Al Putnam’s final ride

updated December 12 2017

 

 

Al Putnam in 1946

 

George Kuehn born in 1907 grew up in a wealthy family in Milwaukee Wisconsin to become what was then known as a “gentleman sportsman.” Kuehn was the 1937 and 1939 APBA (American Powerboat Association) outboard class high-point champion and at one time held the C-class outboard world record, made the move into automobile racing in a big way as in late 1941 he became an Indianapolis race car owner.

 

 

 

 

Kuehn was president of Metal Products Corporation which manufactured the Flambeau outboard motor in a factory located at 245 East Keefe Avenue in Milwaukee Wisconsin. The 2-1/2 and 5 horsepower Flambeau outboard motors were unique as both were constructed using a two-piece clamshell aluminum casting which resulted in light weight a very attractive benefit.  Flambeau also advertised that their motors sported two other features - “uni-control for one simple control for fuel mixture” and "visual control priming - to take the guesswork out of starting."

 

 

 

George’s father Louis Kuehn was born in Alsace-Lorraine immigrated to the United States in 1888 at age 20.  Louis arrived in this country with $60 in his pocket and at first worked in a pottery shop in Canton Ohio. He later became the Midwestern territory salesman for a steel products company then he left that firm and started the La Crosse Steel Roofing & Corrugating Company of La Crosse, Wisconsin in 1896.  

In 1902, Louis sold his La Crosse firm and relocated to Milwaukee where with the help of the Fred Pritzlaff of the Pritzlaff Hardware Company, he founded the Milwaukee Corrugating Company.  Initially, the Milwaukee firm produced corrugated steel siding but Louis steadily expanded the company’s product line through acquisitions to feature a wide selection of products for the hardware and sheet metal trades.

By the 1920s Milwaukee Corrugating was one of the country’s leading building materials suppliers offering items such as steel roof tiles and stamped metal ceilings with branches in six cities. In 1930, the company name was changed to Milcor Steel Company and In 1936 Milcor was purchased by Inland Steel Company for three million dollars. Louis remained involved as Milcor’s chairman until 1940 when he retired and later helped his son fund the creation of the Metal Products Corporation in 1943.  

The car George Kuehn bought was a “three-spring” championship car, with two parallel leaf springs on the front axle and a transverse spring for the rear suspension had been built in 1936 by Curly Wetteroth for Harry Hartz. According the fellow historian Michael Ferner the car with its body built by Myron Stevens proved to be too heavy at 1800 pounds to be competitive on half-mile tracks but was a decent mile track car.

Hartz’ driver Ted Horn did not care for the new single-seater and only drove the grey and blue car twice – both times in the George Vanderbilt Cup races held at Roosevelt Raceway in 1936 and 1937.  After the car sat idle for the 1937 season, in 1938, Hartz sold the car to the Chicago IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) union president and racing team owner Mike Boyle.

Boyle Racing Team mechanic Harry “Cotton” Henning pulled the car's Miller engine and fitted the car with a 255-cubic inch four-cylinder Offenhauser engine. Painted in Boyle Racing’s trademark maroon and cream colors, Elbert “Babe” Stapp drove the car to victory in August 1939 at the Milwaukee Mile. 
 

Harry McQuinn drove the car in 1940 in two AAA races but failed to finish. After the 1941 season during which the ‘Boyle Special’ was driven by George Connor in three races with two top three finishes, Boyle sold the car to George Kuehn who planned to enter it in the 1942 Indianapolis 500-mile race for driver Adelbert William “Al” Putnam.

Al Putnam was born in Salt Lake City Utah in 1908, but grew up in southern California, and began his racing career in the nineteen thirties at San Diego's 5/8 mile Silvergate Speedway. Throughout the thirties Putnam competed in the AAA (American Automobile Association) Pacific Coast championship up and down the West Coast with races at the second 5/8-mile Ascot track, Oakland and Legion Ascot (the third track called "Ascot"). Al finished 17th in the 1936 AAA Pacific Coast standings prior to his relocation to the Midwest.

Putnam considered himself a “hard luck driver” at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  He tried to qualify for the 1936 Indianapolis 500-mile race in one of Phil Shafer’s “Buick 8 Specials” but he wound up as the first alternate after his ten-lap qualifying average speed of 110.481 miles per hours (MPH) was surpassed by Emil Andres’ 111.455 MPH qualifying run.

 

In 1937, Putnam returned to the 2-1/2 mile brick paved oval again behind the wheel of one of Shafer’s Buicks sponsored the local Indianapolis Kennedy Tank Manufacturing firm but once again his qualifying speed fell short of making the 33-car field.

