The wreckage of his aircraft was recovered and brought back to Mérida, Yucatán where it was placed in a museum. While Francisco Sarabia was taking off with a full fuel load for the return flight to Mexico from Bolling Airfield in Washington D.C., and in full view of his family, his engine failed due to an oily rag having been sucked into the carburettor intake, and he plummeted into the Potomac River, where he was trapped by the collapsed cockpit structure and died before his aircraft could be extricated from the mud of the river bed. He had bought the R-6H from Babb in late September 1938 and repainted it bright white with a red fuselage stripe, with the Mexican registration XB-AKM, and renamed it the Conquistador del Cielo. 1939 Mexico City to New York City record flight įrancisco Sarabia Tinoco set a record for a non-stop flight from Mexico City to New York City in 10 hours and 47 minutes on 24 May. ![]() While being flown by George Armisted to the race it suffered another engine failure but was relatively undamaged, However, his troubles were not over as during the race, oil temperatures soared, he lost oil pressure, was experiencing icing and his radio failed all of which ended his run in Winslow, Arizona. The aircraft was then stored in Tucson, Arizona.Īfter being bought by aircraft dealer Charles Babb, the aircraft was repainted cream overall with a green stripe, and fitted with a more powerful 950 hp (710 kW) Pratt & Whitney Hornet with a 14:1 supercharger. In the 1936 Thompson Trophy despite most of the major contenders having dropped out before the race, Lee Miles was forced down with an engine failure on lap 11 of 15, after lagging behind Michel Détroyat's winning Caudron C.460. Royal Leonard was forced down with an engine failure and had to land in Wichita, Kansas, shortly after the Gee Bee R-1/R-2 Hybrid Intestinal Fortitude disintegrated in flight, killing its pilot. 1934 MacRobertson Air Race Īfter having their entry delayed because the British authorities had trouble accepting the limited amount of testing the R-6H had undergone was adequate for a commercial aircraft, and enduring insults in the British press (who dubbed it the "HeeBee GeeBee"), Jacqueline Cochran and Wesley Smith made it as far as Bucharest, Romania, the end of their first leg in the bright green and orange Q.E.D., when a malfunctioning flap and a damaged stabilizer delayed them until they were forced to drop out. He continued without the cowling and a new modified one was dispatched but the replacement suffered the same fate during the race and he was forced to drop out. While enroute to the Bendix Race at Des Moines, Iowa Lee Gehlbach had the cowling come loose and it pulled into the prop. Operational history įrancisco Sarabia with the Conquistador del Cielo 1934 Bendix Race Īlthough most contemporaries were already moving to retractable undercarriage, the R-6 persisted with the spatted and faired units common to their previous designs, although to save time, the actual gear legs were borrowed from the Curtiss A-12 Shrike. Tandem cockpits provided space for two under an extended greenhouse canopy. The fin was integral with the fuselage structure, while the rudder and cantilevered elevators were constructed in a similar manner to the wings with a plywood covering. This was then covered with sheet aluminium panels forward, and fabric covering aft. The fuselage form followed an ideal teardrop shape calculated to minimize drag and was built up from welded chromium-molybdenum alloy steel tubes with plywood formers and spruce stringers. After problems with these during the MacRobertson Air Race, they were redesigned without the extra hinge. Split flaps that functioned somewhat similar to Zap flaps with an extra hinge line mid-chord were installed between the ailerons and the fuselage. Ribs were also spruce, and the entire wing was skinned with plywood and braced to the fuselage and undercarriage with streamlined wires. The wings were built around a pair of spruce spars, with the front spars split into upper and lower beams while the rear spars were a single beam. The Gee Bee R-6 shares the same general shape and overall design as the better known Granville Gee Bee R-1 Super Sportster racer, but was nearly 10 ft (3.0 m) larger in span and length.Īs built the aircraft was powered by a 675 hp (503 kW) Pratt & Whitney Hornet 9-cylinder air cooled radial engine enclosed in a NACA cowling. ![]() ![]() R-6H XB-AKM Conquistador del Cielo showing the later simplified flaps
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