Was going through some pics from an old Hard drive and came upon this. I'm not sure where I came across this picture and have seen it on the Banner of this Site but it sure needs some historic factoids from this community or the Crosby Family (the *.jpg on my copy dated back to Feb 2006). Any thoughts to the design, purpose (looks like a race boat), where it is now, and is this the only one? the JPG says Miss Firebird at Saulton Sea. Looking forward to the responses, Kevin Bugel. ? Kevin Bugel
"The late Gus Grissom piloted racing boats as a break from the tension of astronaut work. Grissom (right) and Gordon Cooper (left) entered ‘Miss Firebird,’ a sleek hydrodyne racing hull, in national powerboat competitions. The pictures above were taken when the 23-foot wood and fiberglass Firebird was ‘shaken down’ in checkout tests. Since then, the boat has raced in the Slaton Sea, 500 Race in California and in Texas competitions off Galveston. The boat is equipped with two 427 Corvette engines capable of producing 1,000 horsepower." The quote has several sources. jim
Gus Grissom and Gordon Cooper. They are two of the original 7 astronauts. I worked with Gus on a couple of occasions when I was with McDonnell Aircraft in the 60's during the Gemini Program. I never met Cooper. They both had pretty cool Corvettes McDonnell was the prime contractor for the Gemini space program which was between Mercury and Apollo. It was used to perfect some of the techniques needed to get to the moon and back. It was quite an adventure. jim
I knew the 2 astronauts had some experience with Dynes and even played with the Kennedys at some point. I did not think a Dyne hull was suited for speed. I own a shallow V with a pad which is a race boat dressed up with nice seats for recreational use and the hull is capable of 120+. I have had it to 75 a couple of times and that is fast enough for me. I also had a 24' cat with twin Merc 300's that was a 110 mph boat and I had that up to 75 before I ran out of lake. The cat scared me because I was in constant fear of a blowback. Back to the astronauts. I met John Young (moon walker and 1st shuttle pilot) when I was in TPS (Test Pilot School at Pax River, MD) in '95. Pretty cool guy. 2 of my classmates went on to NASA. Billy O as we called him was entangled in that "love triangle" and left NASA after I believe one spaceflight. I taught him how to fly helicopters at TPS and he was the best natural pilot I have ever seen. Dex as we called him was the admiral's son and after a hard night of drinking at the O club Friday night and talking sh++ we suited up Monday to do battle in a T-38. We pulled so many G's trying to make each other quit that when the gas ran out after 1.3 hours we both staggered from that jet and called it a draw. Alan PoinDEXter flew 2 space missions - one as a pilot and the 2nd as the commander. Unfortunately he was killed in a jet ski accident in 2012 in Florida.
The Dyne hull is a lousy speed boat. The soft chines create a lot of drag. Grissom and Young flew the first Gemini manned flight. I worked with both of them and many others. Here is a picture of my hot boat. It would go well over 100 and was stable there. I sold it years ago. jim