I know that I have written about this topic before on this and one other hydro site, but I came across a couple of photos in the 1967 APBA yearbook, and they spurred me to resurrect the topic and fill in some of the blanks from the previous posts for this week’s edition of Thunderboat Throwback Thursday. Those of you who have read my book “Hydromania - A History of the Diamond Cup” know that I spent a good deal of time documenting the 1959 accident in Miss Bardahl that nearly killed Jack Regas, the many months that he spent in the hospital following the accident, his subsequent struggle to recover from its debilitating after effects, and the way the damage to his brain affected his life thereafter. Despite the serious nature of the traumatic brain injury he suffered, it seems that he never gave up the desire to race an unlimited hydro again and that brings us to today’s story. When Notre Dame owner Shirley Mendahlson McDonald decided to part ways with Jim McCormick after the UIM World Championship race in Detroit on July 2nd, Crew Chief Mike Welsch suggested Jack Regas to replace him. Welsch felt that Jack would be the best man to be able to sort out the problems that had plagued the boat in its first few races. Contact was made, and Jack was invited to join the team for the Indiana Governor’s Cup in Madison on July 9th. Jack quickly accepted the assignment, ending the eight years of retirement that he never really wanted. The intervening years had been difficult ones for Regas. He still had a deep desire to compete, but the seriousness of his Coeur dAlene injuries caused the boat owners to err on the side of caution - this despite the clean bill of health his doctors had given him. Now he had second chance, and he readily accepted the challenge. As she was sometimes wont to do, Shirley McDonald had reportedly failed to tell McCormick, however, that he had been dismissed. So it was that both drivers arrived in the Madison pits at the start of qualifications. While angered by the situation, McCormick didn’t stay unemployed for long. When his situation became known, Wayfarer’s Club Lady owner Bob Fendler offered McCormick the driving duties for his boat. Fendler was newly married, and his new bride was not keen on his driving the big boat. Jim got a raw deal, not being notified that he was fired before he came here,” Fendler was quoted as saying as he announced the appointment of McCormick to the Wayfarer cockpit. Back in the Notre Dame camp, Regas easily passed his driver’s physical and was declared ready to race by the medical staff. He also easily completed his driver’s re-qualification test, but the rust from his eight year layoff was evident in his failure to make the final of his first race back and he and the team suffered a dismal 10th place finish. The results were only slightly better two weeks later in the Tri-Cities where Jack placed ninth in the Atomic Cup. There were flashes of the old Regas to be seen this time, however, as he timed the start of Heat 1-B perfectly and led the field deep into the first turn before faltering his way back to fifth place. He would rebound to take third in Heat 2-C, but landed short of the final and placed ninth overall. Which brings us to the incident at the Gold Cup in Seattle two weeks later that is the center of this TTBT posting. Regas easily qualified the boat on the first day of qualifying on Lake Washington at a speed of 111.876 mph and the team drew Heat 1-A for Sunday’s racing. On paper, the draw was arguably the most competitive of the first round of heats with Notre Dame taking on top qualifier Miss Bardahl with Billy Schumacher, Miss Lapeer with Col. Warner Gardner, Harrah’s Club with Chuck Hickling,Bob Gilliam with Hilton’s Hy-Per-Lube, and Savair’s Mist with Walter Kade. Due to the rescuing of a buoy that had briefly escaped it moorings during morning testing on Sunday, the start of racing for the 1967 Gold Cup was delayed by fifteen minutes. When the five minute gun finally sounded at 12:15 PM, five members of the formidable field quickly roared onto the course - The sixth contender, Bob Gilliam and his Hilton’s Hy-Per-Lube, also made his way partially onto the course but lost power near the start finish line. There he sat - dead in the water - for most of the score up time, but he was finally able to get the boat underway again just moments ahead of the one-minute gun. In a mad dash to catch up with rest of the field now making its way down the back straightaway, Gilliam cut across the infield. Behind him he left a slow to dissipate trough that slowly rolled along perpendicular to the front straight. Winds that day blew out of the southwest, and rather than gusting they rose and fell in unpredictable cycles rising from five to fifteen miles per hour and then back. The usually rough surface of Lake Washington was even more so at times, and the cyclical winds led to swells suddenly materializing where none had been a few moments