John Keith Butterfield (1930-2023) John was born on August 6, 1930, in Momence, Illinois. The son of C. Elvin Butterfield and Clara (Wyatt) Butterfield, John was a graduate of Momence High School and the University of Illinois. He married Martha A. Butterfield in 1956 in Champaign, Illinois. John was a veteran of service with the United States Air Force, where he served as a sergeant in the Alaskan Air Command during the Korean War. He worked for the Pope Brace Company in Kankakee until becoming a contract negotiator for the US Army at Joliet Arsenal. His work there took him to the Rock Island Arsenal and later to the Pentagon. He retired from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 1991 and returned to the Kankakee area, where he was a photographer, writer, and cartoonist for the Bourbonnais Herald, Country Market newspaper until he relocated to Las Vegas in 2015. John was an artist, whose paintings, drawings, cartoons, and hand-made greeting cards are treasured by many. He was also an avid photographer and model builder. Some of his detailed airplane models, created from scratch with found materials, are displayed at the Lyons Air Museum in Orange County, California.

The Macchi M.C. 72 is an experimental floatplane designed and built by the Italian aircraft company Macchi Aeronautica. The M.C. 72 held the world speed record for all aircraft for five years. In 1933 and 1934 it set world speed records for piston engine-powered seaplanes; the latter still stands. In 1928 they created the Scuola Alta Velocità (High Speed School) at the seaplane base in Desenzano del Garda under the command of Colonnello Bernasconi. The Ministero dell’Aeronautica considered the creation of such a specialized unit absolutely necessary following the dismal Italian performance at the Schneider races in Venice during 1927. The scarlet-colored Italian seaplanes, the supposed favorites, lost to the British Supermarine racers which proved more advanced and mechanically, far more reliable. In the Scuola Alta Velocità, the Regia Aeronautica had created an extremely specialized team, which would work in close cooperation with the Italian aviation industry, and produce highly skilled pilots and engineers dedicated to the singular goal of permanently winning the trophy; achieved only by the team which won at least three competitions over a five year period. Unfortunately, at Calshot in 1929, the Italian aircraft again failed to win the competition due to technical problems and the imperfection of their engines; giving Britain the opportunity to win the trophy outright in the subsequent competition in 1931. Macchi had already built the majority of the nation’s attractive but underperforming seaplane racers, but the Aeronautica felt they were up to the job, and ordered the company to develop a new seaplane racer powered by the new FIAT AS 6 engine. From the pen of designer, Castoldi flowed a drawing of a beautiful and lithe floatplane, with clean aerodynamic lines, low drag, and reduced weight. They designed the wing using duralumin with asymmetrical biconvex profile, and tail stabilizers of wooden construction. The revolutionary FIAT AS-6 24 cylinder V-engine could produce more than 2,500 hp and drove two large, coaxial, contra-rotating propellers. The hugely powerful engine produced prodigious amounts of heat which demanded maximum available cooling area, so Macchi designed the radiators to lie flush with the wing and float surfaces. The M.C. 72 was an amalgamation of all the latest technology, and as such rode the ragged edge of what was possible. As powerful as it was, it was a delicate balance to get it all to work reliably. Unfortunately, the new engine suffered from serious problems caused by dangerous backfires, which led to two fatal accidents involving pilots Monti and Bellini. These tragedies resulted in an Italian request to postpone the competition, but the British refused to budge, so the Regia Aeronautica felt compelled to pull out of the 1931 races. With the American team having dropped out previously, only the British ended up flying the race with their Supermarine S.6As and S.6Bs. The British wanted the race to be credible, and had designs on airspeed records as well, so the pilots pushed their aircraft to the edge, with the result that S.6A N247 crashed taking the life of its pilot G.L. Brinton. Predictably, of course, they did succeed in completing the race and won the Schneider Trophy outright with Flt.Lt. John Boothman successfully flew to victory in S.6B S1595 (now on display in London’s Science Museum). At this point, the Scuola Alta Velocità seemed to have outlived its usefulness, as the principal goal for its founding, winning the Schneider Trophy, was now irretrievably lost. Nevertheless Italo Balbo, conscious of the advanced level of technology and human performance reached, decided to entrust the unit, recently renamed the Reparto Alta Velocita or RAV (High-Speed Unit), with the task of breaking the airspeed record. A British pilot, Flt.Lt. George Stainforth had set the speed-to-beat of 655 km/h (407.5mph) in Supermarine S.6B S1596 just over two weeks after the 1931 Schneider races. In reality, the RAV received three primary objectives: i) break the speed record, ii) set the absolute record for speed over a 100 km distance (and therefore win the Coppa Bleriot created by the French pioneer for the first pilot to fly for 30 minutes at an average speed greater than 600 km/h), and iii) to participate in all the other international competitions of the period in which the speed element played an essential factor.