The Races (Cont'd)

"I left another five miles in her for Russ," said Pilot Jimmy Doolittle last year at the National Air Races just after making a world's landplane record of 294 m.p.h. "Her" referred to the plane, a fat little bumblebee known as Gee Bee 11. "Russ" was famed Pilot Russell Boardman.

But when the 1933 National Air Races were run off at Los Angeles last week "Russ" Boardman and his Gee Bee 11 were not there to make that extra 5 m.p.h. Instead, his plane was a pile of wreckage in Indianapolis and his dead body was being flown back to his Hartford home. Without him, the fastest time flown at Los Angeles was 280 m.p.h.--first time in National Air Race history that one year's speed record was not bettered the next.

However uninspiring, the 280 m.p.h. mark earned an additional $1,135 for Roscoe Turner, the able, gaudy flyer who collected $5,050 last fortnight by winning the transcontinental Bendix Trophy Race. Last week his Wedell-Williams racer flashed off a 249 m.p.h. lap downwind.

In the big wind-up of the meet for the famed 100-mi. Thompson Trophy, Designer Z. D. Granville spunkily entered one of his stock model Gee Bee's, but every observer knew the winner was simply a choice of one of the three Wedell-Williams's.

From a flying start in front of the grandstand Roscoe Turner and Jimmy Wedell vanished neck-&-neck into the haze. At the end of the first 10-mi. lap Turner roared around the home pylon in the lead. But when they popped out of the mist again, null was in front. Then Turner took the lead, held it to the end of the race.

In the grandstand big-framed Roscoe Turner, a clashing figure despite his coat of grime, received from Mary Pickford the Thompson Trophy--a gold plaque of Icarus, Greek myth boy, stretching winged arms aloft toward a modern racing plane. Also he mentally counted a third fat purse --$3,375. Admirers back-thumped him as the first man ever to clean up the three main events of the meet.

Long after the applause died down, a muttering arose from the judges' stand. Pilot Turner, the other contestants, judges, timers, umpires were called into huddle. Had Turner cut inside a distant pylon? He readily admitted that he had, to avoid smacking into Wedell. But on his next lap he had circled that pylon twice (as witnesses saw) and still won by more than a mile. Nevertheless, said the judges, pylons are pylons and rules are rules. Prize money, trophy, title were taken from Turner, handed to Wedell.

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