earlier. This may or may not have contributed to what was about to happen. Coming out of the north turn for the start, the Miss Bardahl, Miss Lapeer, and the Notre Dame charged to the front of the pack with Gardner and Lapeer surging even more as they neared the start line buoy to take a clear lead. The speed of the boats was estimated to be near 150 mph. Suddenly, the Notre Dame found a hole, bounced, rocked slightly from side-to-side, bounced again, and became airborne. The flight, while somewhat brief, never the less carried Regas and his blue and white charger a good ways down the front straight without the benefit of flaps, ailerons, or other flight controls. When it finally returned to the water’s surface it did so nose down with a slight roll to the left. What followed was eerily similar to Jack’s 1959 accident on Lake Coeur d’Alene. Portions of the right side of the bow and a sizable chunk of the right sponson area flew in the air and hydrauliced back toward the cockpit. Unlike the Coeur d’Alene accident, however, this time the transom of Regas’ crippled boat slammed down and the boat hooked violently to the left, throwing the aft end broadside to the course. The inertia of the sudden left turn threw Regas from the careening craft and into the water at speed in what was described by writer Eileen Crimmin as “a ball of arms, legs, and self-generated spray.” Seeing the huge pillar of spray from the accident, the rest of the field took quick action to evade the flying debris as can be seen one of the pictures accompanying this story. Bardahl and Hy-Per-Lube in lanes one and two seemingly moved in unison into the infield of the course. Savair’s Mist was trailing the others by some distance out in lane four, and Walter Kade now slid even further to the outside edge of the course when he saw the wall of water erupt ahead of him. With the Notre Dame now parallel to the start line, it became an unavoidable target for Chuck Hickling and a Harrah’s Club that was at full tilt. Hickling was faced with some split-second decision making. He knew that somewhere in the spray was likely an injured Jack Regas. A turn to the left might find him bearing down on the helpless driver if he had been thrown from the boat. A turn to the right - something that racing hydroplanes were not designed to do very well - might mean colliding with the remains of the Notre Dame. “I elected to turn right,” Hickling was quoted as saying. “I didn’t want to hit him, so I just plowed over the top of his boat.” Observers of the accident saw Hickling crank hard on the Harrah’s Club’s steering wheel, causing the boat to suddenly catch some air in response to the sudden change in direction. The resulting bow lift allowed the Harrah’s Club hull to slide up and over the top of the now drifting Notre Dame rather than to t-bone its midsection. The shaft, struts, prop, and rudder tore through the cowling as it continued its forward flight. Hickling found himself “flying” down the course, and like Regas, without any controls to bring him safely back down to the water below. The Harrah’s Club’s broadest surface acted as wing, the bow lifted skyward, and boat began a steep climbing turn to the left. No longer receiving forward thrust from its power plant and prop, the boat continued its slow roll over as it started to float back towards the water. Hickling was thrown clear and when the boat finally slammed down, the shiny bottom of the boat was facing skyward. It quickly sank to the bottom of the lake, joining the Notre Dame that had already slipped below the surface. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter was on the scene of the accident within seconds, and plucked an unconscious Regas from the water within fifteen seconds. A Coast Guard tender was also quickly on the scene, and the crew had an alert but badly hurting Hickling on board and headed for medical attention inside of thirty seconds. Hickling later credited an unidentified Coast Guard crewman with saving his life: “He sure did a good job. I don’t know if I could have made it without him because my jacket was all torn and falling apart.” Hickling reportedly suffered rib fractures, a punctured lung, and severe bruising from the impact. Regas also had several rib fractures, an enormous black eye, bruising, and a minor back injury. Following the race, there was the usual debate about what caused the accident. Some writers blamed the wind chop and hydro historian Fred Farley wrote that the late charge across the course by Bob Gilliam likely caused the accident. From his perspective in the cockpit, however, Regas saw a completely different reason for the accident. “I was off to a great start and in the lead,” Regas later remembered of the accident, “but another boat (Miss Lapeer) had jumped the gun and was running ahead of me making holes in the water. I saw two big holes. I knew I had it. I hit one of them, my nose went down, and I was thrown out of the