It was late in October when I established the record at 555 mph. The season had already lasted longer than usual. There was little chance that it would last much longer, but we still had the salt tied up for seven more days. I intended to use every day of it, and Art was madder than a hornet. He wanted to go.
Art had told the press that we were planning some completely unimportant runs just to keep him off the Flats, hoping that the first snows would close the season and keep him away for another year. He was right. I didn't want to go back out and run that flying machine again if I didn't have to; so I began devising ways to keep the salt. The salt is reserved about a year in advance and in your reserved periods the salt is yours, all yours. Nobody can run until you relinquish the salt, or until your time runs out.
Co-driver Bobby Tatroe helps Criag get ready for his crack at
the circular course at the
flats
So I had time to kill. I called Carroll Shelby and asked if he could let us borrow a Cobra Daytona, the super-fast coupe that had run so well in the Daytona Continental sports car race that year. I told him that I planned to set some endurance records on the salt. He was delighted to supply the car--so long as somebody paid him handsomely for it. The next call was to Bob Lane at Goodyear. I said, "Bob, if we expect to keep the salt, we're going to have to run something. Here's what I have in mind: I can run Shelby's Daytona coupe for 12- and 24-hour endurance records, but it will take about two days to get one ready and up here. In the meantime, what do you think of running Lee in the Spirit for the women's land speed record?"
Crew chief Nye Frank, second from right, oversees the running
of the Daytona coupe at the Salt
Flats
Bob said, "Run Lee in the Spirit? Are you kidding?"
I wasn't kidding. The idea hadn't popped into my head until I was talking to Bob, but I wasn't kidding. I hadn't asked Lee, but I knew her well enough to know that she would do it if I phrased it right. Besides, the record was only about 250 mph, and the Spirit almost idled faster than that. The car was silky smooth at 300, and that's all I would want her to go.
"That's right, Bob, we could not only tie up the salt, but we could come off as the fastest husband and wife in the world." The thing was already starting to appeal to me.
It must have appealed to Bob, too, because he said, "Okay, if Lee wants to do it, and you're sure it's safe. I guess you want me to pick up the bill for both runs."
I chuckled and said, "That's right, Bob."
He said, "Okay, you get Lee up there, and I'll have our racing division people talk with Shelby."
I called Lee at home and asked her if she could get a babysitter for a few days. "Why, do you want me to come up and be with you?" she asked.
I paused for a second. This would have to be worded exactly right. "Yes, honey, I would like to have you up here. There are a few things I have to do, and you can help me."
She said she would be glad to do anything I wanted. What was it?
"Well, I would like you to break the women's land speed record."
There was a stony silence at the other end of the line. "You've got to be kidding," she said.
Thirty minutes of fast talking later, she said, "Well, if you think I can do it, I'll try. I guess it would be nice to have some publicity of my own. Maybe it will keep you at home more."
Lee and my dad arrived next morning. The whole thing had been too much for him. He had wanted to come up before, but I had always talked him out of it because I didn't want anyone, not even Lee, who was that close to me around when I was driving. If anything happened to me, I didn't want them to see it. Now, with Lee running, there was no stopping him. He thought the whole family had gone nuts, and I guess he wanted to come up and watch them strap us all in straight jackets and lead us off to a rubber room.
I took Lee out to the Spirit and asked her to get in the cockpit. We went over the switches and procedures time and time again. That night at dinner I made her repeat everything to me until I was sure she knew it as well as the contents in her purse. "Tomorrow I'll let you run some 150 to 175 mph runs. The next day you can up it a little and go for the record when you feel comfortable," I told her.
She did amazingly well in her first run. She went 185 mph. I aged ten years. While she was in the mile, I was about to go out of my mind. After we saw the chute come out and the car begin to slow, Stan Goldstein came over to me and said, "Look, Champ, you're not going to make it. Calm down. You're about to worry us all to death. You know yourself that she's safe out there."
I said, "I guess you're right. Hey, Stan, do you worry this much when I'm out there?"
He looked at me and said, "Oh, no, you're not that pretty."
Well, when the car stopped, I felt like a proud parent. I bounced over to the car and gave Lee a great big kiss--right on the oxygen mask.
She ran four more times, and I knew she was ready. I told Joe Petrali that we would make the record run next morning.
We set the throttle stop at 60 percent power. Without the afterburner that should give Lee the speed she needed to break the record held by Betty Skelton, who had established it in one of Art Arfons's cars. So there we were again, battling one of the Arfonses. Lee broke the record as easy as pie.
We had a big party that night to celebrate the feat, but I couldn't stay up too late because the Daytona coupe had arrived, and I wanted to start breaking records early next morning on the circular course that had been set up on the Flats. One of the records I expected to break was the 12-hour endurance mark; so I needed a co-driver. The choice was easy. I chose Bobby Tatroe, the wild man from the rocket car. Bobby had been hanging around the Flats because he had nothing else to do after the Wingfoot Express had gone up in flames. He was wild about the idea of co-driving the Cobra.
