The Record-setter Runs Again

August 29, 2024 - 11:49pm

Miss U.S., Seattle, 1957. Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum Collection

By Craig Fjarlie

In 1953, Detroit industrialist George Simon entered Unlimited hydroplane racing. His goal was to win the APBA Gold Cup, and he could use his boat to advertise his business, U.S. Equipment Company. The first Miss U.S. raced through 1956, then was replaced by a new boat, Miss U.S. 1, designed by Dan Arena and built by Les Staudacher. The boat had a mahogany deck with white cowlings and tail fin, and initially was powered by an Allison engine. Fred Alter handled driving duties, and won the 1958 International Cup at Elizabeth City, New Jersey.

Miss U.S., Seattle, 1957: driver Fred Alter is standing on the dock in his driving gear.
Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum Collection

Midway through the 1958 season, Don Wilson took over as driver of Miss U.S. 1, and the Allison engine was replaced with a Rolls-Royce Merlin. Wilson won three races, including the President’s Cup, and the boat finished second in high point standings. From that time on, Miss U.S. 1 showed flashes of speed, yet victory was elusive. It was the fastest qualifier for the Gold Cup three years in a row, but mechanical problems prevented it from winning. During that same time period, the boat’s mahogany deck was painted red; and a taller red, white, and blue tail fin replaced the original low white one.

A later black & white photo of Miss U.S. (year unknown), when the hull was painted red.
Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum collection.

For anyone who doubted the speed capabilities of Miss U.S. 1, those doubts were put to rest on April 17, 1962, when Roy Duby drove the boat to a mile straightaway record of 200.419 mph on Lake Guntersville, Alabama. Duby was usually a mechanic on the crew but drove the boat through the measured mile and also had a brief stint in the cockpit during the 1963 season—the boat’s final year in competition. George Simon continued his pursuit of the Gold Cup with newer boats and some of the sport’s top drivers, including Bill Muncey. He finally fulfilled his dream in 1976 when Tom D’Eath drove Miss U.S., a boat built by Ron Jones, to victory in the Gold Cup on the Detroit River. Simon retired from racing at the conclusion of that season.

Eventually, George Simon, Jr., took over operation of U.S. Equipment Company. “We had the boat sitting in a company warehouse, up on rafters, for 30 years,” he recalls. “After my father passed (in 1998), Danny Foster had it in his mind that he’d like to get the boat redone. He went to my mother’s house and said, ‘We really should rebuild George’s boat.’ She said, ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’ I was President of U.S. Equipment at the time, still under my leadership, but really Danny’s leadership re-doing the hull itself. That took about three years. We did the complete renovation. Turned it over, the bottom came off, all the stringers and stuff were checked, the battens are all new. Flipped it back over, took the deck off, put a new deck on it, basically made the boat structurally sound.” Simon estimates about 70 per cent of the boat is original material.

The next challenge was finding a Rolls-Merlin engine. “Danny Foster worked with Jack Roush’s group to get an engine for it,” Simon explains. “He has a NASCAR race team and he’s a big engine builder, a big supplier to Ford, the technology, and he’s a flying buff. He has a couple P-51 Mustangs, and he started rebuilding Rolls-Royce Merlins for his own use. Then he started selling them to other people.” Foster helped facilitate the purchase of an engine from Roush.

George Simon, Jr., and his cousin, Joe Simon, Jr., planned to run the boat on the St. Clair River in 2010. “Tom D’Eath came,” George begins as he recaps a disappointing day.

“There were problems with the engine. A rod came right out the side. That kind of took the wind out of everybody’s sail. It was back in the warehouse and sat there until two years ago, when Joe and I brought it to Guntersville without a working engine, but just to show folks.”

In 2022, the APBA Gold Cup race was held in Guntersville. It also was 60 years since Miss U.S. 1 set the mile straightway record on Lake Guntersville. “We put together a mock engine and dressed the boat all up and brought it down,” Joe says. “We watched the race that weekend. We’d look at the boat and look at those hydros that were running and we were watching the vintage Miss U.S. IV run. We thought, ‘We have to get this thing going.’ That started the process a couple years ago. We brought it back to Detroit and we started looking at all the systems we needed to support the engine. We had lots of engine parts. We put them all in boxes and hauled them out to Omaha, to George Czarnecki, and he built an engine for us. In the meantime, we started replumbing and rewiring the boat. That process, in the evenings, took us a couple of years to get it all right.”

