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Wednesday, February 12, 2003
With great speeds come greatest sacrifice
By KEN WILLIS
NEWS-JOURNAL SPORTS WRITER
DAYTONA BEACH — They´re known in history books as the Roaring Twenties. And nowhere was the roar as loud and unmistakable as on the sands of Daytona Beach.
In a fashion that has stood through time, the 1920s in Daytona Beach brought everything auto racing offers: Drama, bravery, controversy, rivalries, glory and, finally, disaster.
The previous decade ended gloriously with the classy Ralph DePalma thoroughly dominating the winter speed runs of 1919 -- establishing records at all distances in a Packard V-12. By the close of the coming decade, everyone became familiar with speed-seeking stars like Malcolm Campbell, Henry Segrave and Frank Lockhart. But the beginning of the 1920s brought the first recognition of a young racing star named Tommy Milton.
It also brought a little controversy. Milton had come to Daytona Beach with a group of mechanics and a car, the Duesenberg. After settling in, Milton made a scheduled trip to Havana, Cuba, for a race. While he was away, DePalma´s year-old record had been broken by Jimmy Murphy, who upped the mark to 152 mph.
Thirty-nine years later, while here for a Birthplace of Speed ceremony, Milton recounted the “untold story” to Bill Tuthill, who included it in his 1978 book, Speed on Sand.
It turned out that the Jimmy Murphy who set the new record was the same Jimmy Murphy whom Milton had brought to Daytona Beach as part of the mechanical crew. While Milton was away in Havana, undoubtedly enjoying the tropical atmosphere and perhaps looking forward to the spoils soon to come his way, his crew back in Daytona Beach not only finished putting together the Duesenberg but put Murphy in the cockpit and watched him set sail for a new land speed record.
“Can you imagine how I felt,” Milton told Tuthill, “learning that my car, built with my sweat and money, had been driven to a new world record by the fellow I had hired to get it ready for me?”
Upon returning to town, Milton fired Murphy, naturally, then began shaking down the car and rebuilding it. When he finally made his own run in late April, it might´ve been lingering anger as much as determination that kept his foot to the floor when the flames first appeared.
Milton was just halfway through the measured mile when a fire started. But he kept the gas planted for another 20 seconds or so, until he was through the speed trap, and only then did he start slowing and veering in the direction of the surf -- just in case the fire grew.
In the end, Milton had a new record of 156.046 mph, and quite a reputation to go along with it.
That record held, officially, until Segrave cracked the magical 200-mph barrier in 1927. But in reality, Milton´s mark lasted only two years. A young Norwegian by way of Minnesota, Sig Haugdahl, came to Daytona Beach in 1921 and spent a year building a torpedo-shaped car he called the Wisconsin Special. With a modified aircraft engine providing the power, Haugdahl became the first man to travel at a rate of three miles per minute -- 180.27 mph.
But Haugdahl wasn´t a member of the American Automobile Association. In fact, he raced under the banner of the International Motor Contest Association, so the AAA didn´t recognize the mark.
In those years prior to Segrave´s arrival in 1927, a new form of racing took shape on the beach. Borrowing from what they´d seen at rodeos, local hot-rodders would set up barrels on the hard sand and race around them in groups. Instead of straightaway dashes against the clock or against one other opponent, it was a turning of laps in a field of cars. Who could´ve guessed what that would later spawn on that beach?
But if those barrel races were nice sidelights with little more than a local flavor, the true worldwide attention arrived again with Major H.O.D. Segrave, a well-known Brit whose eclipse of the 200-mph mark was an event, by any standard.
Segrave´s entourage included four engineers, six mechanics and a group of English media. Huge wooden shipping crates carried his car -- the Mystery S, powered by twin Napier aero engines -- along with 500 gallons of gas, 200 gallons of oil and seven crates of spare tires.
With that unimagined number hanging in the air -- 200 miles per hour -- locals lined the dunes from Ponce Inlet to near the Silver Beach approach. The nine-mile stretch of beach was necessary for such speed runs, because cars needed four miles to attain maximum speed, a mile for the speed trap and another four miles to coast to a stop. All saw what they came to see: 203.79 mph.
“It didn´t come thundering and shooting lightning from its tail,” wrote Fred Booth, a former News-Journal editor who covered speed-run attempts. “It made a humming sound like a huge top.”
The next two years, 1928-29, are often described as the most exciting time in the history of the land speed record. They were also rather tragic.
Malcolm Campbell, usually described as a “millionaire English sportsman,” brought his Bluebird to town in 1928. He was one of three men with plans to rewrite speed history. Frank Lockhart, the handsome young star who´d won the Indy 500 just two years earlier, was another. The third was Ray Keech, another Indy-car veteran, hired by Philadelphian Jim White to drive his well-muscled (three aircraft engines mounted on a frame made from railroad rails) Triplex.
Campbell drew first blood, upping the mark to 206.96 mph in his famed Bluebird. Three days after Campbell´s run, on Feb. 22, Lockhart hit a soft spot in the sand and went airborne, but came to rest right-side-up in the surf. He somehow lived, thanks in part to some locals who rushed into the surf -- where he was still slumped in the cockpit -- and kept him from drowning in the incoming waves. Two months later, Keech posted a new mark in the Triplex -- 207.55 mph.
With his Stutz-Black Hawk rebuilt, Lockhart returned with thoughts of a 225-mph run. But he blew a rear tire just as he approached the speed trap, and the car began catapulting down the beach. The wild speed derby of 1928 ended with the death of a rising American racing star.
The final year of the decade was more of the same -- glory mixed with tragedy. Again, it was Segrave back to reclaim his King of Speed title. This time, he brought a sleek yet brutish piece of machinery called the Golden Arrow. Segrave upped the ante dramatically on March 11, posting a speed of 231.36 mph. With better beach conditions, he thought he could reach 240, and planned to wait around town until a combination of wind and high tides honed the beach surface into a perfect course.
But Segrave called off his plans March 12 when he watched the Triplex wreck and kill two people -- driver Lee Bible, a Daytonan whose previous driving experience had been limited to half-mile dirt tracks, and a newsreel photographer from Miami named Charles Traub, who couldn´t escape the car´s wayward path.
Segrave turned his attention to water and boats. His first shakedown runs with his boat, Miss England, were on the Halifax River in Daytona Beach. After returning to England, he set a new speed record in his boat and for a while was the fastest man on land or sea. For this, he was knighted by the King of England.
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