We got out the next morning, and he wanted to take the first two hours. Jumping into the car, he went screaming off on the one-mile circle. Two hours later he slid into the makeshift pit area, and I took over. Neither of us had ever been in the car before, and we were out there running--at about 160 mph. It was a ball, especially in a spot in the eastern section of the course. The salt was soft and at that point it had broken through to mud. The car would go completely sideways everytime we hit it. We loved that section because it broke the monotony of the whole thing, and we started seeing how far back around the circle we could keep the car sideways after hitting the soft stuff. The crew finally figured we had been inhaling too much carbon monoxide and that it affected our minds.
When the 12-hour period had ended, we had broken 23 world records. We were exhausted because it wasn't easy to sleep during the rest periods, but we had really enjoyed the run.
Then the weather turned bad. It started to rain, and the next day we felt that we could safely leave the Flats. It looked as if the winter snows would soon be there.
Lee and I left the following day for New York, where we were to appear on the television program "To Tell The Truth." As we got off the plane, I was greeted by news that made my whole world collapse. Ben Pope, one of the Goodyear public relations men, was there to meet the flight.
"Craig, I've got some bad news for you," he said. "Art just went 576. The weather cleared for a moment, and he was right there. He rolled the car off the truck and broke the record."
I didn't say a word. I just kept walking.
"He blew another tire," Ben continued. "The car was badly damaged, but he's all right."
"I'm glad he's all right," I said. "Excuse me." I went into the men's room, where I slammed my fist into a metal partition.
The guy behind the partition screamed, "What's wrong? What's wrong?"
The little bit of comic relief brought me back to reality, and I felt better. I went outside and told Lee that we would do the show and return to the Flats tomorrow.
"Craig," she said, "you can't run the Spirit again. You know it's going to fly if you go any faster. You can't run it."
"I'll work it out, Lee. I won't take any unnecessary chances, but I have to run again," I said.
When we got to our hotel, a phone message was waiting for me from Bob Lane. I called him back, and he said, "Craig, you don't have to go back to the Flats. This whole thing is getting out of hand. You know Art had trouble this time, and you were close to it on your last run. We don't want to force you to go back out there and hurt yourself. As far as I'm concerned, you've fulfilled your obligation to us. You've done a tremendous job for us, and we don't expect you to go back."
I was grateful to Goodyear. But I said, "I know that, Bob, but I have to go back. I'm sure I can correct the problems, and if I get the record back, I can keep it because I hear Art's car is damaged so badly that he can't come back. I have to go, Bob."
"Well, Craig," he said, "we're behind you if you want to go back, but if you change your mind after you get there and want to step down, you do it with our blessings--and our respect, I might add."
"I really appreciate that, Bob," I said. "I know your concern is a genuine one, but I honestly feel that I can get the record back and do it safely." Part of that statement was true; the rest was pure wishful thinking: I did feel that I could get the record back, but I wasn't too sure about the safety angle. I felt that we could modify the front fins some more and maybe make the car stay down through two more runs, but all that didn't really matter. I was driven more than anything else by the fact that Art was out of the show. If I could just get the record, I would hold it--for a long time.
It was as if the other gunfighter had winged me but had run out of shells. The next shot was mine.
I was back on the Flats within 24 hours and was surprised to find that Art was still there with one of his drag cars. He was running standing quarter-mile records and just about every fool thing he could think of to keep the salt. It was his for four more days, and this time it was he who intended to keep it. The weather reports were getting worse and worse. It looked as if Art was going to beat me at my own game, for there was little hope that good weather would hold out. Snow was predicted for the next day, and that would probably end the season.
Still, I didn't take any chances. We took the Spirit to the air base and began working. If mother nature cast the dice in our direction, we would pick them up and go for broke.
Walt Sheehan and Nye and I looked at the car. I said, "I think if we raise the front end some, it will help."
I reasoned that the low front suspension was the same as retracting the wheels up into the body. The car was riding on a cushion of air. With the suspension lowered, the pressure of the tires against the ground was reduced, giving the whole car less steering control. I thought that we should raise the front end and add four more inches onto the trailing edge tab of the larger front fin, to make the air foil act as a negative force. The new features would change the pressure distribution over the entire foil.
After some discussion and eye-ball engineering, everyone agreed that it might work. We made the modifications, and I adjusted the fins to give a 15-degree angle of incidence, a fantastic down angle. I figured that if I angled them down as much as three-thousandths of an inch more, they would stall, we would lose all the negative lift and the car would fly. We really would be going on a hope and a prayer.
By the time the car was ready, Art and his crew had left the Flats. The snow had come, and it looked as if things were all over for the year. We took the car to the salt and waited, nevertheless. We needed only two runs, and the snow had not yet started to stick. The flakes were large and fluffy, like most first snows of winter. In an hour the sun might shine. It was November 12, 1965. As we sat at the Flats waiting, I thought, "I hope what we did to the car is right." It was not an aerodynamicist talking--just a human being concerned for his life.
