A MAN FOR THE RECORD

[Music] the temperature is red sa's going into the red Air's pretty rough bang it around hard do you have me inide repeat do you me inside this man is set on flying faster than anyone has ever flown a propeller airplane he tears through the sky at the breaking point for pilot and plane Reaching For The High Ground he has to topple a legend a record which no man has been able to break for 30 years his name is Daryl greenamyer [Music] Champion spark plugs presents in 1932 Jimmy dittle set a new world air speed record by pushing the stubby and highly unstable GB racer up to 294 mph he was one of the few Pilots that flew this plane and lived to [Music] tbot 3 years later this plane upset D Little's record by flashing through the speed traps at 352 mph it was a radically advanced airplane for its day almost as unique as the man who built and flew it Howard Hughes [Music] in 1939 the German air force prepared a special racing plane just for the world propeller speed record the Sleek Messer Schmidt racer flown by Fritz vendel set an unbelievable Mark of 469 [Music] mph for over 30 years the German speed record has been Invincible a challenge to men who fly and build propeller airplanes now in the jet age most have conceded the old record to be the final one but on the hot California desert a small group of men labor for one more charge at the Windmill darl green Amire and his crew pour sweat and muscle into rebuilding the engine burned out in last year's feudal attempt if you had to put a label on Daryl green Amire it would be pilot for a capital P he eats sleeps and dreams flying not just any kind of flying but the fastest highest lowest and most teeth rattling kind of flying imaginable at work he test flies airplanes such as the world's fastest jet aircraft the locked [Applause] SR71 doing over 2,000 mph almost too high to see the ground reom Meer carries out his engineering test pilot [Music] assignment green Amire is a quiet unassuming guy with strangers a man of few words with a far away look in his eyes like many pro Pilots he only really opens up with those who who know and share the strange fascination of flight in this small exclusive World Daryl stands out as a leader a doer in unspoken terms they rate him the best pilot around a guy with a natural gift for flying I've been flying now for about 15 years that's how I've made my living right from the start I've flowing all kinds of aircraft Jets transports private planes and ex-military Fighters like this Bear [Music] Camp it's hard to describe what it is about flying that gets in your blood you can have freedom power speed and a real sense of physical and mental accomplishment all in one package if you do it well of course it can get hairy too but uh I guess good things don't come easy darl green is 32 years old a bachelor he lives alone in a house cluttered with airplane Parts engines and various mechanical odds and ends he plays several musical instruments likes to ski drive fast Automobiles and has even taken a fling at drag racing he enjoys pizza and beer but doesn't smoke a fairly ordinary guy except when he climbs into an airplane this is his personal Proving Ground a Restless Place flying at over three times the speed of sound would be enough for most any man but green Amire isn't satisfied with flying the fastest jet he's decided he's going to fly the world's fastest propeller airplane as well as many have discovered this is easier said than done especially under the strict conditions necessary to certify the record neither industry nor military are interested in the propeller record today so Daryl and a handful of friends must do it alone they work long hard hours on the machine machine Daryl hopes to coax up to 500 mph a lot to ask of an airplane that was at its prime when green Amire was only 8 years old the Navy bear cat seemed to be all propeller and engine built strictly for quarter horse speed and dog fighting drum's f8f was one of the last propeller Fighters made for the US Navy succeeding the famous Wildcat and Hellcat Fighters its mission was interception of Japanese suicide [Music] aircraft after retiring from active duty a small number of Bearcats were auctioned off to persons looking for fast transportation or an unusual Conversation Piece one of these planes would eventually find its way to Daryl green for a new and highly unusual [Music] Mission as an Interceptor the Bearcat excelled but now only one thing is important Flatout speed this means stripping all non-essentials then taking the basic airplane and adding smoothing and refining every piece and part when air racing picked up again or there was some talk of air racing coming back I wanted to get an airplane and uh and go up and join the crowd and and see what this racing was like at the time the easiest airplane for me to get my hands on was a bearcat of course it was a stock Bearcat sitting in a field needing a lot of work well I I realized that it was going to take a little bit more than a stock airplane to compete with the the guys that were uh running in the unlimited