The Gee Bee Racers: A Legacy of Speed

Specialty Press, 1979-01-01. Paperback. Very Good. Specialty Press [Published Date: 1979]. Soft cover, 173 pp. Stated First Printing, September 1979. Contents include: Introduction 1909-28; Biplanes and Sportsters 1929-30; "Z" is for Zinger 1931; R-1:Super Sportster 1932; 7-11 at the Races 1932; Crashes and Crises 1933; Q.E.D. - Another Chance 1934; Time Flies and Fizzles 1935-37; Double Trouble 1938-9; Enough is Enough 1940-79; Appendix: Gee Bee Data Bank; Index; Bibliography. Black and white photo reproductions and illustrations throughout. In very good condition. White pictorial paper covers have light bumping and creasing to edges and light overall scuffing, aging and soiling. Binding tight. Pages lightly aged but otherwise unmarked. NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. [From Introduction] THE GEE BEE RACERS were fast, colorful, and cursed with the most outrageous bad luck imaginable. They were also much, much more. Until their remarkable but brief time span in aviation history, no other aircraft ever made such daring contributions to the advancement of speed, to the amazement of thousands, and to the excitement and adventure of American ingenuity in full bloom. At the time the Gee Bee series was begun, not thirty years had passed since the stick and wire Wright Flyer had taken to the air for a one-hundred-twenty-foot flight across the windswept dunes of Kitty Hawk. Any invention of a transportation device soon results in a race, and the airplane was no different. By 1909, less than six years after the first successful heavier-than-air flight, an international speed contest was held at Rheims, France. Glenn Curtiss took over the meet with his Golden Flyer fluttering along at a little over forty-six miles per hour and emerged an international celebrity.