LIKE FATHER LIKE SON
The multi-multi-million pound efforts of the much-publicised Bloodhound Project roll on. In its endeavour to set a new Land Speed Record (LSR) of 1000mph and raise Thrust SSC’s 1997 mark of 763.035mph, it has created more awareness today of speed records than at any time since the days of Donald Campbell.
Yet there is a very important and longstanding speed record that most have forgotten. Campbell, of course, like his father Sir Malcolm, was a record-breaker on land and on water. Attempting to break his own world Water Speed Record (WSR) was his undoing when he was killed in Bluebird K7 on Coniston Water in January 1967. In Australia, in 1964, Campbell achieved the unprecedented when he set the LSR on Lake Eyre and the WSR on Lake Dumbleyung.
A decade after Campbell’s death, Australian Ken Warby set a new WSR of 290.313mph with Spirit of Australia. On 8 October 1978 on remote Blowering Dam in New South Wales, some 425km from Sydney, he raised the record once again by breaking the 300mph and 500km/h barrier with a speed of 317.60mph.
That record still stands today. Many men have died attempting to raise this record from its first official benchmark of 92.838mph, set by George Wood in Miss America VII
