I dug out from under the mud and salvaged what I could. I made some money from an occasional personal appearance and the sale of my trucks and my AMX. I also managed to hang onto some personal property, which brought in some income. One way or another, I was able to keep going and to pay off almost all of my personal and business debts.
I took a pretty big step back in December, 1969. I had been invited to appear as a guest on a Los Angeles television show, and when I got there, I found that the other guest was a singer. Well, it turned out that the singer was Tonya Campbell, Donald's widow. It was a pleasant reunion, and I was happy to see that she, too, was on the way back up. She had been a singer before she and Donald were married, and I guess this was her way of overcoming the loneliness.
Tonya and I had dinner that night and talked at great length about our plans for the future. Then I asked her the thing that had been on my mind all evening: "Tonya, what ever happened to the Bluebird?"
She told me that it was in the Bristol museum, not too far from London, and that five American drivers--including Dan Gurney--had asked her about getting the car out and running it. She had said in each case, "Absolutely not." It's a magnificent $4 million machine, so I wasn't surprised at the great interest.
My next question was obvious. I said, "Would you consider letting me get the car out and running for the wheel-driven record?"
Tonya seemed very excited about doing it, and we made plans to go over and try to get the car out of the museum. I had to save and scrape for an airplane ticket, but I wasn't exactly unused to that, and I got one.
This was to be the perfect start on the long trail back, I thought. Tonya wanted me to drive the car because she said that she was sure Donald would have wanted it that way, especially since the Summers Brothers broke Donald's record with the Goldenrod. It now stands at 409 mph, and I was sure the Bluebird could beat that.
However, as usual, there were problems. When I arrived in England, I met with some opposition. The car and, as a matter of fact, the whole concept of land speed racing are so deeply embedded in the English tradition that the idea of an American driving the Bluebird didn't sit too well with some of the trustees of the Campbell estate. The project was also complicated because practically the entire British automobile industry is financially involved in the car. But we finally worked out all of the problems, with a lot of help from Tonya, who pointed out to the trustees that Donald had been so fond of me that she was sure he would have wanted me to have the car.
"If the record is to be broken, he would want it done in the Bluebird with Craig Breedlove at the wheel," she told them. Finally, everyone agreed, and we removed the car from the museum.
The next step, still in the future, is to bring the car to the United States and get it ready to run. A few modifications need to be made--some tuning and rebuilding--because the car has been sitting idle for a few years. Basically it is superb; it's beautiful and sleek and should go 475 mph without too much trouble. It will be called "Bluebird America," and near the cockpit, where the driver's name traditionally goes, there will simply be lettered "Campbell-Breedlove."
The project is definitely on the boards, and as soon as I get the necessary sponsors, I'll be out on the Flats with the car to break the record for Donald.
Breaking the sound barrier--at the altitude of the Salt Flats, 4,200 feet, the speed of sound happens to be 720 mph--is my ultimate goal, and it's something I've had ten years to think about--every single aspect of it. I go to bed almost every night thinking about it and wake up the next morning with the same thought in mind. While I'm eating lunch, I think about different parts and pieces of the car and how they could go together. I have the entire car, from the rivets to every piece of metal and every fin, complete in my mind. It will be the Spirit of America-Sonic II. I've got an auto-pilot worked out to help with the stability and a braking system designed that could slow down Superman.
Sonic II will be powered by a hot rod version of the lunar descent engine used by the Apollo astronauts and designed by TRW Inc., except that "my" version doesn't need some of the extreme refinements that made the space version so expensive. Mine will be a bi-propellant engine; in other words, one that uses two agents to supply the energy to the rocket. In this case, it will be nitrogen tetroxide for an oxidizer and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrozine for the basic fuel. The two fuels will ignite on contact and give me 35,000 pound maximum thrust--seven times the power of the first Spirit and more than twice the power of the second. The engine will be very small, so I will be able to build a car that is only 36 inches high and 24 inches wide.
The car will cost about $250,000 and will have all of the refinements that I feel will make it capable of going through the sound barrier. I've studied reports of various air force tests on rocket-powered sleds and missiles, including the ground effects well past 1,000 mph, and I am confident that Sonic II will break the sound barrier.
What special conditions will be in operation when man first breaks the sound barrier on land? First, there will be the effect of shock waves reflecting off the ground. I don't anticipate too much of a problem with the shock waves reacting on the top of the car, but, because of its closeness to the ground, the reaction on the bottom of the car may be a different story. Consequently, the bottom of the new Spirit must be designed to minimize the effect of any shock waves that do reflect. We can't stop the reflection, but we can minimize the angle at which the waves strike the ground, and we can reduce the resistance that the car will present to them as they bounce back up.
