In April of 1928, American hero Frank Lockhart was killed in a violent, 200 mph crash on the sands of Daytona Beach, Florida. This is the newsreel footage from that tragic day. 

Frank Lockhart was only 23 years old when, as a rookie, he won the 1926 Indianapolis 500. He ran away with the race by more than two laps, rising from backup driver to champion in the span of a month. Lockhart used his race winnings (the winner’s purse was $29,500, a fortune at the time) to buy his Miller race car, then a second one, winning four more AAA championship events that season and setting track records across the country. In 1927 he sat on the pole for the Indianapolis 500, using an intercooler he developed, and won five more AAA events.

With backing from the Stutz Motor Company, for 1928 Lockhart designed and built a revolutionary race car to claim the absolute world speed record on land. Tiny compared to the giant aircraft-powered monsters that competed for the land speed record in those days, Lockhart’s Stutz Black Hawk Special used two 91 CID Miller engines wedged into a narrow, missile-like body shell.

At Daytona Beach on April 25, 1928, Lockhart ran 198.29 mph on his warm-up run, within easy reach of the 207 mph record set by Ray Keech earlier that year in the 81-liter Triplex Special. (The Triplex was powered by three huge Liberty aircraft engines.)  On the followup run, the Stutz cut a tire—on a seashell, it is believed—and flipped violently over the sand multiple times, pitching Lockhart from the cockpit and killing him instantly. He was barely 25 years old. Video below.