class so I started into a program of modifying it to uh see if I couldn't clean it up aerodynamically and make it go faster many major changes had to be made to the nose and engine propeller Wing [Music] Roots [Music] wingspan wing [Music] tips cockpit and canopy and tail with these modifications the Bearcat was ready to race and so was greenaire every September the clear Desert Sky near Reno Nevada is filled with the Roar of powerful Racing Engines this is the site of the national championship Air Races the main event here is the unlimited class race to enter an airplane must have a propeller and a piston engine other than that the sky is the limit this has got to be the biggest most powerful form of motor racing [Applause] anywhere when the pace plane pulls up the race is on 125 mil around an 8m oval course the rules are simple stay outside the oval and go fast [Music] it gets a little hectic especially on the start because you've got old six or seven airplanes line of breast and you're coming all coming across the starting line and that first pylon everyone's looking at and they're looking out of the side of their eyes at everyone else and uh you're all going to converge on that first pylon and something's got to give [Music] with a desert going by at 450 mph 50 ft off the deck there's not much room for anything but see of the pants start flying you have to be just become part of the airplane so much so that that you can sense The Nearness of the ground below judge your speed by the Roar of the Wind wind in the engine and feel the tremendous buildup of force on the wings as you B into turn above all you have you have to have total confidence in yourself and the airplane drop the ball just once and and the ground will reach right up and bite [Music] you this was The Proving Ground for darl greenamyer and his Bearcat he met the challenge by winning the unlimited Championship race every year for the past 4 years although strong the bearcat's air race performance is still below the 480 mph speeds required for the world record so Daryl and his crew work without letup on the last few possible modifications for Speed finally with Darkness setting in and the record attempt only 18 hours away the last screw is tightened and the Bearcat pushed out for a test flight the line leading to the cockpit is very short the airplane is kind of marginal it it takes a lot of work to get it in the air it's um it's not a very nice handling airplane at low speed and uh it's not even nice handling at high speed and and I'm afraid that uh that I'm not going to be able to stay on top of it and someday I may end up you know having to jump out of it or playing it in on the Bearcat failure of the smallest part could result in sudden disaster right now the tiny sealed cockpit is the lonliest place in the world for Daryl [Music] green the takeoff appears normal but then something goes wrong a aircraft clear immediate land on any available Runway All other out with the engine throttled all the way back at a dangerously low altitude green am strains every inch of Glide from the stubby Wings in an effort to reach the [Music] runway [Music] it's a very bad feeling to be sitting up there you kind of have your your heart and your throat and and you expect the engine to seize at any [Music] time repairs are rushed through and a second flight made with daylight all but gone time runs out before a full test can be made but the brief flight has revealed something unusual the airplane is is so highly modified and of course I did the modifications and I'm not so sure there that the wings are on there straight for instance and so when you get going up to high speeds your airplane flies sideways and there doesn't seem to be anything to get thing to go straight down the road it it just does it's it just wants to go sideways at this point no one knows what will happen tomorrow when the Bearcat is push to its speed limit but one thing is certain green Amire has locked his sights on the speed record and he'll fly forward sideways or upside down to break [Music] it Edwards Air Force Base on the Mojave desert in California is one of the few locations in this country where a world speed record attempt can be made here they have the required measuring equipment and surveyed speed course at the southern end of the base out on rogers's dry lake has a long black strip with measured markers on it these markers are exactly 1 km apart green Amire will have to go down this strip over the markers two times in each Direction staying below 300 ft altitude the record is the average speed for four complete passes without Landing he will have to average 477 or better to take the record and the temperature will be around 110° the record is possibly just a few hours away how are you well fine I uh wish I had a little more sleep last night but uh the airplane's looking good I I'm a little disappointed with the wind blowing this hard this early cuz it may get up quite a bit heavier the airplane is given a final cleanup and prepared for flight not much more can be done at this stage a lot