> Features > Pg 2 Feature Stories > Haffke donates 'Senior Sportster' to museum
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Haffke donates 'Senior Sportster' to museum
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Henry Haffke, left, hoists the 54" wingspan model plane titled "Senior Sportster." Curator of the Physical Science Museum Richard Sanderson accepted the donation. Reminder Publications photo by G. Michael Dobbs
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By G. Michael Dobbs
Managing Editor
SPRINGFIELD Henry Haffke remembers watching the Granville brothers fly their famed Gee Bee racing planes from their hanger at the former Springfield Airport on Liberty Street in the early 1930s. The former Chicopee Falls native said with a smile, "It was cheap entertainment."
Obviously watching the local aviation designers fly their distinctly shaped planes had a lasting effect on Haffke -- he has become nationally known for his gasoline-powered flying models of the Gee Bee planes and for his research in the brief but important aviation career of the Granville Brothers.
Haffke presented the Springfield Museum on Wednesday with one of those models for the Museum of Science's Gee Bee collection. On hand for the presentation was June Granville Dakin, daughter of Thomas Granville and author of the book "Farmers Take Flight."
The model presented to the museum was a 1/6-scale representation of one of the Granville's brothers' most successful airplanes, the Model Y, dubbed the "Senior Sportster." It has a 54" wingspan.
Flown by Maude Tait of Springfield, the Model Y proved to be a prize-winning plan in a number of races during the early 1930s. Haffke said that, ironically, this plane was not designed as a racer and yet it won more prize money and races than any other Gee Bee.
Haffke has built about 18 Gee Bee flying models, some in a quarter scale with a 90" wingspan.
The Granville Brothers are best known for their snubbed-nosed "Super Sportser," one of the fastest planes built in the 1930s, a time when innovations in aviation design could come from small companies as well as large corporations. Dakin's book recounts how nationally known test pilot James Doolittle won a 1932 race with the Super Sportser by achieving an average speed of 252 miles per hour.
Doolittle was quoted by the "Springfield Evening News" saying, "I think this proves that the Granville Brothers up in Springfield build the best speed ships in America today."
The Super Sportster, though, became infamous as being difficult to control and as a dangerous design. Haffke has constructed Super Sportser models as well and said the plane mimics "a teardrop, the most streamlined design in nature."
He said that pilot Delmar Benjamin, who built flying full-scale replica of the Super Sportser, ran a computer analysis of the design and found "they couldn't be better."
Haffke attributed the bad reputation of the plane to the fact that in 1932 "no one had any experience in high performance aircraft."
"It was 60 years ahead of its time," he said.
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> Features > Pg 2 Feature Stories > Haffke donates 'Senior Sportster' to museum
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