Thunderboats Video is the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum's RU-vid Channel. The museum is located in Kent Washington near Seattle and has a huge collection of restored and running legendary unlimited hydroplanes as well as an enormous amount of artifacts, photos and films covering the entire history of hydroplane racing since the 1940's. Throughout 2024 Thunderboats Video will be adding dozens of rare films to this channel. Please join us by subscribing to this channel, and consider becoming a member of the museum. For info:
Hydroplane & Raceboat Museum 5917 South 196th Street Kent, WA 98032 (206) 764-9453 ddw@thunderboats.org Thunderboats.ning.com
Miss Pay and Pak is still my all time favorite boat. Coolest boat ever made. Seeing it as an 8 year old kid was indelible. My Dad was beer wagon 100% When the Pak won I lost my mind. I pulled that wooden hydro behind my bike all summer long that year.
This boat like the last version was the first of its kind and thus was my favorite until it flipped in a double flip that was the highest flip in hydro plane history right in front of me in Kennewick Washington
Nope nope nope, he wasn't on the water in Pasco. He got in the boat in Kennewick. No hydroplane driver has ever entered or left the race course from Pasco. Not once in almost 60 years.
I think I was at this race as a boy of 5. This film helps me clarify some of the visual memories I've kept of one of the hydroplane races my father took me to that was *not* the Detroit Gold Cup.
Bill's flawed "reasoning" for pushing past 50 years old, was bogus, and cost him his life. By 1980, he was very secure financially, had a "trophy wife" and sons...his pride took him down.
Muncey...wow....he seemed to be really considering giving racing up...and then, Atlas Van Lines threw him another lifeline, another chance to really dominate the sport. I wish the guy had listened to his inner voice, and quit while he was ahead. He was already the Babe Ruth of the sport.
Ray McMakin...was the perfect commentator for the 1970s,,,,fueled by enthusiasm, as well as cocaine!. Which is why his partying ways eventually led to his parking ways with KING TV.
Wonderful, that these series of videos from the 1950s/60s are so well-preserved!...No one not born and raised in Seattle during that era, could ever understand the incredible hold this sport had on my "Boomer" days as a young kid. I loved the original Thriftway, and was so upset when she came apart on the Potomac river, later in 1957. That first Thriftway was a close copy of Slo-Mo lV...the 2nd boat was coming along, in 1958...until the rudder failed, and Muncey somehow survived that terrifying crash. The 3rd Thriftway was, IMO, the best rendition of the classic "three point" design. With Muncey, it set a record for reliability, around 600 miles without breaking down, while winning a ton of trophies. I never thought Muncey would die...and I cried when he did...it was the death of my youth!
This has to be one of the best prop videos I've seen. Cuts through the myths and gets to the realities. Several areas of discussion were real eye openers
I was there, on that day in 1962...15 years old...watching my favorite boat, Century 21, flashing down the backstretch, with the barge announcer stating that "Muncey is hitting 170mph in the backstretch!". I was completely thrilled watching this qualifying run! IMO, that boat was the very best of the older style, 3-point hydros!
I just did some research on Brien Wygle...What a dude he was!...WW2 hero, test pilot for Boeing for many years, drove hydros for a couple of years, but had a family, and recognized the danger factor of hydroplanes, and sort of "bailed out" of the sport after a couple of years. He owned a small airplane for his personal use, and flew until he hit 80...lived to be 93 years old!...Another guy from "The Greatest Generation" of Americans...Intelligent, fearless, good family guy. He clearly was the best driver for Thriftway Too. This man was in love with flying, in planes, and also over the water in hydroplanes!
