Jet Turbine Powered Water Speed Record 300 mph boat, Bluebird, being restored.

[SkyvanDelta]

Donald Campbell died in a 300mph speed run in a jet turbine powered boat in 1967 in England. The boat broke into pieces, sank and remained there until 2001 when it was located and raised.

Next is the restoration to running condition. Should be finished in Spring of 2010.

You tube video on the project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9r1zsFmVk

TheBluebirdProject.com website. More videos here under "Promo Videos".

http://bluebirdproject.com/

[First time Juke]

Re: Jet Turbine Powered Water Speed Record 300 mph boat, Bluebird, being restored.

Here is more dramatic footage of the accident;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8giRCp8ypA&feature=related

Are those generally hard to keep on water after certain speed ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c65F3Bvn2y8&feature=related

--------------------

These seem to fly ok;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYpHOg056BE

[Big_Jim]

Re: Jet Turbine Powered Water Speed Record 300 mph boat, Bluebird, being restored.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding this \'restoration\'. Many people (including the Campbell family) didn\'t want it restored, since a large percentage of the boat was destroyed in the accident, and lots of it corroded after being at the bottom of Conniston for 30+ years.

This is essentially a \'replica\' using a few parts of the original.

Juke, as long as the boat is properly balanced and is flying over the top of the water in that balanced condition, it\'s relatively stable. The problems come when the \'game plan\' isn\'t stuck to.

Campbell died for two reasons. First, they didn\'t refuel the boat for the return run, and the power settings were calculated for a specific weight each way. Second, a boat had gone across the lake minutes before the return run, and in the film you can see that he goes over the wakes and that is what pops the nose out of the water.

John Cobb died in Crusader the same way. As did Lee Taylor in U.S. Discovery II, and Craig Arfons in the Rain-X Challenger. Each one of them felt pressure to make \'another run\', against the advice of others, outside of the safety envelope that the craft was designed for.

[SkyvanDelta]

Re: Jet Turbine Powered Water Speed Record 300 mph boat, Bluebird, being restored.

Jim

I don't know a lot about speed, but I believe they run on a very fine line between living and dying each time you make a record type pass.

All it takes is a gust of wind, a change of water or air temperature, barometric pressure, a broken part...and off you go. And at the speeds they are traveling, death is a moment away.

When Craig Breedlove was runnning his Spirit of America car at Black Rock, his car flipped on it's side at 600mph? He is very lucky he survived that incident. And that was caused by a misinterpretation of an announced wind speed?

When trying to break speed records, I think it's a dangerous hobby. It may be safe, but it's still dangerous.

I'll sit at the computer and watch them. I'm too scared to do it myself. It would be a good rush though. I bet lots of adrenaline gets dumped into the bloodstream causing all kinds of physiological responses to sharpen the body for what it's about to participate in.

Some text on Donald Campbell and the Bluebird run from here

http://www.bluebird-electric.net/water_speed_records.htm

Bluebird K7 was over a decade old, and an American called Lee Taylor was threatening the record with a new boat, Hustler. The patriotic Campbell desperately wanted a Briton to be the first to break 480 km/h (300 mph). His first run across the lake was untroubled and fast. K7 averaged 475.2 km/h (297.6 mph). A new record seemed in sight. Campbell applied K7's water brake to slow the craft down from her peak speed of 315mph as she left the measured Kilo. The wake caused by the water brake was very large from traveling at such high speeds, so Campbell would normally refuel and wait, before starting the mandatory return leg, for the lake to settle again. This time, perhaps fearing that conditions would deteriorate if he waited, Campbell immediately turned around at the end of the lake and began his return run, to try and beat his own wash. Bluebird came back on her return even faster. At around 512 km/h (320 mph), just as she entered the measured Kilo, Bluebird met its wake from the first run. The boat began to lose stability, and finally, 100m before the end of the Kilo, its nose lifted at a 45 degree angle. The boat took off, somersaulted and then plunged nose-first into the lake, breaking up as she cart-wheeled across the surface. Campbell was killed instantly. Prolonged searches over the next two weeks located the wreck, but it was not until May 2001 that Campbell's body was finally located and recovered. Campbell was laid to rest in the churchyard at Coniston on the 12 September 2001.

