During the 1950’s London had become something of a hot bed for extreme boat racing. The whole Southwestern Ontario region was involved in the races and engineers and pilots came form all over to participate in the sport. One such pilot was Guy Lombardo, a successful musician from our London Ontario.
Lombardo would initially pilot a few different boats starting with his fathers row boat on the Thames river as a child. This would push Lombardo to become more heavily invested in the sport later in life. During the 20’s he quickly became a successful amateur pilot and after the second world war he would enter into the Unlimited Hydroplane series and prove his worth in that as well.
When it came to speed records Guy began chasing a 200 mph barrier along with a group of other pilots.
One such pilot was another London native, Claude Brown.
Claude started out as a general thrill seeker during the 20’s and 30’s running rum from port Stanley to the United States during prohibition.
Bob Hayward in the Miss Supertest three. Hayward would be killed piloting it in a race, ending the Supertest’s teams goal of the 200 mph speed record
Dan Brown is his Grandson, at first he didn’t believe the stories he heard about his grandfather the hydroplane racer. It wasn’t until recently that he began to heavily research his grandfathers past.
What he found showed Dan that the man who had never spoken of hydroplane racing to his grandchildren was a intuitive engineer and an expert boat racer. Dan maintains that his grandfather was always one step ahead as a engineer and the tricks up his sleeve were endless.
Dan even found the technical drawings for a boat that he is absolutely sure would have crushed the 200 mph record that Guy Lombardo and the Miss Supertest team were attempting. However, after a close friend who had been at Claude’s side since the beginning of their racing careers died in a car accident, Brown gave up racing.
After that the brilliant engineer who would have been a world record holder never spoke of hydroplane racing again and his custom boats were sold off.
Brown hopes he will be able to reignite his grand fathers dreams and hopes to build a boat himself to use as a platform to help struggling youth.
