Word: cockpit
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...sounds simple," says Baldwin. But no one has done it yet. First step is to "dump" the transparent bubble canopy over your pressurized cockpit. "When your cover goes off you are subjected to what the doctors call 'explosive decompression' . . . the gas and air in your lungs and belly and muscles must escape and expand. They go out of you in a great whoosh; your lips flutter . . . and your body feels as if it were 'getting a great thrust from all directions...
Just before sunset one day last week, cool John Cobb of London squeezed his 200 lbs. into the cockpit of his two-engined, ice-cooled racing car. It was his last chance of the year: the rainy season was at hand on Utah's Bonneville salt flats. The cowling was bolted into place on top of him; a truck gave the car a push. At 20 m.p.h., the engine coughed and then settled into a steady roar. At 140 m.p.h., Cobb shifted into second gear, into high at 240 m.p.h. About halfway down the 14 mile course he entered...
...Forward, in the cockpit, the pilot and copilot were wrestling with the controls to keep the big ship's nose up. They were flying blind. The needle registering altitude bounced crazily between 200 and 800 feet. The plane was bobbing too fast for the instrument to keep up. . . . I tried to swallow but couldn't. . . . My legs were numb from the hips down, partly from the pressure of the safety belt cutting into my belly, but mostly from fear...
...fouled oil line, and Miss Peps finished the winner by quasi-default, a sort of streamlined version of Aesop's tortoise. Miss Peps, however, had not exactly plodded. With a converted Allison engine (from a Lockheed P-38) under her hatch and a converted Army pilot in her cockpit, she had averaged 54.88 m.p.h. Curly-headed Driver Danny Foster finished after being temporarily deafened by his engine, but not bleeding at nose & mouth, as drivers sometimes do after a bumpy, rough-water race...
...charged down Long Island's Jamaica Bay to start the first of three 30-mile heats in the International Gold Cup race. Most eyes were on 45-year-old Bandleader Guy Lombardo, the defending champion, half obscured by his helmet and Mae West as he hunched in the cockpit of his 600-h.p., red-gold-&mahogany Tempo VI. More than a famous name and expensive pressagentry made Lombardo the favorite. Other speedboat drivers had to admit that he was "a hot chauffeur" with a well-balanced boat that should have plenty of staying power in a long race...