depends on the unpredictable Desert [Music] weather we uh we pick the hottest time of the year well the problem with this is you you start running around the desert at 100 ft off the ground um there's a lot of turbulence and the wind blows at 30 knots uh you know very easily practically every afternoon so it gets very turbulent and this really throws you around in the cockpit and so I took some sponges uh and rags and and taped them to my shoulders and I jammed up against the the airframe of the the inside of the cockpit so that it wouldn't jostle me around so much with the airplane ready and takeoff only minutes away calculations are reviewed for the last time in order to get the required speed Daryl will have to squeeze close to 3,000 horsepower from the rebuilt engine what some Pilots appropriately call destruction power in its modified State and with the use of special fuel additives the engine should be able to put out this tremendous power but only for very short [Music] bursts the year before that I tried to break this record I blew up an engine of course uh I think about all kinds of things like uh if the engine seizes it's probably going to yank itself out of the engine mount and of course this gives you a bad CG problem to where the airplane flutters down like a leaf and you know you think about all these things but uh and the biggest problem is the only incentive to push that and torture that airplane is that little tiny piece of paper that says the speed through the course was such insane there's no one alongside of you no one pushing you it's it's kind of like you you're competing with yourself more than [Music] anything one in one [Music] [Music] inbound on the fourth pass and the last pass the oil pressure started fluctuating I wasn't sure what the problem was so I just pulled the power off and glided through the course it's hot it's so hot I couldn't believe it I was burning my hand in fact I got a blister on my finger from holding on to the control stick and it's a lot hotter than it was last year maybe the stack mod that we did move the exhaust in closer and it's it's hotter than a pistol we made a stack modification to the exhaust pipes uh to try and get the flame laying along the fuselage whether than sticking out across the wing and what it amounted to is it uh it burned all the paint off the side of the airplane and um the cockpit got real hot there was an exhaust leak coming out of one of the stacks and and the ex exhaust was coming down the top of the fuse Lodge into the cockpit and right in on my hand and of course my hand was burning I couldn't hold on to the stick and I was changing hands back and forth and and it was so hot that I thought uh I must have burnt a hole in the side of the fuse Lodge the same pattern of last year's fa failure seems to be repeating minor engine trouble and not quite enough speed on the first try as Daryl heads for the barrier a second and last time there's a desperate confidence in the air if he fails the cost and effort for a third attempt next year would make it impossible those involved understand why the German record has stood so [Music] long [Music] a on the lake bed the strong wind is like the breath of a furnace protected from the baking heat the Precision Timing cameras stand ready to record green Amy's last try West Arrow one [Music] sight 510 mph way over 3,000 horsepower too much power and the engine could rip itself right off the airplane 459 mph now the wind's against him but that's not all power is dropping and oil temperatures going into the red the hot engine may start to detonate at any minute he's got to keep the speed up to come out with a 477 or better [Applause] [Music] [Applause] average green Amy's fighting to keep the left wing up as the Bearcat tries to bank and go sideways the wings May flutter and tear off at this tremendous [Music] overlooker 8 mph cylinder and oil temperature both in the red now the exhaust Stacks are running quite hard turning the cockpit into another gream is flying between the Hammers and a hard place one man sealed into four tons of screaming metal this is where the test pilot comes out clear head and Steady Hand reflex and instant one more pass just one more [Music] time [Music] engine starting to smoke and the belly's covered with oil this is it throttle All the Way Forward markers Dead [Music] Ahead he's got it 454 average speed 483 miles an [Music] hour right now Daryl greenamyer could probably fly the Bearcat straight to the Moon with no [Music] sweat those who knew better said it was practically impossible one man a few friends and a war Surplus airplane had no chance of breaking a record of this stature darl greenamyer thought otherwise and a few minutes ago he proved his point the hard [Music] way like green Amire Victory is the only reward these men were after they've helped to do something they measure as great and that's what's important as the fastest propeller airplane in the world the Bearcat will probably go to a museum as for Daryl Greeno His Eye Is on the horizon for the next [Music] challenge [Music]