About Lee Taylor:

Originally Taylor tested the boat on Walker Lake in Nevada but his backers demanded a more accessible location, so Taylor switched to Lake Tahoe. An attempt was set for November 13, 1980, but when conditions on the lake proved unfavourable, Taylor decided against trying for the record. Not wanting to disappoint the assembled spectators and media, he decided to do a test run instead. At 432 km/h (270 mph) Discovery II hit a swell and one of the floats collapsed, sending the boat plunging into the water. Taylor’s body and his destroyed craft were never recovered.

In 1989, Craig Arfons, nephew of famed record breaker Art Arfons, tried for the record in his all-carbon-fibre Rain X Challenger, but died when the hydroplane somersaulted at 483 km/h (301.875 mph).

Take a look at the American Challenge Boat. Looks like an F18 Hornet tail fins.

http://www.americanchallengewsr.com/index.htm

Ken Warbys Spirit of Australia

http://www.kenwarby.com/introduction.htm

At 55 seconds into this video that Juke posted http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c65F3...eature=related
the hydro does a back flip, lands upright and continues. How's that for a surviving a near death experience? Sort of like a Bob Hoover maneuver. Too bad he doens't pour liquid from a bottle into a cup on the dashboard like Bob Hoover did.

Here's a video of a high speed cat doing a back flip with a full twist. A gymnastics move. What will they think of next?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6uNwQe4lRU&feature=related

Here's some helicopter video of Cigarette Offshore Boats Jumping swells

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6VJJfSaOYw&feature=related

How about a 200mph tail end shot of a boat in a narrow channel of water

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBmJ2cuFTcE&feature=related

[HiredBitSlinger]

Re: Jet Turbine Powered Water Speed Record 300 mph boat, Bluebird, being restored.

John Cobb died in Crusader the same way. As did Lee Taylor in U.S. Discovery II, and Craig Arfons in the Rain-X Challenger. Each one of them felt pressure to make \'another run\', against the advice of others, outside of the safety envelope that the craft was designed for.

Sounds like there should be a book in those stories.

[SkyvanDelta]

Re: Jet Turbine Powered Water Speed Record 300 mph boat, Bluebird, being restored.

Here's an interesting video of a jet turbine boat being started in somebodys driveway doing a wet/fire start.

Go here

http://www.screamandfly.com/home/multimedia.htm

scroll down towards the bottom of the page to this section
"Reader and Sponsor Submitted Videos"
and click on this video

"Ken Warby ignites the jet engine in his new boat- by Mike Balz"

My question is, when you start a turbine motor like this, how long should you allow it to run for?

Is a short run like this hard on the motors as compared to allowing them to run for a few minutes or longer?

A turbine speed boat called Quicksilver

http://www.quicksilver-wsr.co.uk/

Some info on Craig Arfons and the Rain X Challenger turbine water speed record boat from here:

http://www.lesliefield.com/personalities/jon_craig_arfons_the_fastest_boat.htm

Craig Arfons, a former automotive drag racing champion, was the next to take up the challenge [of the world water speed record]. In 1989, he put the finishing touches on a jet hydroplane called Rain-X Record Challenger, which boasted a lightweight composite hull and a jet engine that could deliver 5,500 horsepower with the afterburner lit. Arfons calculated that the boat's favorable thrust-to-weight ratio would give it a 200 percent power advantage over Warby's record-setting boat.

The record attempt took place on Jackson Lake near Sebring, Florida [on July 9, 1989]. Members of Arfons' crew say his boat reached a speed of 263 mph before it became airborne and began to cartwheel across the mirror-smooth lake. Arfons tried to deploy a safety parachute, but the angle at which his boat was traveling prevented the parachute from opening. Arfons was killed as his boat shattered around him. He was 39.

Craig Arfons ... approach centered on notions gleaned from a career as a notable builder and driver of jet drag cars. Undressed, his glossy, 25-foot record challenger was a stretched Dever tunnel drag boat. The powerplant was the small General Electric J85-17 turbojet. The entire package weighed only 2,500 pounds with fuel and driver. Arfons calculated that this aggressive thrust-to-weight ratio would give him an advantage over [Ken] Warby.

