Everything about Donald Campbell totally explained
» For other people with the same name, see Donald Campbell (disambiguation)
Donald Malcolm Campbell,
CBE (
23 March 1921 –
4 January 1967) was a
British car and
motorboat racer who broke eight world speed records in the 1950s and 60s. He remains the only person to set both land and water speed records in the same year (1964).
Family and personal life
Donald Campbell was born in
Horley,
Surrey, the son of
Sir Malcolm Campbell, holder of 13 world speed records in the 1920s and 30s in the famous cars and boats, and his second wife, Dorothy Evelyn née Whittall. He attended
Uppingham School. At the outbreak of
World War II he volunteered for the
Royal Air Force, but was unable to serve because of a childhood illness. He joined Briggs Motor Bodies Ltd in
West Thurrock, where he became a maintenance engineer. Following his father's death in 1948 and aided by Malcolm's chief engineer,
Leo Villa, the younger Campbell strove to set speed records on
land and
water. He married three times: to Daphne Harvey in 1945, producing daughter Georgina (Gina) Campbell in 1946; to Dorothy McKegg in 1952; and to Tonia Bern in 1958, which lasted until his death in 1967.
Water speed records
Campbell began his speed record attempts using his father's old boat
Bluebird K4, but after a structural failure at 170 mph (270 km/h) on
Coniston Water,
Cumberland in 1951 he developed a new boat. Designed by Ken and Lew Norris, the
Bluebird K7 was an all-metal jet-propelled 3-point
hydroplane with a
Metropolitan-Vickers Beryl jet engine producing 3500 lb
f (16 kN) of thrust.
Campbell set seven world water speed records in
K7 between 1955 and 1964. The first was at
Ullswater on
23 July 1955, where he set a record of 202.15 mph (324 km/h). The series of speed increases - later in 1955, in 1956, in 1957, in 1958, in 1959 - peaked on
31 December 1964 at
Dumbleyung Lake,
Western Australia when he reached ; he remains the world's most prolific breaker of
water speed records.
Land speed record attempt
In 1956, Campbell began planning a car to break the land speed record, which then stood at 394 mph (630 km/h). The Norris brothers designed
Bluebird-Proteus CN7 with in mind. The
CN7 was completed by the spring of 1960, and was powered by a
Bristol-Siddeley Proteus free-turbine engine of .
Following low-speed tests conducted at the Goodwood circuit in Sussex, England, the
CN7 was taken to the
Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, USA, scene of his father's last LSR triumph in 1935. The attempt was unsuccessful and
CN7 was written off following a high-speed crash in September at Bonneville. Campbell wasn't seriously hurt, suffering a fracture to his lower skull, and was by 1961 on the road to recovery and planning the rebuild of
CN7.
The rebuilt car was completed, with minor modifications, in 1962 and, by the end of the year, was shipped to Australia for a new attempt at
Lake Eyre in 1963. The Lake Eyre location was chosen as it offered of dried salt lake, where rain hadn't fallen in the previous 20 years, and the surface of the track was as hard as concrete. As Campbell arrived in late March, with a view to a May attempt, the first light rain fell. Campbell and Bluebird were running by early May but once again more rain fell, and low-speed test runs couldn't progress into the higher speed ranges. By late May, the rain became torrential, and the lake was flooded. Campbell had to move the
CN7 off the lake in the middle of the night to save the car from being submerged by the rising flood waters. The 1963 attempt was over.
Campbell and his team returned to Lake Eyre in 1964, but the surface never returned to the promise it had held in 1962 and Campbell had to battle with
CN7 to reach record speeds (over ). After more light rain in June, the lake finally began to dry enough for an attempt to be made. On
17 July 1964, Campbell set a record of for a four-wheeled vehicle (Class A). Campbell was disappointed with the record as the vehicle had been designed for much higher speeds.
CN7 covered the final third of the measured mile at an average of, peaking as it left the measured distance at over .
Dual record holder
Campbell now reverted to
Bluebird K7 for a further attempt on the water speed record. After more delays, he finally achieved his seventh WSR at Lake Dumbleyung near Perth, Western Australia, on the final day of 1964, at a speed of .
