The Gee Bee carries its pilot, Jimmy Doolittle, to victory at the 1932 National Air Races after booming around the course at a record average of 294 miles per hour. Doolittle’s plane was every bit as dangerous as it looked, but the air races of the 1930s spurred technological innovations that would prove invaluable to its pilot and thousands of others in even more perilous endeavors ten years down the road.

 

robert henry adams fine art, chicago1993_8_93

The Gee Bee carries its pilot, Jimmy Doolittle, to victory at the 1932 National Air Races after booming around the course at a record average of 294 miles per hour. Doolittle’s plane was every bit as dangerous as it looked, but the air races of the 1930s spurred technological innovations that would prove invaluable to its pilot and thousands of others in even more perilous endeavors ten years down the road. The eerily static, utterly accurate rendering of the Gee Bee is the work of the Russian-born illustrator Boris Artzybasheff (1899–1965), whose prolific output included forty books and two hundred Time magazine covers.