The Miss U is getting a makeover before hung from ceiling of Kent , Wa. Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum . Models don’t scale up well . A 16” pitch prop doesn’t sound right, My Safeboat prototype could turn a 21” p if empty but the stock pitch of most 45mph fishing boats is around 17” . Race water on 3 rd lap would have been deadly . I picture a Lawn Dart on the water had it reached liftoff speed . Is cool to look at
My favorite , I learned that a boat that corners flat and stable fast will beat faster top speed hulls and survive that rough “Race Water “. Testing is Not same as in a heat with lots of boats . I built the Nitro 1/12 scale Dumas kit RC and we lit it off in a bathtub during a keggar . Water went up the wall , across ceiling, and down the faucet wall as the Nitro took the Oxygen out of the small bathroom. One guy held on as it ran wide open until no gas . Epic and made me smile when T-Mobile put in a Swimming Pool for a commercial. The Restored Pak showed up for display at Henleys Resort on Silver Lake in Eatonville for driving school / apba race . Won my first heat of racing A Stock hydro and then capped it off with Mary Henley choosing me for the Henley Cup . Join the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum and YOU can be part owner !
Muncey was such an articulate ambassador of the sport, that eventually took his life...here he is casually explaining why the driver's seat in those boats did not have safety belts....being thrown clear was the hope...in Bill's case, he was not thrown far enough. I basically stopped following the sport after the Thriftway folks stopped racing. I knew that Muncey eventually did very well in the Blue Blaster...but something about that "pickle fork" hull design turned me off...and when jet engines showed up, I totally lost interest. The grip the Hydroplane racing had on my hometown of Seattle, in the 1950's and 1960's, was incredibly potent!...For years, it was the highlight of summertime in Seattle, the thunderboats could be heard from 10 miles away...it sent a thrill of anticipation down my spine, as a kid, and as a young adult too! Those days of more simple pleasures will never be with us again...I was lucky to be born and raised in Seattle!
I'm from Guntersville and I have heard my mom talking about muncey oly bardahal shoemaker Bernie little I love seeing the old videos like you my mom hated the turbines she called them vacuum cleaners
Fran Muncey...I had merely thought of her, as being just a "Trophy Wife"...His first wife Kit, seemed so supportive of his racing, in those earlier days, and I was kinda shocked when I heard they had divorced. It is clear to me now, that Fran was even more supportive, particularly of his later career..Of course, she had the advantage of being NOT a mother, so she could devote her time to her famous, successful, and increasingly wealthy husband! Time, as well as circumstances, can change relationships...for better, or worse. The more I learn about my boyhood hero, Bill Muncey, the more I admire him, as a man, and as a great spokesman for the sport. He clearly was still on a "roll" of ascending success, when his Fate took him away from us. He looked, and sounded even better at 50+ years, than he did in the earlier days of his first successes.
Bill had a reputation for being hot-tempered and difficult at times...But here, he is so articulate, so affable....and he seems to be in better physical condition here, in his early 50s, than he was 20 years earlier! He was my hero as a kid, and it is rather emotional for me now, to see how great this dedicated, well-spoken man was prepared, mentally and physically, to do his job! Mr. Muncey was a "man for all seasons" , also being an excellent musician, a disc jockey early in his career, a KING 5 "Dance Party" host, and at times also being a very good hydro event commentator! I wish my hydro hero had retired at age 50...but he certainly seems so at peace with his station in life, in this video!...We should all be so lucky, and so hard-working, as to achieve what Bill Muncey did in his shortened lifetime! He certainly did not allow himself to become just another, middle-aged, rather short, balding, overweight typical guy--which I myself did become later in my life...shame on me!
Why oh why...were they having to drive a 10 lap heat? It just was mostly a test of the ability of any boat, to finish such an overly long course...and it made for boring racing for the fans...oh, every speed on the back stretch was 128mph? Not likely...those boats would, even back then, hit 140-150mph in that area of the course. In later years, such "guesses" were not made very often! The late 1950s-early 60s, was a magical, very competitive time for the unlimiteds!...another good era was the later 1960s, into the early 1970s...the advent of those "vacuum cleaner" boats, IMO, spelled the end of the excitement. The sheer sound of those magnificent V12 airplane engines, was such an important aspect of enjoying this unique sport!...by the time Bill Muncey died, the sport was dying too!
