VGMagazine

   One month later Malcolm Campbell and George Eyston made the trip to Utah. They immediately grasped the potentials of the dry lake. They also appreciated that this would be solitary work. There would be none of the 50 to 100 thousand enthusiastic spectators lining the bluffs above Daytona Beach. None of the cultural diversions and comforts of Florida would be available at day's end. What was done would be witnessed for history by the few involved, and the vast emptiness.
    By September Campbell was on the flats with the latest iteration of Bluebird with one objective in mind, taking the LSR beyond 300 miles an hour. A twelve mile stretch of surface salt was groomed for the run. A guide stripe of oil ran the entire length of the salt course. On his maiden test run Campbell took his Schneider cup powered car to a relaxed 240mph. It was now time to get serious
    In the post dawn hours of 3 September Campbell rolled the Bluebird onto the salt. It was to be a most eventful run. With the roar of the Roll's engine echoing against the Wasatch mountains, Campbell ran it up past 200. Entering the measured mile, it is said he closed the radiator inlet and all hell broke loose. An oil film covered the windshield as the cockpit filled with fume. Very quickly the thin air and rich mixture of engine fumes diverted Campbell's concentration, the guide line was momentarily lost from sight. Campbell's jolt back to consciousness and instantaneous steering correction threw the car into a heart-stopping swerve. Campbell finessed the Bluebird back in line, only to have the left front tire burst with a fully opened throttle. Campbell, now wrestling the car with a bound wrist, brought the car to a stop at the crew area.
    With fire extinguishers at the ready, the engulfed tire was put out, and the crew set to work within the hour allowed for replenishment before the return run. While Campbell regrouped his faculties, the news from the triple A's timekeepers came through; he had passed through the measured mile at 304.311 miles an hour.
After running through the measured mile on the return run, the railroad embankment seemed to be coming up rather fast. Campbell stood on the brakes, throwing the Bluebird sideways at speed. As the salted dust engulfed the stopped car, Campbell could see from the reading on the broken tach, he had topped 300 on the return run. The triple A seemed to have gotten a different reading. The official time through the traps was 12.18 seconds through the mile. He had missed his personal goal by 13 hundredths of a second.

   Schneider Trophy race was won for Britain by J.N. Boothman, flying his Supermarine S6B, which was powered by a 1900hp Rolls Royce R engine. Two years later the final chapter was written on this era of aviation speed. Francesco Agello took the remarkable Macchi MC.72, with it twin Fiat AS.6 engines, developing 2800hp, to an Absolute World Speed record of 440.6 miles an hour.
    The Schneider competition had singularly caused the rapid increase in aviation engineering. New engine designs had evolved with a velocity represented by the speeds attained over their maritime racing courses. With the Trophy passing permanently to the British Aero Club, all of this new engineering was now available to raise the Speed Record on Land from 200 to 400 miles an hour.
    For a 1929 LSR attempt Segrave and J.S. Irving, late of Sunbeam, contracted with Napier for S. Webster's 1927 Schnieder winning Lion engine for their Golden Arrow. Now getting 925hp out of the Napier lion, Segrave brought the record to seemingly effortless 231mph on the sands of Daytona. Campbell responded with a 1450 hp Napier Lion engined Bluebird in 1931, upping the LSR to 246. In 1933 Campbell got a hold of J.N. Boothman's Rolls Royce R engine from the '31 Supermarine S6B. The boys at Rolls hadn't been idle, the engine output had been raised from 1900 to 2300hp. With the record now set by Campbell at 276, the Land Speed Record was outgrowing Daytona's patches of soft sand and sea mist.
    What was needed was a vast stretch of land, with a hard surface that extends beyond the horizon. Such a place was found in a desolate, sun baked, salt crusted dry lakebed 4,200 feet above sea level, and 5,000 geological years distance from the rest of the civilized world. What was once a lake was now a radiant endless salt flat named Bonneville. The surface of salt looks like 1940s sculpted carpeting of a most brilliant white, which extends beyond the imagination and the curvature of the earth. The sun's ultra violet rays pass from sky to salt and back to sky without slowing. Providing a nice even sunburn from above and below. The chromatic reversal of the setting reads like a film negative of the real world.
It would only be appropriate that such a vast and isolated place would gain recognition through the unassuming efforts of the Quiet Man of the LSR, John Rhodes Cobb. After having set a number of long distance records with his Napier Railton on the concrete of Brooklands, this perennially affable man took his silver racer to the salt flats outside of Wendover Utah in July of 1935.