The morning of the official attempt in the summer of 1989, at Jackson Lake, near Sebring, Fla., Arfons said: "I'm a little bit numb right now with the heebie-jeebies. But I'm anxious to get out there. We're going to give it a try." He seemed to know that he was climbing into bottled lightning. Arfons flew into his first pass with the jet's afterburner switched on full tilt. A ragged roostertail broadcast the first message of trouble. Then all hell happened. The featherweight boat rocked side to side in an escalating shuffle, climbed and barrel-rolled several times with sickening force. One hour and thirty-four minutes later Jon Craig Arfons was pronounced dead.

I liked Craig Arfons. I only met him the once - when I stopped over in Sarasota between the Canadian and US Grands Prix in 1988 - but what I saw was an uncomplicated man, a racer, determined on just one thing: setting a new water speed record.

He had a 'shop in Bradenton, Florida, just up the road from the Great American Boat Yards operation owned by David Loebenberg, the mentor who had come to understand his dream and then to share it. David's money helped Craig immensely towards his goal, but he would have got there anyway; he was that kind of man. The strain that had taken father Walt Arfons to the Bonneville Salt Flats with the two Wingfoot Expresses and Uncle Art to three land speed records (and back twice to the flats even after his 600 mph accident in 1966), ran deep in him, too.

"You know, this could inspire a new explosion in water speed records," he said as we talked about his shiny white boat. "In five years I think 350 mph will be the record that used to be..."

If that might have sounded like an idle boast, it certainly wasn't meant to. Craig spoke quietly, without braggadocio. A poster on the wall said 'Life begins at 200 mph' and he had already been over that speed many times in dragsters. In Detroit in June 1981 he broke his neck when his innovative sidewinder machine didn't stop quite the way he'd hoped at the end of a quarter mile pass of 325 mph. A fortnight later, the crushed vertebrae wired together, he was testing a replacement.

When I saw it, his boat didn't really have a name - "We'll probably call it Green Monster in the family tradition" - he'd smiled. In the end, the windscreen wash people, Rain-X, who already had a motorsport history backing Mario Andretti in CART, came aboard. By the time of the ill-fated record attempt, it was officially known as the Rain-X Challenger. Craig had been impressed with the way Diva dragboats got up on the plane, "and the way they get over 225 in the quarter mile. I figured that'd be the way to go." The Challenger was based on a similar kit, albeit lengthened to 25 ft for increased stability. That left it two feet short of Ken Warby's record-holding Spirit of Australia in a game where length is safety, "but our boat actually has a longer wheelbase" (the distance between the front and rear planing points, because Challenger had short sponsons) "and that should make us handle better." In practice it didn't work out that way. Video film of both boats suggests that where Spirit was totally stable in pitch, Challenger very definitely wasn't.

The Challenger was the first record boat to use really hi-tech materials, eschewing traditionals such as wood or honeycomb aluminium in favour of carbon fibre. It was moulded in two halves, top and bottom, and once they had been bonded together the shell was filled with special density buoyancy foam. I was worried at the time that it appeared to have few internal bulkheads. It weighed in at a dramatic 1450 lbs, giving an all-up weight of a remarkable 2500 lbs when equipped with the General Electric/Westinghouse J85/CJ610 turbine that normally powers Learjets. The Rolls-Royce Orpheus in Donald Campbell's Bluebird weighed an impressive 980 lbs for a thrust of 5,000 lbs and a craft weight around 5,500; Craig's powerplant weighed only 365 lbs and put out 3300 lbs of thrust without reheat. With an afterburner, he spoke confidently of more than 4000. It made for a very favourable power to weight ratio.

The other thing that worried me about the boat was its aerodynamics. The conventional three-point hydroplane has proved itself wholly capable of speeds up to 340 mph - witness the peak of Warby's original needle-nosed Spirit of Australia - and there is no reason to suspect that the lobster-claw shape of Challenger would have put it at any particular disadvantage in comparison. But the whole key to Spirit was that massive rear wing, which damped out pitch as effectively as a mongoose can tackle a snake. Craig opted instead for a couple of inwardly-inclined vertical tail fins and left it at that, saying they generated a lift of around 800 lbs of lift at the transom. Challenger never went anywhere near a wind tunnel in its whole short life.

