilots their choice between air-to-air refueling and lugging underslung wing tanks.

No longer would they have to throttle back for their pass above the Will Rogers pylon. They could let down as fast as they wanted to -- provided that they stayed above 5,000 ft. so that the shattering racket of a "sonic boom" would not un nerve spectators or jostle instruments.

Fernandez figured everything to a split second, scorned the time-consuming safety of taking on extra fuel in the air, climbed as high as 30,000 ft. running away from head winds, got his F-100C Super Sabre jet to Oklahoma City with exactly one minute of fuel left. His nice calculations earned him the Bendix Trophy and a new Bendix record: 666.661 m.p.h. In second place, with 656.250 m.p.h. : Captain Robert A. Madden, a Korean veteran who spent 15 months as a PW. Although adverse winds edged them out of a supersonic trip, all six contestants, all flying North American F-100Cs, cracked the record of 616.208 m.p.h. set two years ago by Captain Edward Kenny in an F-84F.

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