Laird Super Solution
The Laird Super Solution was a single-seat racing biplane built by the E. M. Laird Airplane Company for the Cleveland Speed Foundation in the summer of 1931. Developed from Matty Laird's Thompson Trophy-winning Solution and powered by highly modified Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior radials of over 500 hp, it was built in about six weeks as Jimmy Doolittle's mount for the first Bendix Trophy race. Doolittle won the Bendix, flew on to Newark to set a transcontinental record, then led the Thompson Trophy before a failing engine forced him out. Rebuilt with retractable gear for 1932, it was damaged in a belly landing and passed into storage; its remains went to the Smithsonian in 1948. No original flies today: a static replica stands at the EAA Museum in Oshkosh and a flying reproduction at Fantasy of Flight in Florida.
Why It Mattered
In mid-1931 the Cleveland Speed Foundation commissioned Matty Laird to build a challenger to the Travel Air Mystery Ship, then the racer to beat on American courses. The Bendix Trophy, sponsored by Vincent Bendix and his corporation, was a new cross-country race meant to encourage transcontinental air travel. Flying the Super Solution, Jimmy Doolittle won the first Bendix race, averaging 223 mph between Burbank and Cleveland. Rather than stop there, he flew on to Newark and set a transcontinental record, beating the 1930 record by 1 hour and 8 minutes. The Smithsonian lists the 1931 Bendix among the famous air races Doolittle won, alongside the 1925 Schneider Cup and the 1932 Thompson Trophy.
Design Notes
Laird based the Super Solution heavily on his earlier Solution, the biplane that had won the 1930 Thompson Trophy, and on his other earlier designs. The result was a single-seat biplane of just 21 feet in span, with clean aerodynamic construction, a tight engine cowling and an extremely faired windshield. It carried the company designations LC-DW300 and LC-DW500 and the nickname "Sky Buzzard". Laird supplied two engines, both highly modified Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior nine-cylinder radials: a direct-drive engine for the long Bendix race, where steady power at altitude was the key, and a 3:2 geared engine for flat-out pylon racing. The stock Wasp Junior was rated at 375 hp; with high-compression pistons and doped fuel, the modified engines produced well over 500 hp. First flight tests showed the racer needed more rudder area for stability, and propeller adjustments so that it could take off in under a mile.
Operational History
Construction started on 8 July 1931, and the aircraft was complete and test-flown in Chicago by 22 August 1931. At the Cleveland National Air Races, Doolittle won the Bendix Trophy with an elapsed time of 9 hours, 10 minutes, 21 seconds, at an average speed of 223 mph. After only minutes on the ground in Cleveland, he flew on to Newark, New Jersey, completing the 11-hour, 16-minute transcontinental flight at a 217 mph average. Less than 30 minutes after landing, he was airborne again, returning to Cleveland to have the engine changed for the Thompson Trophy race, a 100-mile pylon race for aircraft with engines of unlimited displacement. With the geared engine installed, the Super Solution time-trialled at 260 mph on partial throttle but proved almost uncontrollable, as the geared engine's torque and vibration warped the wings and reversed the ailerons above 250 mph. The direct-drive engine was reinstalled, Doolittle time-trialled at 272 mph, and he led the Thompson field until the engine that had already flown the Bendix race began to fail. He landed after the seventh lap, having averaged 228 mph, and a teardown revealed a scuffed piston. In October 1931, after an overhaul at the Pratt & Whitney plant, Doolittle flew from Ottawa via Washington, D.C., to Mexico City in 12 hours, 36 minutes, a record that stood for many years. For 1932, with Shell Oil as sponsor, the aircraft was extensively modified, with a raised seat, sliding canopy, controllable-pitch propeller and retractable landing gear among the changes, and the rebuilt machine was plagued by severe rudder and elevator flutter. On an August 1932 test flight the new gear would not extend, and Doolittle bellied the aircraft in. He switched to the Gee Bee R-1, and won the 1932 Thompson Trophy in it.
Afterlife
The damaged racer went into Shell Oil storage, where it spent years largely ignored and was picked over for parts. The fuselage reached the Smithsonian in 1948, donated by the Swallow Aircraft Company of Wichita, Kansas, possibly after passing through several owners. The remains stayed in Smithsonian storage until 1974, when two enthusiast groups, helped by EAA headquarters, obtained them from the National Air and Space Museum. Restoring the incomplete, badly damaged airframe proved impossible, so the groups built a full-size replica instead. Completed at the EAA Museum, the replica was unveiled at Oshkosh in 1981, with Doolittle and Laird reunited for the occasion. A second reproduction, built by Jim Moss of Washington state, is the only flying example of its kind; it is displayed at Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Florida. Kermit Weeks recalls that Moss flew it down from Seattle to the 2004 Sun 'n Fun fly-in at Lakeland, and left it at Fantasy of Flight after the two men "cut a deal".