Prior to the 1938 Indianapolis 500-mile race, Al, who had been married previously with two sons, married Pearl the widow of William “Spider” Matlock who had died in a crash at Legion Ascot Speedway in January 1936 along with driver Al Gordon.

 

Being a newlywed must have helped as Al qualified for his first Indianapolis race driving a Miller-powered Stevens chassis owned by Arthur Sims with sponsorship from Tidewater Petroleum through its Troy Tydol brand. Al started 23rd in the first race since the end of the two-man AAA “Junk Era” but finished a disappointing 32rd position after the Miller engine broke its crankshaft on lap 15.

In May 1939 Al who had relocated to Detroit was at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway all month but never was nominated for a ride.  During the 1939 race Al drove relief on two occasions for Harry McQuinn for a total of 59 laps in the Brisko-powered machine.  

In 1940, Putnam was named as the driver of Tony Gulotta’s Offenhauser powered Clyde Adams chassis sponsored by the Refinoil Motor Oil Company. Refinoil advertised as the “tough-bodied oil” the result of a “patented refining system that lubricates your motor better and lasts longer” and was “guaranteed equal to or better than any 35 cent per quart motor oil at 12 cents per quart.”

Al qualified the Refinoil Special at 120.818 MPH to start from the twenty-eighth position and was still running when race officials flagged off the remaining cars due to rain. Later in the season on Labor Day Al Putnam was gravely injured in a pre-race practice crash at the Moody Mile at the New York State Fairgrounds in Syracuse New York
 In 1941, Al who had recovered from his injuries and relocated to Indianapolis, drove all three of the AAA championship series races for Milwaukee car owner William Schoof in a six-year old Curly Wetteroth chassis powered by a 270-cubic inch Offenhauser engine. Al bumped his way into the 33-car starting field with a speed of 121.951 MPH that bumped out Louis Durant’s Mercury V-8-powered ‘G&S Special.’ 

 

The ‘Schoof Special’ went on to finish the 1941 '500' in 12th place at an average speed of 101.381 MPH after Al Putnam was relieved at lap 154. Louis Durant who had driven the Schoof car in 1938 and 1939, drove the car the rest of the way to the full 200-lap distance.

Later in the 1941 season, Putnam finished fourth in the bright orange ‘Schoof Special’ at the Milwaukee mile in August and eleventh at Syracuse New York in September and wound up twelfth in the 1941 AAA drivers’ championship.     

Al and the Kuehn crew members prepared their new car for the 1942 Indianapolis 500-mile race but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941, plunged the United States into World War II.  The coming of war brought about the cancellation of the 1942 Indianapolis ‘500’ on December 29 1941 followed later by the government mandated cessation of all automobile racing in June 1942 to conserve rubber and gasoline. Like all race cars, the Kuehn/Putnam car went into long term storage for the duration of the war. 

During the War, Al Putnam was one of 3,250 workers at the massive Indianapolis Curtiss-Wright Corporation plant that manufactured hollow steel airplane propellers. The historic 400,000 square foot plant on South Kentucky Avenue at Harding Street originally part of the massive Nordkyke Marmon factory before it was purchased by Curtiss-Wright in 1941.

During the war Al Putnam was featured in an article published in the Indianapolis Star newspaper on Memorial Day 1943 that marked the second year of no racing at the great Brickyard.  In the article Al was quoted; "No, I haven't won a Speedway race, yet, because something always has gone haywire, but I did manage to make a good showing in each race. And I intend to win some day." Putnam was shown in a photograph that accompanied the article with fellow Curtiss-Wright employee George Souders the 1927 Indianapolis 500-mile race winner.

Within months after the war was won, Curtiss-Wright laid off its employees and closed the plant, but transferred Al Putnam to one of its Indianapolis based subsidiaries, LGS Manufacturing.  LGS whose product line consisted of spring clutches had at one time been a division of the Cord Corporation, and became part of Curtiss-Wright after their purchase of a number of Cord’s manufacturing assets including LGS after the collapse of the Cord Corporation during 1938.  

 

Al Putnam posed in the LGS Spring Clutch Special

for a promotional photo for Permalube Motor Oil.

 

On March 7, 1946 Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Wilbur Shaw announced the cream and blue #12 car owned by Kuehn to be driven by Putnam and sponsored by Putnam’s employer, LGS Spring Clutches as one of first 10 entries in the 1946 Indianapolis 500-mile race.  

