When Richard Noble took Thrust II to Reno airport for engine tests during one of its more troublesome periods at Black Rock, Nevada, I wonder if he knew that a couple of blocks up the road in Harrah's National Automobile nuseum, sat the great grandaddy of all jet cars - The Flying Caduceus. I know that expensive record attempts, necessarily have very little inclination towards sentimentality, but the schoolboy enthusiast in me would have been overjoyed to have seen these two cars from either end of the LSR timescale introduced to each other. A photo session on the desert at Gerlach would have given a fascinating and very graphic insight into just how far jet car design had come in twenty five years. Ah well!
Of course, thrust driven vehicles were not totally new when the good Doctor Nathan Ostich, along with Ray Brock and Ak Miller, fellow mid-wives at the birth of the LSR jet age, rolled out their new baby to an expectant world in 1960. Back in the thirties, a whole series of rocket powered vehicles from German scientist, Max Valier had given us a taste of things to come, while almost at the dawn of the jet age, Sir Malcolm Campbell lost no time in acquiring a Ghost engine and fitting it to his Bluebird K4 boat. Now here's a puzzle for you. How come Campbell was able to do this almost without protest in the boating world, while Ostich, Breedlove et al, were the subjects of a right old row with the FIA when they tried similar things on land. Sure, there were some mumblings from the boating fraternity, but nothing like those that eventually led to the formation of a new class for jet powered LSR contenders, Waybe it's something to do with the fact that K4 proved to be a real dog and therefore no threat to it's prop-driven brethren. But then again, The Flying Caduceus ultimately proved to be no threat to John Cobb's record either. Maybe boating people are naturally more adventurous and capable of accepting change.
Change, was certainly something sweeping through the Californian hot rodders in the late fifties, especially those with an eye on the ultimate goal of being the world's fastest. til then, most would have been content with Ostich and Miller's latest project, a Ford model J stuffed full of Chrysler Hemi and topped off with a GEIC 6-71 blower. Hmmm!! A typical hot rod solution to the problem of going fast, but ane which didn't satisfy a most untypical Nathan Ostich. although he'd been around the salt for years, the fact that he was over fifty and a practising Los Angeles physician, hardly made him the archetypal hot rodder. What he did have in common with others , was an eye for a bargain, When the largescale transfer of front line combat aircraft to jet power led to the government surplus stores being full of junked but servicable piston engines, Ostich and his buddies mades tracks for their favourite, the Allison V12. Add one of the equally abundant aircraft drop tanks and the basis of a Bonneville steamliner was yours for the asking.
Any thoughts along these lines were quickly changed when Ostich contacted old friend Jack Corvil of the Airmotive Equipment Company in Los Angeles. Urging him to "forget that tired old piston engined stuff" Colvil promised him that jet engines were also turning up in surplus stores "at a price a private citizen can afford". The idea was checked out with some of Ak Millers racing friends, the Hansen Brothers, one of whom, George Hansen, ran a company making missile nose cones. Through his contacts, the Doc and Ak were soon talking to Doug Ray of the Firestone Missile Division and such was his enthusiasm for this radical approach that the door was opened to a whole host of space age technologists who helped turn their backyard special into a professional project.
Choice of engine would be the key to the design of the whole project and initial plans for a brand new 3700 pound thrust J35 were soon ditched in favour of a rebuilt J47-GE-19 of 5200 pounds thrust, when the Firestone people calculated that this is what would be needed to get the job done - namely getting Cobb's record and then going on to 500 mph. The 19 was one of a whole family of J47 engines which were themselves a development of the J35. It was also already a record breaker, having been fitted to the North American F-86A single seat fighter which in standsrd form set a new airspeed record of 670.981mph (1,073,5kmh) at Muroc on September 15th 1948. The 19 version was fitted to Convair B-36D's, B36-F's and B36-J's and differed from the earlier 11, 13 and 15 versions only by virtue of being fitted with a high altitude ignition and starting system. When fitted with an afterburner it was known as the GE-17B while in 1955 it gathered the distinction of heing the first American jet engine to be license built in Europe, by FIAT, This must have been a particularly bitter pill for European aero engine companies to swallow, since the original Whittle jet engine programme had been virtually gifted to the USA shortly after the second World War by a short sighted British government desperate for currency.
Before committing himself to the purchase of two of these engines, Ostich went back to Fires tone, but this time via technical editor of Hot Rod magazine, Ray Brock, to the Tire and Rubber Company Division. After considering Brock's request for help with tyres, and working on the proposal for a number of months, Firestone came up trumps, promising to produce tyres with a safe operating limit of 600 mph. The tyres, 48 inches in diameter and 9 inches wide not only enabled engine purchase to go ahead but also helped to determine the overall shape of the car, Again, fortune lent a hand when the project was made a study by the engineering department of the California polytechnic using their own wind tunnel. First ideas around around a fully enclosed streamliner with enclosed wheels and a long tapering tail gave measurements of 5 feet high, 9 feet wide and 60 feet long! Some beast, but surely not practical to build or run. Quickly, thoughts moved back to the Bonneville drop tank shape and although specially fabricated to fit the engine, this altogether simpler approach came out well in the wind tunnel work. Interestingly, in the light of later experiences, the large rear mounted fin originally planned, proved to be yaw-inducing and the car was only ever stable in the tunnel without it, despite trying four different sizes. The overall concept was of no negative or positive lift, relying instead on the weight of the vehicle to stop it becoming airborne, and saw Firestone come up with calculated performance figures of 565mph using the tunnel data.
