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Speed Pilots: Jimmy Doolittle and the Thompson Trophy Race
From: Columbia University
| By:
Kenneth LeishColumbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The expert aviator and aircraft racer James H. Doolittle, known as Jimmy, not only won several speed races, including the Bendix and Schneider Trophy Races, but also set a world high-speed record in 1932. In this 1960 interview, conducted by Kenneth W. Leish on behalf of Columbia's Oral History Research Office, Doolittle talks about a Spokane, Washington, aeronautic show and his famed Thompson Trophy Race win, when he lost count of the laps and almost stopped one lap short. |
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An unabridged transcript of the 1960 oral-history interview with James H. Doolittle from which this excerpt was taken. |
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Question: Could you speak of the Bendix races? |
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| Doolittle at a refueling stop, Bendix Trophy Race, 1931. | |
James H. Doolittle: I only flew in the Bendix Race once and won it the time I flew. I only flew in the Thompson--no, I flew in the Thompson Trophy Race twice. The first time was after I won the Bendix Race in 1931, and a piston burned out in the middle of the race, and I had to land. The next year, 1932, I won the Thompson Race. So I only flew in the Bendix once, won it; in the Thompson twice, won it once. |
Q: Can you tell me about the Schneider Trophy races? |
Doolittle: In the early days of aviation, it was very difficult. You must remember that after World War I there was peace in the world, and our military establishment became very small. It was very difficult to get money to buy aircraft for military purposes, and it was very difficult to get money to improve aircraft. In those days, racing did have the effect of forming an incentive, a stimulus, to the development of aircraft and engines. |
In the Schneider Cup Race in 1925, the Army and the Navy went together and put up $500,000. Now, that doesn't sound like a lot of money today, but that half a million dollars bought new engines, bought four new racing airplanes  and all of the design and engineering that was required to bring them into being. Those airplanes were good for their day. They were designed to fly either on wheels or pontoons. |
It happened that, of the four of them, one was tested to destruction statically in order to find how strong it was. The other three were given away, two to the Navy, one to the Army. Fortunately, the Army got the fastest one of the three, and St. Betlis won the Pulitzer Race on wheels, and a month or so later I won the Schneider Trophy Race on pontoons with the same airplane. |
Q: Does any particular race of yours in that period stand out in your mind, either because you had trouble on it or because you won narrowly over an opponent? |
Doolittle: In that era, no. However, one race stands out in my mind because I won it and almost lost it. In the Thompson Trophy Race--I think it was 10 laps of 15 miles, 150-mile race, three pylons, 15 miles around--and I marked up on my instrument board each time I completed a lap. On one lap, I marked up and then wasn't sure whether I'd marked up or not, and I began wondering about it, and when I ended up at the end of nine laps I had marked up 10 marks. |
Still, I just had a hunch--I knew I was way ahead, and the fastest airplane by far [1932], so I just had a hunch that maybe I'd better go round again. There was a bare possibility that I had marked twice on one lap. And I flew around another lap, just for the hell of it, and it was fortunate that I did, because I'd only made nine laps before. |
Had I not had this hunch and made the extra lap I would have lost the race, because I would have thought I'd finished the race when I hadn't. As it was, I won it. |
Q: Was there any particular rivalry between some of the pilots? |
Doolittle: At the time that I was doing acrobatic work for the Army, Sanderson of the Marine Corps was an outstanding Marine Corps acrobatic pilot. Williams of the Navy was an outstanding naval acrobatic pilot. And there was always some rivalry between the three of us, when we gave stunting demonstrations at the same place. We always tried to do the best we could, hoping we could outdo the other one. |
Q: What kind of stunts did you specialize in? |
Doolittle: You always did the routine stunts, and then tried to think of some new ones that somebody else hadn't done, because you always got a little extra accolade if you could do all of the routine stunts that everybody else did, and then do something that somebody else hadn't done. |
One experience that I remember that was rather embarrassing was the Spokane Air Races in 1927.  Sanderson and I both did acrobatic flying, he representing the Marine Corps and I the Army. A short time later, a few days later, we were all invited to come to Portland, Oregon, to put on a show there. The papers spoke of the competition between Sanderson and Doolittle, and the day that we went out to put on our respective shows, there was only about a 1,000-foot ceiling, which is too low to do acrobatics. |
You ought to be above 1,000 feet doing it, really, but the ceiling was solid overcast. So Sanderson and I got together before the show and said, "Well, let's both put on our best show, but in no sense have this a competition, because we don't want to jeopardize either our own lives or the lives of anyone on the ground." |
So this was our agreement. When we finished the show, thinking that we had made it known that there was to be no competition between us--each one of us would put on a show, but under unfavorable weather conditions we wouldn't take any chances--the papers came out that afternoon saying that, in the competition between Sanderson and Doolittle, Doolittle won. I was very, very embarrassed, because both of us had agreed that it would not be a competition, and we thought we had made that clear to the officials and to the press, but I presume this made a little better story. |
I tried to do a new thing each time, and there were all sorts of variations. The first time I did the outside loop at Dayton, Ohio, I kept it very quiet. There was only one other chap and myself who knew about it. I went up and did it, and it felt all right. Then I got this chap to watch, and took off and did it again. He said yes, it was definitely an outside loop, and it looked good. I said, "All right, don't tell anybody. Next time I have to put on a show, I'll do this, and this will be a winner." |
That was the sort of thing that we always did. |
"The Reminiscences of James Harold Doolittle," in the Aviation Project collection of the Columbia University Oral History Research Office. Interview by Kenneth W. Leish, 1960 (28 leaves). Copyright 2000 by The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York. |
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