"I truly believe that a wind tunnel isn't necessary," said Craig. "It will only show the shape needed to lift its own weight. Instead, Jay MacCracken, a computer expert friend, has developed a system of 18 tapping points at strategic locations on the hull - 12 on the deck and six underneath - and they all plug into a computer on shore. Our plan is to work up to 100 mph, then hook up to the shore computer to feed in the data we obtain. Then we'll do the same at 150, 175, 200 and 250, each time getting the information to the computer.

"The computer reads all the data at intervals of one hundredth of a second and measures drag, lift and airspeed, and will tell us everything we need to know from 100 to 250. If the thing is going to fly, one of the points is going to warn us." Tragically, they did not.

Craig designed and built the boat himself, following the pattern established by Warby, with whom he had become friendly when he supplied the Australian with turbines for his American dragcar show. It was when he met up with Loebenberg that things really began to move. "I had a real interest in jets in boats after the Arwin project, where Craig and I worked together putting a pair of T58s into an offshore catamaran and ran the 1987 Mississippi River Race. At that time the water speed record was like Chinese to me. Then Craig showed me a video of Warby and we talked it over. Image is important to my company, and we came to issue a challenge to the Sydney Yacht Club." Craig inspired those around him and, infused with the dream, Loebenberg put up the $250,000 needed to get the project off the ground. "It's hard not to believe in Craig when you get to know him," he said. "The guy is unique. We hit it off and found we had lots in common." In the very short time I knew him, I sensed the same things. He was one of the good guys.

They took Challenger to Lake Manatee in Florida for its initial flotation tests, but the State Ordnance bureaucrats refused him the right to run it over the 20 mph speed limit. They transferred to nearby Lake Maggiore in July 1988. "We headed up there early on July 1 at 6am and afterwards they said that if we had asked for permission to run, we wouldn't have got it. But they also said they wouldn't prosecute us!

"She felt a bit squirrelly below 100 - until the back end came up - but after she was over 110 she felt real good. She really scooted on! I got up to 160 in a quarter mile and held her there for another quarter, and she felt so comfortable at 160 I knew I could have gone on to 200."

Shortly afterwards he persuaded the Sebring council to let him use 3.5 mile Lake Jackson, and on August 27 began the push towards 250 mph. There were some insurance problems, and then they had to run in a quartering wind and a four-inch chop which became a foot in the measured distance. "The boat was fantastic. I was elated with the way it performed in that situation. It took a battering, sure, but there wasn't even a hairline crack in the structure.

"I gained more respect for the water because of it and, believe me, you feel every bump!

"I accelerated at nine feet per second, which means Jackson is just long enough to break the record, but only just. So we'll fit the afterburner and test again in late November."

They did, successfully, and the attempt was dialled in for July 1989. The people of Jackson had taken Craig to their hearts and ignored, as so many did, smear suggestions that there had been something not quite kosher about the manner in which he had acquired his engines. "I want to break that record, and I want to do it at Jackson," he said. "The city council has been very supportive."

He'd made a lot of progress in a short time, having only begun design work in September 1987, and his prospects looked good.

But then came the fateful run, when Challenger began porpoising heavily before corkscrewing wildly out of control before crashing violently.

How fast was he going? Opinions varied, just as there had been confusions over whether the speeds quoted previously had been mile and kilometre averages or simply peaks. "He was doing around 420," said Loebenberg initially, "and he averaged 370 through the kilo before he shut off the afterburner. He covered the kilo in four seconds. The parachute failed simultaneously, and the engine torqued the boat on to its right sponson. It bounced twice, veered to the right and became airborne, and then helicoptered to the right. The reduction in speed was too much for it. It couldn't maintain its stability." Later he told me the American Power Boat Association had ratified his 375 mph pass speed.

