Not far from the beach at Pendine in Carmarthenshire is a
small museum called the Pendine Museum of Speed, a modest and infrequently open
establishment which pays tribute to Pendine’s history as a venue for land speed
records attempts. The main feature, albeit one that is often absent from the
museum’s otherwise very modest collection, is one of the cars that featured in
a couple of those attempts, a white-painted monster of a vehicle that dates
back to the 1920s when the boundaries of speed were being pushed by specially-built
racing-cars that were fitted with aeroplane engines. The car is called Babs, and back in 1926 she became the
fastest car in the world, and she did that on Pendine Sands.
By the 1920s, the land speed record had got to the point
where it was no longer feasible to use roads or race-tracks due to the
straight-line distances that were required, for as well as the one-kilometre
length along which the cars were timed the cars also needed space to accelerate
and brake before and after said flying kilometre (it was a kilometre rather
than a mile because the record’s first regulators were French). Long and
straight stretches of sand beach were being sought out, and the one at Pendine
is six miles if you don’t count the bit at the eastern end that curves round
towards Laugharne; with the tide out and in fair weather, it was and for that
matter still is an ideal venue to drive a car in a straight line as fast as it can
go. Twice within the hour, for from the beginning the land speed record had to
be an average of two runs, one in either direction in order to negate any benefits
that gradient or the wind might give.
The first land speed record attempt at Pendine Sands was made
by Malcolm Campbell in September 1924. Campbell, who’d got into motor racing
prior to the First World War, set the record in a modified Sunbeam racing-car
that he’d called Blue Bird due to his
habit of racing in cars painted blue (as opposed to British racing green).
Powered by an 18.3-litre aircraft engine, it had been raced at Brooklands and
indeed used to set a land speed record at that circuit before Campbell acquired,
repainted and renamed it. Before arriving at Pendine, Campbell and Blue Bird had already made two attempts
at the land speed record elsewhere, although they were deemed invalid due to
the use of unapproved timing equipment. At Pendine, though, his team were using
the proper equipment and Blue Bird
set a new land speed record of 146mph. The following summer, they were back and
the record was raised to 150mph.
Campbell had been keen to break his own record because
he’d heard that someone else was preparing for a land speed record attempt in a
more powerful car. John Parry-Thomas was a Welsh engineer who, in addition to
having made a name for himself racing at Brooklands in the early 1920s, had
been involved with the development of the car that came to be known as Blue Bird. This had motivated him to try
for the land speed record for himself, which led to the purchase of a large racing-car
called Chitty IV from the estate of Louis
Zborowski, an aristocratic racing driver who’d been killed at the 1924 Italian
Grand Prix (he had designed and built four powerful racing-cars called ‘Chitty’
or ‘Chitty Bang Bang’, which years later would provide Ian Fleming with the
name of his fictional vintage car). Built for racing at Brooklands, Chitty IV was powered by a 27-litre Liberty
aircraft engine and was in fact the largest capacity car to race at that famous
old circuit. Parry-Thomas, who actually lived in a house located within the
Brooklands circuit, not only substantially modified the car for his land speed
record attempt; he also gave it a new name – Babs.
In April 1926, Parry-Thomas and Babs went to Pendine. They didn’t just break Campbell’s record –
they smashed it, raising the bar to 170mph. Conditions hadn’t been ideal,
though, and Parry-Thomas reckoned that with some modifications Babs could do much better.
Campbell’s reaction to this was that he clearly needed a
bigger car. A new, more powerful Blue
Bird was built, powered by a 22.3-litre Napier aircraft engine (hence this
one’s full name, the Napier-Campbell Blue
Bird). Although the engine had a smaller capacity than that of Babs, it was the more powerful and as a
result this Blue Bird was reckoned to
be capable of breaking the 200mph barrier. In February 1927 Pendine Sands would
once again be the location for a record attempt. In the event, though, Campbell
was only able to raise Parry-Thomas’s record to 174mph; the new Blue Bird had achieved a top speed of
195mph but it was the two-way average speed over the one-kilometre course that
counted.
Parry-Thomas, meanwhile, had not been idle, having spent
the winter of 1926-27 rebuilding Babs’s
bodywork. His work complete, Babs was
ready for another record attempt and a month after Campbell’s new record had
been set, Parry-Thomas was back at Pendine. On 3rd March 1927, he
set out to win back the land speed record but he would end up going down in motorsport
history for a very different reason.
Quite what happened once Parry-Thomas had got Babs up to a speed of around 170mph has
been a matter of debate; some reckon that the drive-chain snapped, although it’s
more likely that there was a failure regarding one of the back wheels. What we
can say for certain is that the car went out of control at high speed and rolled
over, killing her driver who became the first person to die while attempting to
break the land speed record.
That was the last time Pendine was used for a land speed
record attempt; later that month, Henry Seagrave topped the 200mph barrier at
Daytona Beach in Florida, and it was to this location that Campbell would take
the Napier-Campbell Blue Bird for his
next (successful) land speed record attempt the following year.
As for Parry-Thomas, his body was buried in a churchyard
not far from Brooklands; Babs, however, was buried underneath the dunes at Pendine
Sands, and she would remain there for over four decades.
No comments:
Post a Comment