In true hot rod style, the circular birdcage chassis sections that would support the engine, and the longitudnal ties that would transform them into the completed unit were chalked out on the floor of Ostich' s garage before being welded together with the engine bolted directly to it. Ak Miller and partner Allan Bradshaw completed the construction, by fitting a needle nosed nacelle with a substantial roll cage in which the intrepid Doc would sit, to the front of the chassis, leaving curved air intakes either side of the cockpit. Suspension next but how? Solid axles running either through or under the car were out, so A-arm's with axle stubs seemed the obvious answer. Not so obvious was where to source them from, until a meeting with senior managers at Chevrolet's Engineering Center at Warren, Michigan, brought forth upper A-arms from the 5000 pound truck along with lowers from the 3/4 tonner, plus the torsion bars from the one tonner. Ettore Bugatti's quips about Bentleys being the world's fastest trucks must have been ringing in their ears, especially as the steering was also lifted from a Chevy truck, been modified, with aircraft style Heim joints to beef up the suspension and the addition of a rear tail fin with a movable rudder. Some of the instability problems had been attributed to the affect of cross winds on the cars nose section, so a tail fin and underfin with a combined area exactly equal to that of the nose section was fitted. The theory was that the wind would act equally on both sections, thus not upsetting the steering. The movable rudder fitted to the upper fin, and linked by cables to the steering, was also designed to help keep things pointing in the right direction. Calculations had indicated that at speed, any steering movement of more than one degree proved useless, since the tyres lost their grip and merely slid sideways over the salt. Thus a rudder was necessary. Interestingly, Craig Breedlove had come to the same conclusion but from a different direction. He had started with fixed wheels and a rudder under the nose, but had to make his front wheel steer through 1 degree in order to take control of The Spirit.
After waiting for the salt to drain and dry properly, Ostich finally took his car out to test the modifications. A speed of 253 against a planned target of 150 suggested things were going well, but yet again, when pushed beyond 300 things went wrong. After going through the timing traps at 323 and with plenty of track to spare, the Doc decided to stop without the chute; a bad mistake on a course still not completely dry at it's extremities, The harder he pushed the brakes, the less effective they seemed. They were actually working fine; it was simply the locked up tyres sliding over the wet salt that gave the impression that they were not. Eventually the car veered off to the right, spun sideways and hit a plywood course marker with the nose, which although damaged protected it's pilot. A tyre was also split.
Next day they were back again with a new tyre and repaired nose and although they put in good runs of 314, 350, 359, 354 aad 355 they were all made with full throttle, but with the engine only spinning to 90% of maximum revs. Since, the final 108 can account for 25 per cent of the total thrust, this wasn't going to take them anywhere near Breedlove's mark. In the absence of a jet engine specialist, Brock and Bradshaw, hauled out the engine maintenance manual and set about the fuel feed system, based on the fact that the car had started consuming less fuel that it ought to. The throttle stop on the control valve was reset and the fuel nozzles cleaned out, both without success. After changes to other control devices and the fuel pump, a civilian technician was flown out from Salt Lake City, but he couldn't help either. After a further three static tests, the car and it's crew headed home for the third time without the record. Minor engine damage was suspected and they promised to return next year with 100 per cent rpm and maximum thrust.
Ominously, they were followed on the salt by Stormy Mangham and Johny Allen with their single engined Chevrolet powered two wheeler "Big John", and in no time at all this "motorcycle" was knocking on the door of Osttch's best, with 310mph and a handful of throttle left. Walt Arfons and his Wingfoot Express were also due out soon, while the following year Breedlove and Arfons staged their epic battle, which in one month would take the record out of sight from all other contenders, Ostich never did return and so, as is often the case, the pioneers were left with nothing but the heartbreak of watching others reap the success and glory that should rightfully have been theirs.
If you want to see The Flying Caduceus for yourself, then the address is The William F Harrah National Automobile Museum, 10 Lake Street South, Reno, Nevada, 89501. For company, it has a whole host of competition machinery, including the Barbor Nichols steam record holder and the Battery Box, If you do go, make sure you book early and take in the Reno air races for something really spectacular. You could also check out Gerlach and the Black Rock Desert, while Lake Tahoe, scene of Lee Taylor's attempts with US Discovery II is also nearby. finally, if you can't see the real thing, Replicast are offering a 1:43 scale model of the car which is available right now, while in the USA somebody is hard at work writing a biography about Nathan Ostich and his pioneering efforts.
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