boat.” Following the race, Notre Dame designer/builder Les Staudacher made news when he told the media that he would halt building and delivery of any unlimited hydroplanes at his Kawkawlin, Michigan boat shop until he came up with a design that would eliminate the tendency of boats to kite at high speeds. Staudacher told members of the media before leaving Seattle on the Monday after the race that would not build or deliver any more boats “until I am satisfied the tendency of present hulls to leave the waterr and fly is corrected and eliminated.” “I do not mean to imply that I am quitting race boat construction,” Staudacher said, “but for some reason present-day power plants are providing so much thrust that the intended design configuration seems to a change a boat to (an) airframe in a split second.” At the time of the Gold Cup wreck, Staudacher had designed and/or built eight of the hulls racing on the unlimited circuit. The ill-fated Notre Dame had been a 1967 product of his boat shop that was racing in its first season. Staudacher also said that he intended to delay the scheduled delivery of a new Miss Budweiser hull until the aerodynamic studies were completed. It had been set for delivery a week after the Detroit race. Unlimited Racing Commission Chairman Lee Schoenith praised Staudacher’s decision and said that there was a need to find out the reason for the tendency to go airborne and that it needed to be done quickly. “Although lap speeds are not any faster than in the past,” Schoenith said, “our boats are running at much higher speeds - for short distances - than formerly was the case. It is during these times that their attitude seems to change.” Staudacher told an Associated Press reporter that he would hire aerodynamic experts and engineers to study what he described as “barn-door-in-the-windstorm”-type accidents. Despite the accident and the resulting injuries, Regas wasn’t quick to quit. “To me this is the greatest thrill in the world, the greatest,” he told a Chicago Tribune reporter early in the 1968 season. It was obvious that he had not as yet lost the fire, but he publicly said he had learned from the ’67 accident and promised that he would be more careful. “I’ve been through that twice and that’s enough,” he said. This 1968 replacement hull for the Notre Dame team was a Jon Staudacher design. The son of Les, Jon had assisted in father’s boat building business, but this was his first solo effort in the unlimited class. The new boat followed the low profile trend that had proved itself with the latest version of the Miss Bardahl. It featured a snub-nosed bow rather than the rounded shovel nose of its predecessors. Fresh out of the box, it proved to be a handful for Regas and the team. While capable of good speed on the straightaways, the hull tended to want to swap ends as it moved through the corners. The veteran driver made the best of things, and had at least one heat victory at each of the first four race sites. In one heat at Madison, the new boat earned a victory over the likes of Miss Bardahl and Miss Budweiser while setting a new course record for a 15-mile heat. It appeared the time was on the verge of a breakthrough. Sadly, it wasn’t to happen. Jack’s career would come to an abrupt end at the ’68 UIM World Championships in Seattle in August. The boat spun out twice and pitched Regas into the water on the first lap of the final. Jack suffered a serious back injury in the accident and was advised by his attending physicians to retire from racing. The nature of the back injury was such that should he re-injure his back, he might be crippled for life. The game was over and Jack reluctantly returned to the sidelines. As he prepared to leave Seattle on a flight back to his home in San Leandro, California, he told a reporter: “The doctor says if I re-injure my back, I might be a cripple for life, Regas said. “It isn’t worth the chance.” Jack would occasionally travel to Seattle for a race over the intervening years and on one notable occasion took a ride in the mock-Hawaii Kai (Breathless II) with Dr. Ken Muscatel but he never again was able to turn the wheel. The desire to drive never left, however. I have been told that he rankled at the fact that his friend Mira Slovak had been allowed to solo with the recreated Miss Wahoo while in his eighties. As has been documented here, Jack passed away in late January of last year at the age of 90. As a tribute to Jack, his family traveled to Seattle for the 2014 Seafair and made arrangements to have him take one last ride on Lake Washington. Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum Director David Williams took a portion of Jack’s ashes with him on a tour of the course in the Griffon-powered Miss Budweiser. I imagine that had he been able to do so that Jack would have questioned why David hadn’t let him take the wheel that one last time on the water.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 03:33:55 +0000