Cleveland Air Races

From Powersports Information Wiki Source

Cleveland Air Races

The concept of an Air Show was first brought to the USA in 1920 by Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World who funded the money for a race on Mitchell Field, Long Island.

The race was held in various cities for the following nine years, settling in Cleveland in 1929, after Louis W. Greve (President of the Cleveland Pneumatic Tool Company) and Frederick C. Crawford (General Manager and later President of Thompson Products Inc. now a division of TRW Inc.) gave it their support.

The parades for the opening ceremonies rivalled those of the Rose Bowl Tournament with over 300,000 spectators, while the races were enjoyed by another 100,000.

The first free-for-all closed-course race , The Thompson Trophy Race, was five laps around a 10-mile circuit and was won by Doug Davis, with an average speed of 194.9 miles per hour.

The races were moved to Chicago in 1930 after six pilots were killed in the 1929 Cleveland events, but were returned to cleveland by the National Aeronautical Association (NAA) in 1931.

In 1938, the NAA announced there would only be two events: the Thompson Trophy Race; and the Greve Race with a record shared purse of $45,000.

The 1949 races were overshadowed by a tragedy. Bill Odam was chasing Captain Cook Cleland when he banked too sharply around a pylon and flipped upside down, crashing into a private home, killing himself and a young mother and her baby son. This was the first time that someone other than a race participant had been killed.

The deaths marked the end for closed-course racing and the National Air Races closed after 20 years of events in Cleveland.

George Steinbrenner and Noel Painchaud (Cleveland’s Port Director) started the present series of Air Shows at Burke Lakefront Airport in 1964 and racing returned to Cleveland in 1967.

[edit]