February 1927: a new land speed record

Bloodhound SSC, the latest attempt to break the world land speed record, is regularly featured in The Engineer; it’s one of the highest-profile engineering projects in the UK, and its mixture of high technology and derring-do makes it fascinating for many people.

The same wasn’t true in 1927, when a brief news piece marked the breaking of the land speed record by Malcolm Campbell, then a Captain in the Royal Flying Corps — a parallel with current record holder and Bloodhound driver Andy Green, who is an RAF  Wing Commander. Campbell broke the record in the second car to bear the name Blue Bird at Pendine Sands in Wales, and broke the 150mph barrier, hitting 174.883mph on the Flying Kilometre and 174.224 on the Flying Mile. In another Bloodhound parallel, this Blue Bird was driven by an aircraft engine; in this case a Napier Lion 12-cylinder, with the cylinders arranged in three banks of four in a ‘broad arrow’ configuration: this produced 450bhp, which is 100hp less than the Jaguar supercharged V8 that Bloodhound is using to pump oxidiser into its hybrid rocket motor; it positively pales beside Bloodhound’s aero engine, a Rolls-Royce EJ200 turbojet.