house years of the early 1930s were
the Granville Brothers. Driven by
the passion of Zantford Granville,
the enterprise of designing and
building racing aircraft soon
grew to involve all five Granville
siblings, hoping to establish an
enduring aircraft manufacturing
business. It was not to be.
The Gee Bee name became
established through a series of sport
and amateur racing aircraft like the
X-1, Type Y, and Type Z, but they
came to the peak of prominence
in 1932 when famous pilot Jimmy
Doolittle flew the radical Gee Bee
R1 racer to win the Thompson
Trophy at a speed of 252.7 mph. It
was to be the R1’s only victory.The R1 was radical in every
sense; powered by the then-
enormous Pratt and Whitney
Wasp 9-cylinder radial of 800
hp, the airframe built around
it was as small as possible
with a short, stubby fuselage,
relatively thin, 25-foot (7.62m)
span wings, and a spatted, fixed
undercarriage; normal race weight
was around 2415lb (1140 Kg).
The construction was typical for
racers, with a fuselage of welded
high-strength Cr-Mo steel tube
built up to shape with plywood
formers, spruce stringers, and
a mix of aluminium and fabric
covering. The wings had two steel
spars, plywood ribs and a smoothplywood (Haskelite) skinning,
which was allegedly finished
with fourteen coats of hand-
sanded dope for smoothness.
The R1 was a monster to fly,
with appalling pilot vision, a
cranky engine, and desperately
poor lateral stability. Both the
R1 and its longer-range sibling
the R2 (designed for the cross-
country Bendix race and powered
by a 575 hp Wasp Junior) crashed
spectacularly several times and the
parts were ultimately consolidated
into a single lengthened airframe.
The Gee Bee racers were
extraordinary machines, pushing
boundaries that people didn’t
even know existed at the time, anddriven by individual human effort
and vision. Despite their short
lifespan, they created a legacy
that’s impossible to eradicate.THE KIT
Ukranian company Dora Wings
have produced versions of both
the R1 and R2 Gee Bee racers; the
respective kits share many common
parts, with the cowlings showing
the most significant differences.
The R1 reviewed here comprises 55
well-moulded grey plastic parts, a
single-piece clear part for the fixed
canopy, and a photo-etched (PE)
sheet of 20 parts, with some cockpit
details and representations of theThe kit is presented on four sprues of 55 plastic parts and a small
photo etched fretThis is a small model, even in1/48 scale, being only around 10
cm longThere’s a reasonable representation of the Wasp engine,
although some extra detail would be useful given its visibilityWWW.SAMPUBLICATIONS.COM • AUGUST 2018 • 73
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