Flying
Bayles began taking flying lessons from a former World War I instructor pilot. He eventually bought a surplus Curtiss JN-4 Jenny The Jenny was lost when he stopped over in Herrin, Illinois during a gang war between Charlie Birger and the Shelton Brothers Gang. Birger had been bombed from the air and he mistook Bayles' plane for the bomber and had the plane dynamited.
After a stint back in the mines, Bayles began barnstorming around the country. In 1928 he partnered with H. Roscoe Brinton starting a flying service in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Due to the Great Depression, orders for aircraft had stopped and the Granville Brothers Aircraft Company saw the air racing circuit as a way to stay in business. To raise seed money for the air racing operation, the "Springfield Air Racing Association" (SARA) was formed. A group of local Springfield merchants and businessmen who sought to promote Springfield bought shares to fund creation of the racing planes. Bayles added $500 of his own money to be the pilot in the venture.
Bayles flew the Gee Bee Model X in the Cirrus Derby in 1930, coming in second and sharing the $7000 purse with the Granvilles.
In 1931, Bayles piloted a Gee Bee Model E Sportster in the Ford National Reliability Air Tour, coming in fourth in the point standing and winning the Great Lakes Trophy for a total of $2000 in prize money.
At the 1931 National Air Races, Bayles and the Gee Bee Model Z, christened the "City of Springfield," cleaned up, first winning the $7500 Thompson Trophy prize with an average speed of 236.239 miles per hour (380 km/h), then the Shell Speed dash with an average of 267.342 miles per hour (430 km/h), breaking the speed record for the course, then won the Goodyear Trophy race with an average of 206 miles per hour (332 km/h).
Read more about this topic: Lowell Bayles
Famous quotes containing the word flying:
“It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Next week Reagan will probably announce that American scientists have discovered that the entire U.S. agricultural surplus can be compacted into a giant tomato one thousand miles across, which will be suspended above the Kremlin from a cluster of U.S. satellites flying in geosynchronous orbit. At the first sign of trouble the satellites will drop the tomato on the Kremlin, drowning the fractious Muscovites in ketchup.”
—Alexander Cockburn (b. 1941)