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N0KFQ > TODAY 07.11.14 18:02l 64 Lines 2969 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 39506_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Nov 7
Path: IW8PGT<IW7BFZ<I3XTY<I0OJJ<N6RME<N0KFQ
Sent: 141107/1600Z 39506@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.60
Nov 7, 1965:
Art Arfons sets land-speed record
On November 7, 1965, a drag racer from Ohio named Art Arfons sets
the land-speed record_an average 576.553 miles per hour_at Utah's
Bonneville Salt Flats. (Record speeds are the average of two
runs, one out and one back, across a measured mile.) Arfons drove
a jet-powered machine, known as the Green Monster, which he'd
built himself out of surplus parts. Between 1964 and 1965_a
period that one reporter called "The Bonneville Jet Wars" because
so many drivers were competing for the title_Arfons held the
land-speed record three different times. He lost it for good on
November 15, 1965, when a Californian named Craig Breedlove
coaxed his car, the Spirit of America, to an average speed of
600.601 miles per hour.
Art Arfons, born in Akron in 1926, had been racing cars since he
was 13 years old. In 1952, he and his half-brother Walt built the
first of many Green Monsters (not all were actually green), a
three-wheeled drag racer powered by an Oldsmobile engine that
their mother had painted with John Deere's iconic green tractor
paint. The next year, the Arfons brothers built a new Green
Monster, this one powered by an Army-surplus aircraft engine.
(That car was so powerful that it was banned from all officially
sanctioned drag races.)
By the early 1960s, some daredevil racers had begun to build cars
powered by Air-Force-surplus jet engines. They took these new
super-powered machines to the enormous Bonneville Salt Flats in
Utah_an ideal surface for extremely fast driving because it is
hard, flat and smooth_to try and break the land-speed record (394
miles per hour at the time, set by Briton John Cobb in 1947). In
September 1963, Craig Breedlove finally succeeded, beating Cobb's
record by 13 miles per hour in his three-wheeled needle-nosed
Spirit of America. The next October, a car designed by Walt
Arfons (now estranged from his half-brother Art) called the
Wingfoot Express beat Breedlove's record. Two days after that, a
jet-propelled Green Monster took the title for the first time.
For the next year, Art Arfons and Craig Breedlove passed the
record back and forth. On November 7, 1965, Arfons set the 576
mph record that would be his last. Just a week later, Breedlove
broke the record along with the 600-mph mark. In November 1966,
Arfons tried to make a comeback in a revamped Green Monster. His
first run across the flats reached 610 MPH, but on his return
trip one of the car's bearings froze, sending the car flying off
the course. Arfons was uninjured, but the Green Monster was
totaled and the record remained in Breedlove's hands for the next
four years.
In 1997, a team of British drivers broke the sound barrier_763
mph_at Nevada's Black Rock Desert.
Art Arfons died in December 2007. He was buried with wrenches in
his hands and a jar of salt from the Bonneville Flats.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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