UK vs USA

The Green Diamond Club vs Sixth Avenue Racing Team

The civilian competitors all adopted ingenious strategies and sometimes subterfuge in their attempts to win a prize. Originating from opposite sides of the Atlantic, two groups stand out, The Green Diamond Club from the UK and the Sixth Avenue Racing Team from New York. They closely watched each other’s tactics and times, took shortcuts, broke rules and had a great deal of fun.

Green Diamond

Peter Hammond created the Green Diamond Club when he realised the power of group discounts when booking skiing holidays. Club members enjoyed their ski holidays so much they wanted to meet during the year. During the summer months, the club funded their sailing and water-skiing outings. Each corner of the diamond logo represented a value that members strived to promote. They were professionals, empathetic people who were always up for new adventures. The club was carefully managed by volunteers, with surplus funds donated to various charities. Communications in those days were via phone and a regular newsletter was published. Not surprisingly several marriages occurred between members.

Inspired by the Harrier entry and the sense of adventure, Peter and Club members carried out detailed research with the aim of winning the BOAC Direct Passenger prize of £5000. It was a complete club effort. Several members were linked to the Port of London Authority, which gave them access to data around the flow of the river, tides and traffic patterns. They recommended a moored barge in the Thames, near Waterloo Bridge, as a temporary helipad. Others processed the flight times of BOAC crossings from New York through the Port’s computers and determined that the Sunday night 20h00 flight from Kennedy airport was the quickest and experienced the shortest Air Traffic Control delays. Twenty-five members would all play some role in Peter’s ground race. A very detailed plan was drawn up but none of this was evident on the entry form, they were giving nothing away.

Peter approached BOAC to garner support but was rebuffed. The airline argued that as they were a sponsor, they could not favour one contestant over another. Naturally, this did not stop him. He approached the VC10 management team directly, where it was agreed the selected flight would have at least a pilot and navigator, who were Green Diamond members. It seemed the line staff were determined to ensure a BOAC passenger won the BOAC prize.

With every part of his trip planned in detail, Peter punched his card at the top of the Empire State Building at 19h44 on Sunday May 4^th. Club members stopped traffic on 34^th Street, from where a motorcycle sped him to the West 13^th Street Helipad behind an ‘arranged’ police car with flashing lights and sirens . He climbed aboard the Jet Ranger helicopter as it was lifting off for the six-minute flight to Kennedy. A car took him directly to the aircraft where he sprinted up the stairs. The doors were closed and the VC10 on the move at 20h00:10

It had been made clear to Peter that the VC10 would leave at the scheduled time. The crew was made up of Captain Tommy Thompson, who had joined BOAC in 1946, and Green Diamond members First Officers Rolf Richardson, Peter’s brother-in-law and Ged Lavery, Rolf’s brother-in-law. Understandably Thompson allowed Rolf to fly the route that evening, while Ged was the navigator. VC10 G-ASGC cruised at Mach 0.84, and at times more than that to counter the lack of the expected tail winds. On arrival over the UK ATC Rolf recalled that ‘ATC entered into the spirit of the race, giving us priority into LHR and allowing us to keep our speed up until the last moment.’. Despite all the help, they had exceeded their target time of six hours, by 20 minutes.

At six in the morning, 25 club members gathered for a briefing and then moved to their designated stations. John Phillips, the organiser of the CBD leg of Peter’s journey, had been loaned walkie talkies by his employer, the GPO, to maintain communication amongst the ground teams smoothing Peter’s way. As the aircraft came to a halt Hammond was at the door and as it opened, he sprinted along the corridors, was waved through by Customs, jumped onto a waiting motorcycle to a Jet Ranger holding on the North Apron which lifted off six minutes after VC10 touched down. At 07.33 Peter was deposited on the barge 40 feet from Waterloo Bridge and then to a launch that took him to the bridge. There a small crane, used to repair lamp posts, lifted him up to the road, where another motorcycle rushed him to the GPO Tower. Along the way club members manned an indirect but traffic free route, using keys to turn some traffic lights green. The uninterrupted trip meant that Peter recorded a time of 6 hours 54 minutes and 56 seconds.

His total time from touch-down at Heathrow to punch-in at the top of the tower was a record 20 minutes! He held the top spot and was in line to win the BOAC prize.

Sixth Avenue Racing Team

Kimball Scribner, senior pilot with Pan American World Airways and inventor was behind a challenge to the Green Diamonds. Scribner had superb credentials. He had flown for the Navy and Air Force, was qualified to fly gliders, jets and flying boats and was the first American to fly a Boeing 707 to Moscow and Johannesburg. In the 1930’s he developed the first steerable parachute, which was followed by another design for the special forces. Much to the severe chagrin of his wife, he decided that his daughters Colleen (19) and Susi (17) should enter the race in the unsponsored category.

