Donald Campbell
Donald Malcolm Campbell, was a British speed record breaker who broke eight absolute world speed records on water and on land in the 1950s and 1960s. He remains the only person to set both world land and water speed records in the same year. He died during a water speed record attempt at Coniston Water in the Lake District, England.
Family and personal life
Donald Malcolm Campbell was born at Canbury House, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, the son of Malcolm, later Sir Malcolm Campbell, holder of 13 world speed records in the 1920s and 1930s in the Bluebird cars and boats, and his second wife, Dorothy Evelyn.Campbell attended St Peter's School, Seaford in East Sussex, and Uppingham School in Rutland. At the outbreak of the Second World War he volunteered for the Royal Air Force, but was unable to serve because of a case of childhood rheumatic fever. He joined Briggs Motor Bodies Ltd in West Thurrock, where he became a maintenance engineer. Subsequently, he was a shareholder in a small engineering company called Kine Engineering, producing machine tools. Following his father's death on 31 December 1948 and aided by Malcolm's chief engineer, Leo Villa, the younger Campbell strove to set speed records first on water and then land.
He married three times – to Daphne Harvey in 1945, producing daughter Georgina Campbell, born on 19 September 1949; to Dorothy McKegg in 1952; and to Tonia Bern in December 1958, which union lasted until his death in 1967. Campbell was intensely superstitious, hating the colour green, the number thirteen and believing nothing good ever happened on a Friday. He also had some interest in the paranormal, which he nurtured as a member of the Ghost Club.
Water speed records
Campbell began his speed record attempts in the summer of 1949, using his father's old boat, Blue Bird K4, which he renamed Bluebird K4. His initial attempts that summer were unsuccessful, although he did come close to raising his father's existing record. The team returned to Coniston Water, Lancashire in 1950 for further trials. While there, they heard that an American, Stanley Sayres, had raised the record from, beyond K4's capabilities without substantial modification.In late 1950 and 1951, Bluebird K4 was modified to make it a "prop-rider" as opposed to her original immersed propeller configuration. This greatly reduced hydrodynamic drag: The third planing point would now be the propeller hub, meaning one of the two propeller blades was always out of the water at high speed. She now sported two cockpits, the second one being for Leo Villa.
Bluebird K4 now had a chance of exceeding Sayres' record and also enjoyed success as a circuit racer, winning the Oltranza Cup in Italy in the spring of that year. Returning to Coniston in September, they finally got Bluebird up to 170 mph after further trials, only to suffer a structural failure at which wrecked the boat. Sayres raised the record the following year to in Slo-Mo-Shun IV.
Along with Campbell, Britain had another potential contender for water speed record honours – John Cobb. He had commissioned the world's first purpose-built turbojet Hydroplane, Crusader, with a target speed of over, and began trials on Loch Ness in autumn 1952. Cobb was killed later that year, when Crusader broke up, during an attempt on the record. Campbell was devastated at Cobb's loss, but he resolved to build a new Bluebird boat to bring the water speed record back to Britain.
In early 1953, Campbell began development of his own advanced all-metal jet-powered Bluebird K7 hydroplane to challenge the record, by now held by the American prop rider hydroplane Slo-Mo-Shun IV. Designed by Ken and Lew Norris, the K7 was a steel-framed, aluminium-bodied, three-point hydroplane with a Metropolitan-Vickers Beryl axial-flow turbojet engine, producing 3,500-pound-force of thrust.
Like Slo-Mo-Shun, but unlike Cobb's tricycle Crusader, the three planing points were arranged with two forward, on outrigged sponsons and one aft, in a "pickle-fork" layout, prompting Bluebirds early comparison to a blue lobster. K7 was of very advanced design and construction, and its load bearing steel space frame ultra rigid and stressed to 25 g. It had a design speed of and remained the only successful jet-boat in the world until the late 1960s.
The designation "K7" was derived from its Lloyd's unlimited rating registration. It was carried on a prominent white roundel on each sponson, underneath an infinity symbol. Bluebird K7 was the seventh boat registered at Lloyds in the "Unlimited" series.
Campbell set seven world water speed records in K7 between July 1955 and December 1964. The first of these marks was set at Ullswater on 23 July 1955, where he achieved a speed of but only after many months of trials and a major redesign of Bluebirds forward sponson attachments points. Campbell achieved a steady series of subsequent speed-record increases with the boat during the rest of the decade, beginning with a mark of in 1955 on Lake Mead in Nevada. Subsequently, four new marks were registered on Coniston Water, where Campbell and Bluebird became an annual fixture in the latter half of the 1950s, enjoying significant sponsorship from the Mobil oil company and then subsequently BP.
Campbell also made an attempt in the summer of 1957 at Canandaigua, New York, which failed due to lack of suitable calm water conditions. Bluebird K7 became a well known and popular attraction, and as well as her annual Coniston appearances, K7 was displayed extensively in the UK, United States, Canada and Europe, and then subsequently in Australia during Campbell's prolonged attempt on the land speed record in 1963–1964.
