Crash of Gee Bee Z Super Sportster airplane at the Wayne County airport in Detroit, Michigan, on Dec. 5th 1931, during attempt to break the world landplane speed record. Ground crew and one of the Granville brothers, who built the airplane, roll the Gee Bee out of a hangar. The aircraft displays tail number NR 77Y and has large numeral 4 painted on fuselage. City of Springfield is painted on front of the airplane. Pilot, Lowell Bayles, climbs into the cockpit and starts the engine. Crew chief places canopy over the pilot's cockpit. The aircraft takes off with modest rate of climb and makes slow banking turn to the left. Camera next shows the Gee Bee descending rapidly as Bayles dives the race plane at high speed into the officially timed sea level course. Camera captures view of wing breaking off and aircraft rolling and crashing in flames. Witnesses rush to the crash site and emergency equipment responds. Views of smoldering wreckage. (According to some sources, the accident began when the gas cap loosened in the slipstream and blew through the pilots canopy hitting pilot Bayles in the face, either stunning or killing him.) His reaction on the controls pitches the plane up sharply causing a catastrophic structural failure of the right wing. The plane then snap rolled into the ground and explodes into a blaze alongside railroad tracks bordering the airport. Bayles' body was thrown 300 ft. as the huge radial engine broke loose and was hurled hundreds more feet. (Recent experiments with a reproduction of the aircraft also indicate that wing flutter would develop at speeds above 240 mph on the Gee Bee Z Super Sportster.) Part of the building shown at 1:52 still exists today in the far northeast corner of the airport near all the rental car companies. The railroad tracks still exist as well. The plane appears to start to break apart over what is now the intersection of Middlebelt & Wick Roads (1/4 mile south of I-94) in Romulus, MI.
Pursuit Airplanes of United States Army Air Corps. Curtiss P-6-E single seater Pursuit Airplane with Curtiss 'V-1570-C' engine of 600 horse power taxis at Wright Field.
Pursuit Airplanes of United States Army Air Corps. P-1 Pursuit Airplane with wing type radiator for cooling with Ethelyne Glycol engine. It taxis at Wright Field and takes off. It lands and taxis.
Pursuit Airplanes of United States Army Air Corps. Pilot Al Williams flies a plane. The engine of the plane is started. It takes off. Silhouette of the plane in flight.
A United States Marine Corps film about option of vocations at U.S. Marine Corps. The film is titled 'Learn the Leatherneck Way'. Teachers and students in a marine training class. Students get personalized instructions by the teacher. A radio instructor trains a representative group. Students get training of automobile and aviation. They are trained about engines of airplanes. A training of construction work and communication. Telegraphy and training on a radar. Students work with cameras for still and motion picture training. Men get counseling for choosing the courses in classification interviewing room. Marines stand in a line and get payment. A marine looks at his uniform. Men play football. A marine in uniform and in civil dress.
United States Army training film about the attitude of athletes and soldiers of the United States in World War II. The film is titled 'Fighting Men', 'Kill or Be Killed'. Narrator contrasts fair fight tactics in sports in the United States versus the kill or be killed attitude necessary to win in war. Opens with series of scenes of players playing various sports, seemingly at college and professional level for most: boxing, baseball, basketball and ice hockey. Two young boy boxers compete in a boxing ring with a referee looking on who is wearing a Navy sweatshirt. Runners at a race track in a track and field race. A tennis player preparing to serve a ball. A football game. Soldiers run in a field and fire while in prone position. A soldier fires machine guns while the other holds the bullet belt. Bomb explosion on a battlefield. Artillery and soldiers at a front during a war.
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