Today in History: American driver breaks the land-speed record
Breedlove's car, the Spirit of America, which cost $250 000, was powered by a surplus engine from a Navy jet.
On this day in 1965, at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, 28-year-old Craig Breedlove set a new land-speed record — 966,573km/h.
He actually drove across the desert twice that day, since international world-record rules require a car to make two timed one-mile runs in one hour, with officials logging the average speed of the two trips. During his first trip, Breedlove zoomed across the flats at 954,627km/h; during his second, the first time any person had officially gone faster than 600miles/h (965km/h), he managed to push the car up to 978,804km/h. “That 600 is about a thousand times better than 599,” he said afterwards. “Boy, it’s a great feeling.”
For nearly 20 years, the fastest man on land had been England’s John Cobb, who had driven his internal-combustion Railton Special at a record 634,403km/h at the same venue in 1947 (Bonneville was a popular place for drag races and speed tests because, unlike concrete, its salt surface absorbed plenty of water, which kept the track cool).
But in October 1963, Breedlove piloted a three-wheeled version of the Spirit of America to a new record: 655,727km/h. For the next two years, Breedlove and two other racers—Tom Green and Art Arfons, who drove a home-built machine that he called the Green Monster, passed the land-speed title around like a hot potato.
They broke the record six times in one year, something no one had done since 1904. In October 1964, Breedlove became the first man to go faster than 500miles/h (804,672km/h), and he nearly died in the process. The Spirit of America’s parachute — the machine’s braking mechanism — snapped off at the end of the mile, and Breedlove careened off the track, through a stand of telephone poles and into a salt pond. He escaped through the car’s rooftop hatch with a new record: 846,965km/h.
Arfons shattered that record a year later, but his glory was fleeting. Just over a week later (on 15 November 1965, Breedlove and his jet car zoomed past the 600miles/h (965km/h) mark.
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