Donald Campbell

Donald Campbell was born at Canbury House, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, the son of Malcolm, later Sir Malcolm Campbell, holder of 13 world speed records in the 1920s and 1930s in the Bluebird cars and boats, and his second wife, Dorothy Evelyn (née Whittall).

Campbell attended St Peter's School, Seaford in East Sussex, and Uppingham School in Rutland.

At the outbreak of the Second World War he volunteered for the Royal Air Force, but was unable to serve because of a case of childhood rheumatic fever.

He joined Briggs Motor Bodies Ltd in West Thurrock, where he became a maintenance engineer.

Subsequently, he was a shareholder in a small engineering company called Kine Engineering, producing machine tools.

Donald Malcolm Campbell, (23 March 1921 – 4 January 1967) was a British speed record breaker who broke eight absolute world speed records on water and on land in the 1950s and 1960s.

He married three times — to Daphne Harvey in 1945, producing daughter Georgina (Gina) Campbell, born on 19 September 1946; to Dorothy McKegg (1928–2008) in 1952; and to Tonia Bern (1928–2021) in December 1958, which union lasted until his death in 1967.

Campbell was intensely superstitious, hating the colour green, the number thirteen and believing nothing good ever happened on a Friday.

He also had some interest in the paranormal, which he nurtured as a member of the Ghost Club.

Following his father's death on 31 December 1948 and aided by Malcolm's chief engineer, Leo Villa, the younger Campbell strove to set speed records first on water and then land.

Campbell began his speed record attempts in the summer of 1949, using his father's old boat, Blue Bird K4, which he renamed Bluebird K4.

His initial attempts that summer were unsuccessful, although he did come close to raising his father's existing record.

The team returned to Coniston Water, Lancashire in 1950 for further trials.

While there, they heard that an American, Stanley Sayres, had raised the record from 141 to 160 mph, beyond K4's capabilities without substantial modification.

In late 1950 and 1951, Bluebird K4 was modified to make it a "prop-rider" as opposed to her original immersed propeller configuration.

This greatly reduced hydrodynamic drag: The third planing point would now be the propeller hub, meaning one of the two propeller blades was always out of the water at high speed.

She now sported two cockpits, the second one being for Leo Villa.

Bluebird K4 now had a chance of exceeding Sayres' record and also enjoyed success as a circuit racer, winning the Oltranza Cup in Italy in the spring of that year.

Returning to Coniston in September, they finally got Bluebird up to 170 mph after further trials, only to suffer a structural failure at 170 mph which wrecked the boat.

Sayres raised the record the following year to 178 mph in Slo-Mo-Shun IV.

Along with Campbell, Britain had another potential contender for water speed record honours — John Cobb.

Subsequently, four new marks were registered on Coniston Water, where Campbell and Bluebird became an annual fixture in the latter half of the 1950s, enjoying significant sponsorship from the Mobil oil company and then subsequently BP.

To extract more speed, and endow the boat with greater high-speed stability, in both pitch and yaw, K7 was subtly modified in the second half of the 1950s to incorporate more effective streamlining with a blown Perspex cockpit canopy and fluting to the lower part of the main hull.

He had commissioned the world's first purpose-built turbojet Hydroplane, Crusader, with a target speed of over 200 mph, and began trials on Loch Ness in autumn 1952.

Cobb was killed later that year, when Crusader broke up, during an attempt on the record.

Campbell was devastated at Cobb's loss, but he resolved to build a new Bluebird boat to bring the water speed record back to Britain.

In early 1953, Campbell began development of his own advanced all-metal jet-powered Bluebird K7 hydroplane to challenge the record, by now held by the American prop rider hydroplane Slo-Mo-Shun IV.[1] Designed by Ken and Lew Norris, the K7 was a steel-framed, aluminium-bodied, three-point hydroplane with a Metropolitan-Vickers Beryl axial-flow turbojet engine, producing 3,500-pound-force (16 kN) of thrust.

Like Slo-Mo-Shun, but unlike Cobb's tricycle Crusader, the three planing points were arranged with two forward, on outrigged sponsons and one aft, in a "pickle-fork" layout, prompting Bluebird's early comparison to a blue lobster.

K7 was of very advanced design and construction, and its load bearing steel space frame ultra rigid and stressed to 25 g (exceeding contemporary military jet aircraft).

Campbell set seven world water speed records in K7 between July 1955 and December 1964.

The first of these marks was set at Ullswater on 23 July 1955, where he achieved a speed of 202.32 mph but only after many months of trials and a major redesign of Bluebird's forward sponson attachments points.

Campbell achieved a steady series of subsequent speed-record increases with the boat during the rest of the decade, beginning with a mark of 216 mph in 1955 on Lake Mead in Nevada.

Campbell also made an attempt in the summer of 1957 at Canandaigua, New York, which failed due to lack of suitable calm water conditions.

It had a design speed of 250 mph and remained the only successful jet-boat in the world until the late 1960s.

The designation "K7" was derived from its Lloyd's unlimited rating registration.

It was carried on a prominent white roundel on each sponson, underneath an infinity symbol.

Bluebird K7 was the seventh boat registered at Lloyds in the "Unlimited" series.

Bluebird K7 became a well known and popular attraction, and as well as her annual Coniston appearances, K7 was displayed extensively in the UK, United States, Canada and Europe, and then subsequently in Australia during Campbell's prolonged attempt on the land speed record in 1963–1964.

He remains the only person to set both world land and water speed records in the same year (1964).

He died during a water speed record attempt at Coniston Water in the Lake District, England.