samlow2010
Spirit of America
The World Land Speed Record
The date is October 15, 1964. Craig Breedlove pilots Spirit of America I through the flying mile at Bonneville's land speed record course. As he exists the speed traps at over 550 miles an hour, flame extends twelve feet beyond the car's jet exhaust. A white plume of salt rises from her wheels. In the cockpit, Breedlove presses a button to ignite a powder charge in a parachute canister at the car's tail. He feels a slight tug as his braking chute opens. Then nothing. The chute has failed. Streaking past a marker indicating three miles of track remaining, the speedometer indicates 460 miles an hour. Craig deploys his emergency chute. Nothing. At the end of the track, he tries his disc brakes. His foot goes to the floor. Shaped to slip easily through the air, Spirit of America continues off course with great velocity, glances off a telephone pole, climbs an earthen dike that constrains a pool of water, and flies. The vehicle skips across the pool in a series of ever tightening arcs and comes to rest, nose down, with her cockpit in six feet of water. Breedlove emerges unscathed and with a new world record of 526.277 miles an hour. A few months earlier, Glenn Leasher had perished in the wreckage of his jet powered car. In 1963, Athol Graham died when his City of Salt Lake crashed on the same course.
Time warp forward thirty-one years to October 21st, 1996. Breedlove, now 59 years old, still looks the youthful "Captain America" who captured the land speed record five times and set a record of 600.61 MPH in 1965. He is a PR man's dream - handsome, articulate impassioned. Craig first traveled to the Salt Flats on the window ledge of a '46 Ford hot rod driven by a neighborhood teenager. He was then fifteen. From that moment he has focused his life on the land speed record - often at the expense of family and personal fortune. Now, after a thirty year enforced leave of absence when public interest shifted away from speed, Craig has created a new Spirit of America to break the record which, in the interim, has been set by Englishman Richard Noble at 633 miles an hour.
Spirit of America
The World Land Speed Record
The date is October 15, 1964. Craig Breedlove pilots Spirit of America I through the flying mile at Bonneville's land speed record course. As he exists the speed traps at over 550 miles an hour, flame extends twelve feet beyond the car's jet exhaust. A white plume of salt rises from her wheels. In the cockpit, Breedlove presses a button to ignite a powder charge in a parachute canister at the car's tail. He feels a slight tug as his braking chute opens. Then nothing. The chute has failed. Streaking past a marker indicating three miles of track remaining, the speedometer indicates 460 miles an hour. Craig deploys his emergency chute. Nothing. At the end of the track, he tries his disc brakes. His foot goes to the floor. Shaped to slip easily through the air, Spirit of America continues off course with great velocity, glances off a telephone pole, climbs an earthen dike that constrains a pool of water, and flies. The vehicle skips across the pool in a series of ever tightening arcs and comes to rest, nose down, with her cockpit in six feet of water. Breedlove emerges unscathed and with a new world record of 526.277 miles an hour. A few months earlier, Glenn Leasher had perished in the wreckage of his jet powered car. In 1963, Athol Graham died when his City of Salt Lake crashed on the same course.
Time warp forward thirty-one years to October 21st, 1996. Breedlove, now 59 years old, still looks the youthful "Captain America" who captured the land speed record five times and set a record of 600.61 MPH in 1965. He is a PR man's dream - handsome, articulate impassioned. Craig first traveled to the Salt Flats on the window ledge of a '46 Ford hot rod driven by a neighborhood teenager. He was then fifteen. From that moment he has focused his life on the land speed record - often at the expense of family and personal fortune. Now, after a thirty year enforced leave of absence when public interest shifted away from speed, Craig has created a new Spirit of America to break the record which, in the interim, has been set by Englishman Richard Noble at 633 miles an hour.