This is one place where the auto-pilot comes in, too, As the car goes trans-sonic, some parts will become supersonic before the total vehicle does. At this point, when the pressure distribution is shifting and the center of pressure is moving forward and creating a destabilizing effect, the auto-pilot will be compensating automatically on the wheel loading. The car will have a series of three small transistorized auto-pilots that will all vote into a computer, which, in turn, will supply the necessary information to the leveling and stabilizing system. The use of three auto-pilots gives the system a tremendous degree of redundancy: if one unit fails, there are still two voting. The run will continue. In the event that all should fail, the entire system would shut down and the chutes would be released automatically.
This brings us to the braking system itself. Parachutes have now been developed to the point where we know exactly how to measure the correct length of tow lines, how big the attachments should be, and exactly how the chutes themselves should be designed. Chutes now have been developed that will slow the car from the very top end of the speed curve, say from 800 to 500 mph. At 600 mph an intermediate braking system, featuring two very large speed-board flaps, will take over to slow the car to about 300 mph. We proved on the second car that power disc brakes can be designed to stop the car through the lower end of the curve. There will be back-ups on all three basic systems in the new car, because I don't intend to fly over banks again. It's too hard on my nerves, and, besides, Chuck Yeager was the first man to fly faster than sound; I want to be the first to drive faster.
Structurally, we have a tremendous amount of experience from the Sonic I car. We know what we're fighting aerodynamically. The only question at this point is the tire design. There are a lot of exciting new fabrics--such as boron filament that is supposed to be stronger than anything currently used--so I don't think the development of a supersonic car is impossible. It might even be possible to run a car on metal wheels without tires. This could be a development angle for the aluminum companies to work on.
But whatever is developed before I'm ready to go, I'm confident that the car will exceed the speed of sound, will be able to handle the reflection of shock waves, will compensate for any instability through the trans-sonic range by auto-pilot, and will have more than adequate power. I'm sure the design is right.
It is going to be a successful program, and I consider breaking the sound barrier on land the last great frontier for man to conquer. Man has gone to the moon, and we have watched him on television; someday soon Americans will watch the live filming--from the cockpit--of man's first supersonic ride in an automobile.
People ask me if I will quit when I break the sound barrier, and I answer with a positive "yes." And I will--so long as I'm not in the middle of a duel with somebody. If that is the case, I might stay around for a while and run again. But I will definitely quit if I'm the first man to go over 1,000 mph, unless...oh, well, let's wait and see what happens.
In the meantime, I'll fill you in a little on our progress to date. Last year, the American Spirit dragster that I built for American Motors was taken out of mothballs. The engine and all running gear were removed, and the chassis was dismantled.
A few simple calculations showed me that there was enough room to install a rocket system without having to enlarge the body or relocate the cockpit. We removed the canopy in order to improve the driver's visibility, so the car is now an open-seater. The tubular frame was beefed up aft to provide enough structural strength to take a rocket thrust of up to 10,000 pounds.
Converting the American Spirit into a rocket dragster required a few other modifications as well: The rear axle was changed to a straight beam type with limited suspension; a new aerodynamic steering fin was positioned on the bottom of the nose; and a new dual parachute system was installed for use on the short stopping areas of most dragstrips. I just finished redoing all of the aluminum body panels and painting the car a beautiful hand-rubbed red, white, and gold with DuPont acrylic.
We are still setting up the propulsion system, which is powered by a heat sink version of TRW's Apollo lunar descent engine.
We should have the American Spirit rocket dragster finished by March, 1971, and my plan is this: (1) Break the quarter-mile dragstrip record of Art Arfons; (2) Become the first person to exceed 300 mp in the quarter-mile; (3) Gain experience with the new rocket system.
I am planning an extensive demonstration tour covering key dragstrips throughout the nation. The main purpose for the tour will be to inform the public of my upcoming attempt to set a new world's land speed record--this time on the other side of the sound barrier.
As I was putting the finishing touches to this book, I learned that Gary Gabelich had broken my world's land speed record with a fantastic run of 622.407 mph in a car called the Blue Flame. It was great news, because I had been fortunate enough to spend quite a bit of time with Gary out on the Salt Flats helping him get ready for the run. The triumph of the Blue Flame--and it is a triumph--holds out all sorts of exciting new possibilities. Most intriguing of all is the chance to get back out on the Flats in an all new Spirit of America. Now, as I recall, that's where I came in.
