Donald Campbell’s Fight To Emulate His Father

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27856, 3 January 1956, Page 12

Donald Campbell’s Fight To Emulate His Father

WA TER-SPEED RECORD

[By JOHN BRAGG for the United Kingdom Information Service)

A month or two after Sir Malcolm Campbell’s death at the end of 1948, two men sat in his study and sipped whisky. Suddenly, one of them—a speed driver “Goldie” Gardner—asked: “Have you heard what Henry Kaiser has just said? That he is going to take the water speed record back to the States.”

A casual remark . . . but it started one of the biggest success stories since the war.

When Gardner had left, a mental image came to Donald Campbell of the way his father’s nose twitched when he was annoyed. .Possibly Donald’s nose twitched then, too. Anyway, he vowed there and then to keep the record set up by his father in Great Britain.

Campbell had “Bluebird,” Sir Malcolm’s old jet boat. But he had never driven a racing speed craft or shared his father’s urge to break records. The Royal Air Force had turned him down with a suspect heart after rheumatic fever. He had fractured his skull in two places after a motor-cycle accident.

But we all know how well he has ( kept his vow . . . how he set up a new record of 202.32 miles an hour at Ullswater in the Lake District last July and increased it to 216.25 in Nevada recently. The son of the man who was every boy’s hero before the war is now a hero in his own right. “The Urge” “Father was much in my thoughts,” said Donald Campbell. “I hated the idea of his record being beaten. There was still a lot of talk about Britain being washed up and written off as a first-class Power. Somehow it all seemed to irk me.”

This is the urge that has kept him trying for six heart-breaking years of frustration and disappointment when nothing seemed to go right. .Few P e °P le had any faith in the Shoestring Adventure.” He spent every penny he had on the project. He still needed £lO,OOO. He sought financial help from prominent men—and got nothing. Then a friend helped out with £2500. Some firms offered help. One undertook to build a new frame for his boat free of charge. Even then, after delays and disappointing results, he had to

mortgage his house to keep the project alive.

The first setback came with his first run at Coniston, in the Lake District, where his father had made his record of 141.74 miles an hour. Leo Villa who had been Sir Malcolm Campbell’s chief mechanic, and was Donald’s chief engineer, advised him to wait a little.

Buoyantly confident, Donald rejected the suggestion. “It’s a piece of cake,” he retorted. He came back, shaken, after narrowly missing a floating log which would have put paid to his hopes right then, and said: “Leo! This job’s dangerous.”

It was August. 1948. Campbell was no longer confident, but he was' just as determined. More so. in fact, when the American Stanley Sayers pushed up the new record to 160.23 miles an hour the following June. He knew “Bluebird” was likely to turn turtle at that speed. He ignored the risk and carried on. He tried again the next year and took “Bluebird” up to 170 miles an hotir. At the end of the run there was a shattering crash and the boat sank. That “Bluebird” was finished. But not Campbell. “The Barrier” In July. 1952, Sayers increased his own speed to 178.497 miles an hour. Grimly, Campbell said to Villa: “Leo, we’re going to have a new boat. We’re going right out after that record.” He sacrificed everything for it. He sold out his partnership in a firm. He sought out two “unknown” consulting engineers, Kenneth and Lewis Norris, and started to plan a turbo-jet hydroplane capable of more than 200 miles an hour. It would take him into the “water barrier”—the point where excessive vibration is set up. He knew the risks, but went on planning, designing, experimenting. working. Somehow, Campbell kept going and found the £25,000 necessary for construction. Finally came July 23 this year.

The timekeepers were ready. He went out for a test run . . . and down went his foot on the accelerator. “The general strain was telling on me,” he says, “and I wanted to get the whole thing over and done with.”

Now? Obviously we haven’t heard the last of him and “Bluebird.” “We may be able to raise our sights to the 300 miles an hour mark,” he says.