He had become the first, and so far only, person to set both land and water speed records in the same year. Campbell's land record was short-lived, because rule changes meant that
Craig Breedlove's
Spirit of America, a pure jet car, would begin setting records later in 1964 and 1965. Campbell's speed on his final Lake Eyre run, however remained the highest speed achieved by a wheel-driven car until 2001;
Bluebird CN7 is now on display at the
National Motor Museum in Hampshire, England, her potential only part realised.
Final record attempt
In 1966, Campbell decided to once more try for a water speed record. This time the target was 300 mph (480 km/h).
Bluebird K7 was fitted with a lighter and more powerful Bristol Orpheus engine, taken from a Folland Gnat jet aircraft, which developed of thrust. The modified boat was taken back to Coniston in the first week of November 1966. The trials didn't go well. The weather was appalling, and K7 suffered an engine failure when her air intakes collapsed and debris was drawn into the engine. Eventually, by the end of November, some high-speed runs were made, but well below Campbell's existing record. Problems with Bluebird's fuel system meant that the engine couldn't reach full rpm, and so wouldn't develop maximum power. Eventually, by the end of December, the fuel starvation problem was fixed, and Campbell awaited better weather to mount an attempt.
Death
On
4 January 1967, Campbell was killed when
Bluebird K7 flipped and disintegrated at a speed in excess of . Bluebird had completed a perfect north-south run at an average of, and Campbell used a new water brake to slow
K7 from her peak speed of . Instead of refueling and waiting for the wash of this run to subside, as had been pre-arranged, Campbell decided to make the return run immediately. The second run was even faster; as
K7 passed the start of the measured kilometre, she was travelling at over . However her stability had begun to break down as she travelled over the rough water, and the boat started tramping from sponson to sponson. 150 yards from the end of the measured mile,
Bluebird lifted from the surface and took off at a 45-degree angle. She somersaulted and plunged back into the lake, nose first. The boat then cartwheeled across the water before coming to rest. The impact broke
Bluebird forward of the air intakes (where Donald was sitting) and the main hull sank shortly afterwards. Campbell had been killed instantly.
Campbell's last words on his final run were, via radio intercom:
Recovery of
Bluebird
The wreckage of Campbell's craft was recovered on
8 March 2001 when diver
Bill Smith was inspired to look for the wreck after hearing the
Marillion song "Out of This World" (from the album
Afraid of Sunlight), which was written about Campbell and
Bluebird.
The recovered wreck revealed that Campbell had activated the water brake to try and slow
Bluebird down on her final run. The boat still contained fuel in the engine fuel lines, discounting the fuel starvation theory, though the engine could have cut-out as a result of injector blockage.
Campbell's body was recovered from the lake on
28 May 2001. Marillion members
Steve Rothery and
Steve Hogarth were present in the recovery. Campbell was interred in
Coniston cemetery on
12 September 2001 after a funeral service in Coniston village attended by his wife Tonia, daughter Gina, other members of his family, members of his former team, and admirers.
Legacy
Between them, Donald Campbell and his father had set eleven speed records on water and ten on land.
The story of Campbell's last attempt at the water speed record on Coniston Water was told in the
BBC television drama
Across the Lake in 1988, with
Anthony Hopkins as Donald Campbell and
Robert Hardy as Malcolm Campbell. In 2003, the BBC showed a documentary reconstruction of Campbell's fateful water-speed record attempt in an episode of
Days That Shook the World. It featured a mixture of modern reconstruction and original film footage. All of the original colour clips were taken from a film capturing the event,
Campbell at Coniston by John Lomax, a local amateur filmmaker from Wallasey, England. Lomax's film won awards world-wide in the late 1960s for recording the final weeks of Campbell's life.
In the village of Coniston, the Ruskin Museum has a display of Donald Campbell memorabilia, and is home to the actual tail fin of
K7, as well as the air intake of the Bristol Orpheus engine recovered in 2001. A
project
is under way to restore
K7, aimed at returning
Bluebird to Coniston before permanently housing her at the Ruskin museum. The project is due for completion in mid-2008.
The
Bluebird Garage in which Campbell built some of his vehicles has been made a listed building. It now houses a shop, cafe and restaurant.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Donald Campbell'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://donald_campbell.totallyexplained.com">Donald Campbell Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
