ISTAT Jetrader - Autumn 2019 - 38

The Gee Bee Racers
by Jack Feir
ISTAT Appraiser Fellow and ISTAT Member Emeritus

The Model R-1 with a taller rudder and extended vertical fin; flyable but still dangerous.

Beginnings
The story of the Granville Brothers and
their Gee Bee Racers has its beginnings
in 1900 with the marriage of Wilfred
Granville, a farmer in Madison, New
Hampshire, and his bride Belle Savory
from Boston. They became the parents
of two daughters and five boys.
The first boy, Zantford, was
nicknamed Granny because he was the
eldest of the five. He was a self-made
mechanic who could fix anything. By
the time he was 19, he had owned an
automobile dealership and repair shop
in Arlington, Massachusetts. Tom,
second in line, took over Granny's
business in 1924, and Granny took a
job at the Boston Airport as a mechanic
working on airplanes, spending some
of his earnings on flying lessons. He
earned his pilot's license in 1925.
Granny soon opened his own
aircraft repair shop on space near the
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The two occupants in the Model A were seated sideby-side in a wide cockpit where they could easily carry
on conversation while receiving flying instructions, honing
their skills or just enjoying the flight together.
airport, and by 1928, Tom and the other
three brothers - Rob, Mark and Ed -
had joined the business.
Airplanes manufactured in
the 1920s needed a good deal of
maintenance and repairs. It was enough
to keep the five Granville brothers busy,
but at the same time they could see
that it should be possible to design
and build better, new and improved
aircraft. So, by May 1929, they had
built one. It was a two-seat biplane
called the Model A. Unlike most other

small aircraft, the two occupants in the
Model A were seated side-by-side in a
wide cockpit where they could easily
carry on conversation while receiving
flying instructions, honing their skills or
just enjoying the flight together.
After a few successful test
flights, the Granville brothers moved
their operation to a hangar at the
newly opened airport in Springfield,
Massachusetts. They hired three
engineers to help make improvements
to the design and got the Type
Certificate from the U.S. Department of

Photos courtesy of San Diego Air & Space Museum (SDASM) and Wikimedia Commons

AVIATION HISTORY

ISTAT Jetrader - Autumn 2019

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