To extract more speed, and endow the boat with greater high-speed stability, in both pitch and yaw, K7 was subtly modified in the second half of the 1950s to incorporate more effective streamlining with a blown Perspex cockpit canopy and fluting to the lower part of the main hull. In 1958, a small wedge shaped tail fin, housing an arrester parachute, modified sponson fairings, that gave a significant reduction in forward aerodynamic lift, and a fixed hydrodynamic stabilising fin, attached to the transom to aid directional stability, and exert a marginal down-force on the nose were incorporated into the design to increase the safe operating envelope of the hydroplane. Thus she reached in 1956, where an unprecedented peak speed of was achieved on one run, in 1957, in 1958 and in 1959.
Campbell was named as a Commander of the British Empire in January 1957 for his water speed record breaking, and in particular his record at Lake Mead in the United States which earned him and Britain very positive acclaim.
On 23 November 1964, Campbell achieved the Australian water speed record of on Lake Bonney Riverland in South Australia, although he was unable to break the world record on that attempt.
Land speed record attempt
It was after the Lake Mead water speed record success in 1955 that the seeds of Campbell's ambition to hold the land speed record as well were planted. The following year, the serious planning was under way – to build a car to break the land speed record, which then stood at set by John Cobb in 1947. The Norris brothers designed Bluebird-Proteus CN7 with in mind.The British motor industry, in the guise of Dunlop, BP, Smiths Industries, Lucas Automotive, Rubery Owen as well as many others, became heavily involved in the project to build the most advanced car the world had yet seen. CN7 was powered by a specially modified Bristol-Siddeley Proteus free-turbine engine of driving all four wheels. Bluebird CN7 was designed to achieve 475–500 mph and was completed by the spring of 1960.
Following low-speed tests conducted at the Goodwood motor racing circuit in Sussex, in July, the CN7 was taken to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, United States, scene of his father's last land speed record triumph, some 25 years earlier in September 1935. The trials initially went well, and various adjustments were made to the car. On the sixth run in CN7, Campbell lost control at over 360 mph and crashed. It was the car's tremendous structural integrity that saved his life. He was hospitalised with a fractured skull and a burst eardrum, as well as minor cuts and bruises, but CN7 was a write-off. Almost immediately, Campbell announced he was determined to have another go. Sir Alfred Owen, whose Rubery Owen industrial group had built CN7, offered to rebuild it for him. That single decision was to have a profound influence on the rest of Campbell's life. His original plan had been to break the land speed record at over 400 mph in 1960, return to Bonneville the following year to really bump up the speed to something near to 500 mph, get his seventh water speed record with K7 and then retire.
Campbell decided not to go back to Utah for the new trials. He felt the Bonneville course was too short at and the salt surface was in poor condition. BP offered to find another venue and eventually after a long search, Lake Eyre, in South Australia, was chosen. It hadn't rained there for nine years and the vast dry bed of the salt lake offered a course of up to. By the summer of 1962, Bluebird CN7 was rebuilt, some nine months later than Campbell had hoped. It was essentially the same car, but with the addition of a large stabilising tail fin and a reinforced fibreglass cockpit cover. At the end of 1962, CN7 was shipped out to Australia ready for the new attempt. Low-speed runs had just started when the rains came. The course was compromised and further rain meant, that by May 1963, Lake Eyre was flooded to a depth of 3 inches, causing the attempt to be abandoned. Campbell was heavily criticised in the press for alleged time wasting and mismanagement of the project, despite the fact that he could hardly be held responsible for the unprecedented weather.
To make matters worse for Campbell, American Craig Breedlove drove his pure thrust jet car "Spirit of America" to a speed of at Bonneville in July 1963. Although the "car" did not conform to FIA regulations, that stipulated it had to be wheel-driven and have a minimum of four wheels, in the eyes of the world, Breedlove was now the fastest man on Earth.
Campbell returned to Australia in March 1964, but the Lake Eyre course failed to fulfil the early promise it had shown in 1962 and there were further spells of rain. BP pulled out as his main sponsor after a dispute, but he was able to secure backing from Australian oil company Ampol.
The track never properly dried out and Campbell was forced to make the best of the conditions. Finally, in July 1964, he was able to post some speeds that approached the record. On the 17th of that month, he took advantage of a break in the weather and made two courageous runs along the shortened and still damp track, posting a new land speed record of. The surreal moment was captured in a number of well-known images by photographers, including Australia's Jeff Carter.
Campbell was bitterly disappointed with the record as the vehicle had been designed for much higher speeds. CN7 covered the final third of the measured mile at an average of, peaking as it left the measured distance at over. He resented the fact that it had all been so difficult. "We've made it – we got the bastard at last", was his reaction to the success. Campbell's 403.1 mph represented the official land speed record.
In 1969, after Campbell's fatal accident, his widow, Tonia Bern-Campbell negotiated a deal with Lynn Garrison, president of Craig Breedlove and Associates, that would see Craig Breedlove run Bluebird on Bonneville's Salt Flats. This concept was cancelled when the parallel Spirit of America supersonic car project failed to find support.