Page 32 - Volume 10 Number 11

Rawdon and Burnham designed and built the first
Type R, registered R614K, on their own time and after normal working hours. Development and construction spanned more than a year, but Walter Beech was thrilled with the results of their time and labor. At last, here was an airplane that Beech believed would beat any ship the United States Army Air Corps and Navy could put in the air. (EDWARD H. PHILLIPS COLLECTION)
settling into an arrhythmic, staccato idle that gently shook the entire airplane.
Clarence gave the signal to pull the chocks. He pushed the throttle forward and the Type R moved under its own power for the first time. Clark taxied to the sod runway nearby and performed a thorough pre-takeoff check. A crowd of factory workers had assembled along with Rawdon, Burnham and Walter Beech. The engine’s vital signs looked good, and Clarence slowly added power. The 420-horsepower radial roared in response as the little red racer accelerated like a bullet down the runway. Clarence eased the stick forward to raise the tail, and when indicated airspeed reached about 70 mph he eased back on the stick and the monoplane was airborne. The crowd cheered as the airplane slowly climbed for altitude and disappeared to the east. Clark spent the next 20 minutes probing the ship’s flight characteristics before flying back to the factory and landing.
He told Rawdon the ship had attained a maximum indicated airspeed of about 185 without the cowling, and that the airplane handled well and only a few adjustments were required. During the next two weeks the airplane made at least 14 additional flights as Rawdon and Burnham hurried to prepare the Travel Air for the NAR. Finally, the cowling was completed and installed. Much to Rawdon’s delight, Clark reported that maximum indicated airspeed had increased to nearly 225 mph. As expected, the cowling provided a significant increase in performance by reducing drag.
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Although Clark had been the first to fly the Type R, he would not fly the speedster at the NAR. Instead, Walter Beech tapped Doug Davis, his long-time friend and Travel Air dealer in Atlanta, Georgia, who had extensive experience competing in closed-course air races. At Cleveland, Ohio, site of the 1929 NAR, Walter Beech had made arrangements to “hide” the Type R in a hangar away from the main airfield until after the races had begun. Walter ordered that no one was allowed in the hangar except the small group of company mechanics assigned to prepare the racer for the upcoming competition. News of the “Mystery Ship” quickly spread and during the next few days Beech skillfully worked the press, feeding them tantalizing tidbits of information without revealing details about the airplane.
The NAR, held August 24 through September 2, was well attended throughout the week with thousands of spectators jamming grandstands to witness the more than 40 races scheduled during the show. At that time the NAR was the equivalent of today’s Super Bowl extravaganza, and people from all walks of life thronged to Cleveland’s Municipal Airport to watch the best of America’s pilots and their flying machines battle around the pylons for greenbacks and glory. Walter Beech could have entered the Type R in a number of preliminary events, but he chose to keep the airplane out of sight. The ship did make one brief appearance when Doug Davis took it aloft and performed a mild but impressive aerobatic routine. A news reporter who observed the exhibition noted that, “The machine had such an enormous reserve of power that it seemed to travel in any attitude or direction, including upside down and vertically upward flight, quite normally and under full control.”
Except for that one flight, Beech was preserving Rawdon’s low-wing warrior for the one race it had been
NOVEMBER 2016