Harry Hawker - Racing the Boards...

I've just finished reading an excellent biography of Harry Hawker, the famous Australian aviator who flew the Atlantic in 1919 and was also the co-founder of the Hawker Aircraft company. He had moved to England in 1911 and ended up working for the Sopwith Aviation Company who were based at Brooklands. Inevitably, with some spare time on his hands he also raced cars and motorcycles around the legendary banked track.

Like so many people obsessed with machines and speed, Harry also had a love of motorcycles and built two of his own in a small workshop in Melbourne. His  favourite project was a high-powered motorcycle which used a v-twin engine that Harry built himself in 1909. The design was based on the British J.A.P v-twin engine with a few Hawker modifications. I was interested to read that Harry raced this bike on a board track in Australia, just like the great board tracks of America at the time. The biography says that...

"Harry raced against his friends Harry Busteed and Cecil De Faga who also built their own machines. Busteed's machine had enormous cyclinders but used a simpler side valve design. They raced on a steeply banked wooden track which was built for racing pedal cycles... The track was only an eighth of a mile and the high powered motorcycles soon started to shake the wooden structure to pieces"

They were eventually barred from using this track and took to racing on the country roads around Melbourne instead. Here's a few photographs of Harry Hawker and his friends with their homemade racing motorcycles at the Princes Park track, Melbourne, Australia.

Harry Hawker and Cecil De Fraga racing on the Princes Park board track in 1910 (Bob Chamerlain)

Cecil de Fraga with his v-twin Bouchet at Princes Park in 1909 (Bob Chamberlain)

Harry Busteed with his home made racing motorcycle. The engine was so large that Harry had to sit over the rear wheel and use long handlebars (Bob Chamberlain)

Information and photographs taken from "Hawker" A Biography of Harry Hawker by L.K.Blackmore. Published in 1990 by Airline Publishing Ltd. ISBN 185310437X.

Click the link for more information about the fascinating life and times of Harry Hawker.

MAY 21st - A GOOD DAY TO FLY THE ATLANTIC!

At 7.52am on May 20th 1927, Charles Lindbergh gunned the engine of the "Spirit of St Louis" and aimed her down the dirt runway of Roosevelt Field, Long Island, USA. Heavily laden with fuel, the plane bounced down the muddy field, gradually became airborne and just about cleared the telephone wires at the end of the field. A small crowd of 500 well-wishers thought they had witnessed a miracle. On the evening of May 21st, he crossed the coast of France, followed the River Seine and after 33.5 hrs and 3500 miles, he touched down at Le Bourget Field, Paris at 10.22pm where he was mobbed by a crowd of 100,000. Lindbergh - "The Lone Eagle" - the first to fly across the atlantic solo, became an instant hero.

On his return to the USA, New York City gave him the largest ticker tape parade ever and the president awarded him the Distinguished Flying Cross. More importantly, Lindbergh was the inspiration for aviators all over the world to test man and machine to their limit.

On May 21st 1932, the 5th anniversary of Lindberg's Atlantic flight , Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 14hrs and 56min. She was awarded the National Geographic Society's gold medal from President Herbert Hoover and Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross. The world's most famous female aviator disappeared in 1937 as she attempted to become the first woman to fly around the world. She was last heard from on July 2nd 1937, about 100 miles from the tiny Pacific atoll of Howland Island. President Roosevelt authorised an immediate search but no trace was ever found of Eahart or her navigator, Fred Noonan. The disappearance of Amelia Earhart has spawned almost as many conspiracy theories as the Lindbergh kidnapping and the Kennedy assasination.

Stella; The New Girl in Town:

David Uhl and UHL Studios do some amazing artwork of bikes, planes and girls. This video uses time lapse photography to show how "Stella" evolved aboard her Harley-Davidson in the 1920s... There's some more amazing artwork on the UHL Studios website, take a look and be seriously impressed.