 

Al posed with two Indianapolis motor officers

 

Al qualified for the 1946 Indianapolis 500 on Wednesday May 22, described as “the full day of sunshine since time trials last weekend.” There had been three qualifying runs held on Monday May 20th after persistent rain on Sunday May 19th had prevented qualifying runs.

Al’s average speed was the slowest of the five cars that qualified which also included Emil Andres, Mauri Rose, Joie Chitwood and Russell Snowberger. Putnam’s average speed of 116.483 MPH for the 10 mile run was barely above the minimum speed of 115 MPH set by Speedway management. Even though it was the slowest time in the field Al’s speed held up and Putnam started the first post-war Indianapolis 500-mile race from the thirteenth position.

 

 

The LGS Spring Clutches Special on pit lane on Race Day

 

On Memorial Day, George Robson who started 15th in the Thorne Engineering Special on the outside of the same row as Putnam, took over the race lead on lap 93, and led the rest of the way. Meantime, Al was relieved at lap 110 by veteran George Connor whose own entry, the “Ed Walsh Special” Kurtis chassis, had dropped out on the 38th lap. Connor was at the wheel ten laps later when the ‘LGS Spring Clutches Special’ was forced to out of the race with a broken magneto and was awarded a fifteenth place finish.   

During August 1946, Kuehn sold the car to Indianapolis resident Richard L “Dick” Palmer and Rex Mays qualified the ex-Hartz machine dubbed the “Bowes Seal Fast Special” at Atlanta’s Lakewood Speedway but retired after just three laps due to a loss of oil pressure.  

 

 

 

The “Palmer Special” was entered for the ‘‘Indianapolis 100,’ promoted by the Indianapolis Auto Racing Association Inc. a group run by former riding mechanic driver and current car owner Lou Moore. On Sunday September 15 1946 there were 16 mostly rag-tag cars on the grounds of the Indiana State Fairgrounds mile for the first dirt race to be run in Indianapolis since before the war.

The racing world was still in mourning from the tragic crash two weeks earlier at Atlanta’s dusty Lakewood Speedway in which the reigning Indianapolis champion George Robson and veteran driver George Barringer died after they collided with Billy DeVore in the slow ‘Schoof Special.’  

 

 

The ‘Indianapolis 100’ program contained a memorial page dedicated to the two fallen heroes lost at Lakewood Special 

  

 

 

Al a veteran at 37 years old who was driving his first dirt race since 1941, was the fourth car out and was on his third warm up lap before qualifying  when the car skidded at the west end of track between third and fourth turns. The cream and blue “Palmer Special” crashed through the wooden fence and hit the concrete abutment of the vehicle access tunnel nearly head-on. The impact was so powerful that the steering wheel pierced Putnam’s chest and he was thrown from the car.

After the gravely injured Putnam was loaded into an ambulance, the confused ambulance driver reportedly made several laps around the track as he missed the track exit several times.  By the time the ambulance carrying the 37-year old Putnam reached in the field hospital at the nearby Fairgrounds Coliseum building where his wife Pearl was waiting Putnam was pronounced dead on arrival.

Following the crash cleanup and fence repairs, qualifying was completed with Rex Mays in the mighty Bowes Seal Fast Winfield straight eight powered machine on the pole position with a best lap of 41.34 seconds.  The race’s fourteenth and final starter Bud Bardowski was determined by a draw after both Charlie Rogers in the ‘Jewell Special’ and Bardowski in his ‘Army Recruit Special’ were unable to complete their qualifying runs.  Rex Mays dominated the race as he led every lap from the pole position and won by a lap over second place finisher Mauri Rose who had started sixth in the Blue Crown Lencki machine.

According to the Palmer team’s chief mechanic Bill Castle, the car originally built for Harry Hartz in 1936 was scrapped. Al, whose two children lived with their mother in Santa Ana California, was laid to rest on September 20 1946 in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. Al’s widow Pearl was laid to rest next to him after her death in July 1989 and the pair shares a headstone.

It would be easy for a casual observer to discount Al Putnam’s AAA championship career which included just six appearances in the famed Indianapolis 500-mile race, two of those as a relief driver, with a best finish of fifteenth in his final ‘500,’ but clearly the man was dedicated to racing and determined despite repeated misfortunes.         

Scans of the 1946 “Indianapolis 100” program courtesy of Wesley Winterink

Thanks to Jim Thurman for his information regarding Al Putnam's early racing career on the West Coast.

Black and White photos are courtesy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection part of the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Scholarship

The author is always interested in learning more about Al Putnam’s early racing career on the West Coast, as well as contact information for Al Putnam’s children.