Meanwhile, Bob Ottum, a senior editor at Sports Illustrated magazine, had been drumming up support to enter the race and beat the British. He contacted Kimball for advice, but when he heard the Scribner’s plan, the loosely called Sixth Avenue Racing Team was formed and they dived into some lengthy planning sessions. Peter Hammond worried them the most. With the help of Sports Illustrated correspondents in London, they set out to find out how he had managed to achieve such a fast time. Following Hammond’s lead, they planned to land on a barge on The Thames and use a launch to transfer to the road. It was agreed that Susi and the Sports Illustrated team, which now included Jerry Cooke, Russian-American photojournalist, would race Eastwards and Colleen would compete on the return trip.

On 9^th May while Colleen boarded the PAN AM 707 as a normal passenger, an excited Susi met her fellow competitors in Manhattan. They each clocked their race cards, raced to the elevators, which were held by Sports Illustrated staff, out the building and into an ambulance that raced off, with lights flashing and siren wailing, to the helipad, closely pursued by a police car. On landing at Kennedy, PAN AM ground crew put them in a car, which slipped through parked aircraft to an agreed point. There the driver flashed the headlights and when he saw the answering flash from the aircraft landing lights, he took his charges right under the nose of the 707, waiting on the taxiway. ‘Mindful of the roaring jet engines Susi, Bob and Jerry ran single file under the belly.’[i] Reaching the open hatch under the cockpit, they were roughly pulled in and the hatch closed as Captain Scribner entered the runway.

A stewardess entered the crowded cockpit to announce that there was another competitor aboard and that they would have to sneak out. She had closed the curtain in front of the toilets, where all three went to take off their helmets and race tabards. Susi innocently walked through the cabin and sat down next to Colleen.

Contrary to their plans they encountered head winds and the flight turned into a ‘jingle bell cruise’. The speed alarm continually sounded as Kimball pushed the speed limits. His reward was that they landed seven minutes ahead of schedule. Scribner made for the gate at speed and the competitors ran out as soon as the doors were opened, their passports at the ready, guided by PAN AM ground crew the rushed to the helipad.

As planned, they landed on the barge, where they boarded a boat that seemed to chug along to the bank. The tide was out, but luckily bystanders leant over the wall and lifted the three of them up to the road. Susi jumped on the back of one of the waiting motorcycles for a manic journey hanging on to a very large man with chains. Bob’s rider became lost and Jerry’s hit a truck. Near the GPO Tower Susi’s rider lost control, skidded and they went down. A woman nearby helped her up showed her where to get the lift at the base of the Tower.

As the doors opened at the top she asked if she was in the right place, before she clocked her card and sat down exhausted. Someone then announced that she had won. Immediately she found herself faced by ‘a blizzard of press people.’ Bob and Jerry were minutes behind her and managed to ‘shield her from the madness.’

Susi remembers the ‘craziest bunch of people doing it for the laughs in a wonderful atmosphere’. As a winner she appeared on the cover of the Daily Mail and was recognised on the street. In preparation for the Race Ball, Susi and her mother were taught how to curtsy when they met Prince Phillip. Wearing a brand-new dress, she remembers meeting the grey suited royal but has no recollection of what was said.

Colleen’s London to New York leg was a disaster. Neither her motorbike nor the helicopter was in place and she had to take a taxi to Heathrow. The flight was then delayed as there was no food on board and when she landed in New York the ground plans went awry.

After the race the two girls travelled the world with PAN AM giving talks on their race. Later they became some of the first women to enrol at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. There they managed to scrape through to become licensed pilots, but only flew for a short period.

And the Result Was…..

Susi’s time, a minute less than Hammond’s, had made Peter concerned he would not hold on to his winning. He embarked on a second attempt, returning to New York. There, he provided the ground team with pocket sized action cards detailing exact times and contact numbers to help speed up his time to the airport. Instead of the 20-minute gain hoped for he only managed to shave 55.93 seconds off his previous time, but it looked like he would hold his position.

On the last day of the race BOAC, QANTAS, TWA and PAN AM had flights leaving around the same time with competitors aboard. Delays held up the QANTAS and PAN AM flights, while the captain of the later TWA flight 194 managed to get ahead of the competition on the taxiways for a quick getaway. They were chased across the ocean by QANTAS flight and with only a minute separating them, both captains requested permission to land from London ATC. They were given different runways but at the last minute the TWA jet was given permission for a visual approach and the captain made a race winning short approach, landing well ahead of the opposition. Their competitor was out the airport before the others had cleared customs. He clocked in at 6 hours, 48 minutes and 33 seconds. Ken Holden, an Aer Lingus Boeing 747 project controller had beaten Hammond by six minutes to win the BOAC direct passenger prize.

In the words of Peter Bostock, ‘once more seconds, not minutes or hours, were the deciding factor.’[ii]

[i] Bostock 169

[ii] Bostock 192