Watching these powerful craft pulling out of the pit area, takes me right back to the one time, in 1962, when I was 14 years old, and took the bus down to Lake Washington. I saw Century 21, firing up, and cruising out of "Quill shaft Lagoon", unto the 3 mile course...Where Bill Muncey, my only hydro hero, tore up the course in a qualifying run, of round 118mph. very fast for those times. The roar of that Rolls-Merlin engine was so amazingly loud, that I had to hold my hands over my ears!..The sight of century 21-a beautiful boat-skipping down the back chute like a type of flying saucer, hitting 170mph, remains in my mind all these years later...Century 21 was Seattle's boat!...it was driven by the greatest driver of all time! I never thought that Bill Muncey would ever die, after all he had been through. Years later, while driving to work, the news came over my radio....I pulled the car over, and had a good cry!
When I was 8 years old I saw Slo mo shun V flip during a qualifying run on Lake Washington. Lou Fagel was driving. It happened on the back stretch closer to the North turn. We'd just arrived, sat down and it did a back flip and landed right side up coasting to a stop. Lou Fagel fell out when it was upside down. It landed so perfectly that I asked my older brother if he'd done that on purpose...hey, I was 8. Didn't the V then become Miss Seattle?
Muncey declared that this, the third iteration of the Thriftway boats, was the best boat he had ever raced in. It was indeed the very apogee of the three-point design, as executed by the great Ted! The boat used the rolls-Merlin engine, and also used nitrous oxide when needed. Muncey was the most skilled of drivers, and by 1962, stood tall in the sport-despite his short stature! The sound of that Rolls-Merlin at full chat, was the very pinnacle of what those older piston engines could sound like...Thunderboats, indeed!!!
Those 10 lap heats were really boring, and it was so hard on those boats. But I never quite understood as to why the course was shortened from 3+ miles long, to just 2 and a half.
Notice those cloudy skies? Even in summer, you never knew if it just might rain!..But actually, 1962 was a very unstable year for weather in Seattle. The worst of it, was that incredible Columbus Day Storm of 12 October!...I lived through it, and was initially caught up in it, while trying to deliver newspapers on my route, in the Green Lake area...The wind picked up quickly, from 10mph, to a sustained 60mph, with gusts into the 80s in Seattle, and even more in other areas of Western Washington. Truly unforgettable!...I am now 77, and will take memories of that monster storm to my grave. We have had a few fairly large storms since--but nothing as powerful, or long-lasting as that event. Accoring to meteorologists, Puget Sound only gets hit like that, maybe once every 200 years!
This was so much more than film clips of a hydro race!...It shows how naively "Gung-Ho" Seattleites were, about supporting their fair city. I was just five years old in 1952. But I can remember how "nice" people were to each other, in our neighborhoods across the city. People looked after each other, kept an eye on each other's kids! I had no fear, walking to and from my Kindergarten class at Daniel Bagley Elementary...not far from Greenlake! Times were more simple then, I feel fortunate to have been born a first wave Baby Boomer!...Even back then, Seattle had nearly 500,000 residents--but there was an overall feeling that we were city of neighbors..a large city, with smaller town values. Those days are gone, as so many of those happy folks we can see in these excellent film clips!
Seattle's own superstar guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, was fascinated at a kid, by the hydros, and his favorite boat was the TOO!...Jimi showed talent as a sketch artist and painter in school, and his family has a few of his drawings...he drew Thriftway Too a few times!
It is eerie, we see Bill Muncie, looking stunned and concerned....he was to meet a similar fate, 27 years later. Those old hydro drivers knew their number could be "up" at any time, yet they persisted!
"Then we went to Pasco and won all three heats there..." No you didn't, Dave! You were standing in Kennewick when you won those heats! Everybody in the whole damn sport does this and it drives me absolutely insane. When you come from Kennewick, you dont have much to be proud of. Please just give us this.
I have a piece of the Atlas Van Lines that Bill Muncey was killed in. It stopped at Shakey’s Pizza in Hazel Dell Washington when returning from Acapulco and a piece fell off into my hand.
