In addition to helping to promote aviation to the public, air races in the 1920s and 1930s helped spur technological innovations.
“Icons of Aviation History” is a diary series that explores significant and historic aircraft.
The first “air competition” was held in France in 1909, billed as “Champagne’s Grand Week of Aviation”. It introduced the Gordon Bennett Trophy for aviation and attracted aircraft designers and pilots from all over the world, as well as a huge audience including European royalty. The event was won by the American Glenn Curtiss.
In 1913, the first Schneider Trophy race for seaplanes was held. It was then suspended during the First World War, resuming in 1919. Perhaps the most notable of the Schneider races was in 1931 when the British Supermarine Company’s winning seaplane set a record of over 400mph: this design was adapted into the Spitfire fighter.
In the US, the newspaper publisher Ralph Pulitzer sponsored an air race in 1920, which was then continued on an annual basis, dubbed the “National Air Races” and featuring both pylon-courses and cross-country races. In 1964, the National Air Races moved from Cleveland to Reno NV, where they are still held each year.
In 1927, the Texaco Oil Company bought a Ford Trimotor which it flew across the country to promote and advertise its product, and when the Trimotor crashed in December 1928 it was replaced with a Lockheed Vega.
By 1930, Texaco decided to sponsor its own entries into the National Air Races. It turned to the Travel Air Manufacturing Company in Wichita, which had been founded by three men who went on to become aviation legends: Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna, and Lloyd Stearman. The company had been producing a specialized air racer which it called the Model R, but which had been dubbed “Mystery Ships” by the press because Travel Air released no details about the aircraft and kept their manufacture a secret, going so far as to drape the planes with a tarp and post an armed guard in front of the locked hangar. The Model R that went to Texaco was the fourth Mystery Ship to be produced (Travel Air made only five in total), and bore the civilian registration number NR1313. Texaco dubbed it “Number 13”.
It turned out to be a lucky number for Texaco. Powered by a nine-cylinder Wright Whirlwind R-975 engine and a thin low mono-wing, Number 13 quickly set two transcontinental speed records. It won the pylon race at the 1929 meet in Cleveland with an average speed of 194.9mph, even though it had missed one of the pylons and had to circle back. The Model R was also a champion cross-country racer and set over 200 speed records. And the aircraft gave a shocking surprise to the US Army Air Force: two of the entrants in these races were a Curtiss P-3-A and a Curtiss F6C-C, both biplane pursuit fighters that were then in military service. It provoked embarrassing questions from Congress about how America’s frontline fighters had been beaten by an off-the-shelf civilian airplane, and was one of the factors that led the military to phase out canvas-covered biplanes and move to all-metal monoplanes like the P-26. The Fascists in Italy were so impressed with the Model 13 design that they purchased one of the aircraft, pieced together from spare parts, to study it, hoping to adapt some of its features for their own military fighters, resulting in the Breda Ba27.
Today, the Texaco Model R N1313 is on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
NOTE: As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. So I welcome any corrections you may have, whether it's typos or places that are unclear or factual errors. I think of y'all as my pre-publication editors and proofreaders. ;)