This is what actress Merry Anders actually looked like. The photoshopped version looks ridiculous. Mick
Walt Arfons (Art's brother) and his "rocket car", the WINGFOOT EXPRESS, getting ready to leave for the Salt Flats. I got to know Walt pretty well (I was on Craig Breedlove's team, and this was 1965). Breedlove eventually set the Land Speed Record at 600+ MPH in '65, and Walt's car suffered damage due to the JATO bottles almost melting his car. The design of this car was pretty advanced, a three-wheel design (only the front wheel was actually two wheels, so it could be classified as a car with four wheels. Walt's problem was that the JATO bottles did not burn long enough to get the car much past 400 MPH. What Walt did was to try and "stage" the ignition of the bottles, to extend the range of the full power. On top of all the bottles that were stuck in the back of the car in the "bottle racks", Walt redid the sides of the car on both sides, and built more racks, to hold five more bottles on each side, giving him about 25 bottles or there about. But because they were on the sides, they had to blow at an angle to the direction the car was going (about 30 degrees if I recall). All of the bottles were used only once, since the heat from these bottles pretty near burned the back of the car off. I think the bottles put out the power for only 10 seconds. That would have been more than enough if the car entered the flying mile at 500 MPH, but he was starting well before the entrance to the mile, and by the time the car got there, the bottles were all empty and he was not going very fast. On the other hand, Craig Breedlove was able to start his run five miles from the entry to the mile, and was hauling ass as he entered the mile. It took the Spirit of America only six (6) seconds to cover the entire mile from entry to exit. They use the average speed, which worked out to be just a little over 600 MPH. He was running about 630 MPH at the exit of the mile. PS: The box that Walt is leaning on is where the parachutes were to be mounted. Being part of Breedlove's team that built and crewed on the car that Autumn of 1965, was one of the highlights of my life. We had plenty of problems ourselves in keeping the Spirit of America on the ground, but at least we never burned it to the ground...
Walt talking to Bobby Tatroe, his driver. Everything between the front of the JATO bottles and the rear of the driver's cockpit was open, there was nothing there. Bobby fashioned a 1" thick sold steel bulkhead behind his seat, just in case bottles blew through the bottle racks and kept going into his butt crack. Talk about Global Warming...
This was our toy at the Salt Flats. One engine (J-79-15) 15,000 lbs of thrust with the afterburner lit. It was beautiful to look at, but it was not a particularly good design. The biggest flaw was the size of the rear fin. First, it was too big, and second, it was mounted behind the rear wheels. Anything that sticks outside of the car causes drag. That big fin caused plenty of drag but because it was mounted behind the rear axle, the drag had a tendency to pull the front wheels off the ground over 500 MPH. The air pushed on the front of the fin with enough force to push down on the back of the car, causing the car to pivot over the rear axle, which then caused the front to leave the ground. It behaved like a teeter-totter. 500 MPH wheelstands were just not in the book at the time. If you look at the photo carefully, just in front of the front and rear wheels, you can see some canard fins. We had two on each side, each independent of each other, and adjustable. They were way to small originally, so we had to fab up some that were about four times the size for the front, and angle it down enough to counteract the issues caused by the big fin in the back.
The Jalopy Journal