As it hit the water Challenger broke into two, the cockpit and the tail. "That was just as intended," said Lobenberg. "The cockpit stayed intact. But the seat belts tore away and threw him through the windshield. We have a photo of his head and an arm, and both legs, sticking through it." Arfons suffered serious internal injuries. Paramedics resuscitated his heart as they sped him to the shore, and put him on life support as they raced to the Highland Medical Centre. He had two broken legs, a broken pelvis and massive internal bleeding. He was listed dead on arrival.

"It was truly a tragedy," said David. "A lot of people have done this, and died, but they were all intelligent. That boat was the best ever built, the best bit of equipment ever to do the job. Craig was a very intelligent man, very patriotic. He had the highest degree of integrity of any human being I have ever known. He was a very good friend. His son Chad has lost his best friend, as well as his father." The two had always been very close. Craig was 39, Chad 17.

In the tests before the final run Arfons had attained a maximum speed of 275 and then, on a run at the time kept secret, 294.6 mph. The team had been accelerating it hard then, to monitor its behaviour. On July 8 he had 'matched' Warby's record with a peak of 320, although he still had a way to go officially to match Warby's 317 record, on which the Australian had peaked at 345. Comparing peaks and averages has always been a folly of record breaking.

I called the APBA on July 25, and then spoke to timer Gene Whipp's assistant Corky Black. "Craig made a couple of test runs Saturday," he said, "with the fastest run timed over the kilo at an average of 220 mph. Late in the evening the boat hopped and he popped the parachute. As far as I was aware he wasn't using the planned automatic deployment device, but popped it himself and the boat came back down okay. We estimated a 300 mph peak at that time.

"Gene has been around fast boats a long time and felt there was a flaw in the boat that made it hop. Something in the aerodynamics. It had never been in a tunnel." Warby had suggested strongly that Arfons should have it checked out in Lockheed's Marietta facility, but Craig had refused.

"Gene told Craig he thought there was a flaw, but Craig said he felt it was the water conditions. He was a great guy; we got to know him and the family well in the previous week, and he was aware of what he was doing. He knew what he was into. It was his decision and he was the only one in control of his own fate. The boat had never been at those speeds, though, and there was nobody could tell what it might do. It was a hundred per cent professional effort, but when you're dealing with the unknown you have no idea what might happen at those speeds.

"The boat never made it through the kilo that Sunday. Weather and water conditions were perfect, but the boat blew over before the end of the kilo. It hopped again like it did before, then went back down and tripped on the transom just enough for the left sponson to dip in. Then it broke up. We estimated its speed at that time as around 340 to 350 mph, but the 370 and 420 figures are just exaggeration."

Craig knew the dangers of the undertaking, and was always careful. "We want to work up to the record gradually," he promised. "We want to build up even more data before we go for it, so we know more about high-speed boat behaviour than anyone else. That knowledge is going to be pretty valuable." This wasn't just an egotistical endeavour; he and Loebenberg wanted to develop the commercial benefits of their unique data.

Craig Arfons was only 39 when Fate reached out for him, and the water speed record was to be but the beginning of the record trail. "In my head I have the design for a Sound Barrier car," he said that time in Sarasota. "Matter of fact, I'd have preferred to have done the car record first, but for that now you really need to go supersonic. The water record will give us credibility and is much less costly."

The Arfons family way had always been to make the product, set the record, and then look for the money. Craig figured a new water record would be the ideal way of soliciting the massive support a land attempt needed. The Arfons way had also always been to accept the risks and to push forward without letting fear get in the way. Craig was upholding that tradition to the full when the Rain-X Challenger flipped that day on Lake Jackson and snatched him from the life he loved so dearly

[Big_Jim]

Re: Jet Turbine Powered Water Speed Record 300 mph boat, Bluebird, being restored.

Sounds like there should be a book in those stories.

I belive there actually is. Author is named Donald Peterson, if I remember correctly. I think it is called \\\"Run to Glory\\\" or something like that.

Here it is:

http://www.hotrodhotline.com/feature/bookreviews/07runtogloryrp/

[Ron101502]

Re: Jet Turbine Powered Water Speed Record 300 mph boat, Bluebird, being restored.

I think Ken Warby's record is safe, he was interviewed on some TV show last year. The water record is the most dangerous and difficult to obtain and Ken had a wake problem too on his "return" run.

Ron