Czarnecki runs an aircraft engine overhaul business in Omaha called Central Cylinder Service. “About 25 years ago I got involved in doing some of those Merlin engines for the P-51 Mustang, on the airplane called Gunfighter, which is still flying today,” he says. “I built a couple of engines for him through the years and then another one, an airplane in Lincoln, I’ve done two engines for him, then lots of cylinder heads and banks for various ones. I’d never seen an Allison, but then Jay Armstrong (owner of the vintage Miss U.S. IV, who lives near Omaha) said, ‘Hey do you want to get involved with an Allison?’ I said, ‘Yeah, okay,’ so we did the U.S. IV. I’ve been doing some of the Allison stuff.”

Owner Jay Anderson in the cockpit of the U-36 at CRA Spring Fling, Tavares, FL March 15-17, 2013. © F. Peirce Williams

To restore Miss U.S. 1 to its record run configuration, a Rolls-Merlin would be needed. Czarnecki tells a fascinating story how it all came about. “The Merlin is the Dash 7 that I’m familiar with, which is on the P-51. About 25 years ago I was involved with the P-51, and the headquarters were in Midland, Texas. I flew my own airplane down there and took some friends. The pilot who was flying the P-51 was a retired General and he was on the board of directors. The airplane belonged to the CAF at the time. He said, ‘If you need parts, there’s our warehouse; go in there and find some stuff.’ I went in there and picked up some spare parts for the engines. There was another engine box just sitting there. I didn’t recognize it, but it looked like it had some similar parts. That was what’s called a Dash 1, which is the early version. Less horsepower, but not that much—1,300 versus 1,600. Brought it back, didn’t look like anything was very similar so we just let it sit there on display.”

When Czarnecki received the inquiry about a Rolls-Merlin for Miss U.S. 1, he knew he could provide what was needed with the Dash 1 Merlin. “They needed some parts. I knew where some parts were. We went searching through those from the CAF.” Czarnecki took the engine apart and reassembled it. “Repaired it and did some machine work,” he explains. “I had to do a lot of machine work on the water jackets. Had to weld the cracked water jackets because this thing had a blown connecting rod that split the water jacket open. I didn’t like the way some of the stuff was arranged so I said, ‘You know, we’re going to put an Allison carburetor on this engine.’ The Rolls-Royce is a high-altitude engine where the Allison wasn’t. Rolls-Royce on this one had a two-speed, single stage supercharger. Well, you don’t need a two-speed supercharger, just leave it in low boost. I disconnected the hydraulic shift servo. Then I had to make an adapter for the carburetor.”

When everything was ready, George and Joe Simon hoped to run the boat on the Detroit River in early November 2023, with Mark Weber driving. Unfortunately, rough water forced them to cancel the plan. “We had bad weather,” George says with a hint of frustration and disappointment. “There were so many regulations to get around, from the Coast Guard to the Detroit Water Police. It was too complicated. They were hard to work with, so we took it out to Omaha.” In early June of this year, Miss U.S. 1 ran on Carter Lake, with Weber in the cockpit. Czarnecki watched and was pleased with the result. “I don’t know how long the straightaway was—not very long. He got up to 120 and shut it down. He says, ‘Hey, it’s running great. Take it back and let’s see what we can do.’”

Miss U.S. 1 was taken to Guntersville, where it was joined by Miss U.S. IV. Both boats would make exhibition runs between heats of the Unlimited hydroplane race. Friday afternoon Weber drove U.S. 1 and Steve Compton handled U.S. IV in a side-by-side exhibition. George and Joe Simon realized long-awaited dreams when each drove the boat in exhibition runs on Sunday. George wished Danny Foster could have witnessed the boat running. “It’s a shame that he never got to take it for a spin. It’s a shame we can’t have him here with us today, but I think he’d be 105.”

Following the Guntersville race, Miss U.S. 1 was returned to its home base in Detroit. Where it will run next was undecided, but there is a possibility it will appear at Lake Chelan in Washington, during Mahogany & Merlot, the first weekend of October. There is an effort underway to return Unlimited hydroplane racing to Detroit in 2025, and if that occurs, it is a virtual certainty Miss U.S. 1 will treat fans to exhibition runs.

The record-setter is on the water again!