09/02/2026
On September 16, 1951 at Reading Pa. my grandfather got Bobby Barker to drive his stretched supercharged 110 CI Offy Midget that was stretched into a Sprint car. Barker won that day and took 17 seconds off the 20 lap record. My grandfather had repaired and put the car back together after a horrible crash at Salem where Charlie Eithier lost his life in July of 1951 two months prior.
When Barker went back to California he wrote my grandfather a letter saying he wanted to come back the next year and drive for him again.
But that was not to be and In November 1951 Barker, Mack Hellings, the pilot and a photographer were killed in a small plane accident over the mountains in Northern California traveling to a race. Barker and Hellings are buried next to each other in Glendale, California
Robert “Bob” Barker
Jun. 13, 1918- Nov.11, 1951
El Paso, Texas, USA
Race car driver, engineer, designer
Barker was a midget race car driver, and also worked at Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank, Calif. Using the technical knowledge he gained at the aircraft plant, Barker liked to tinker with his race car engines, and many of his modifications are still being used today.
Barker started racing midget cars shortly after he graduated from high school in Houston. In the late 1930s, he suffered serious injuries in a race when his car flipped and trapped him, with his right arm pinned against the hot exhaust pipe. As quickly as his injuries healed, he was back on the track and, in 1941 and 1942, he finished second in the point standings in the midget racing league.
Barker, who was born in El Paso, Texas, was interested the technical and design side of racing, and had developed a new engine specially designed for midget racers. In the late 1940s, Barker came up with a design for a new engine, called the "Barker Engine."
In 1948, Barker -- who had no formal training in engineering, drafting or design -- came up with a design for a cheaper, simpler version of the popular Offenhauser midget engine. His new engine -- called the “Barker Engine” and sold for $1,755 through his B&B Automotive shop in Burbank, Calif., compared to about $10,000 for an Offenhauser -- was a twin-cam, rocker-arm racing engine, specifically designed for midget racers.
In September 1949, Barker wrote an article about his new engine for “Motor Trend” magazine. “In the course of testing in midgets,” Barker wrote, “it will probably have many minor bugs that will have to be eliminated before the engine will be placed in production. The engine had no actual testing or proving period -- from the drawing board the engine was made, tested on a dynamometer, and then placed in a race car against competition.”
Robert “Bob” Barker and Ronald “Mack” Hellings were friends and competitors on the West Coast midget car racing circuit in the late 1940s. Both had achieved success racing around the dirt-track ovals in the popular weekend racesand both lived less than two miles from each other in homes in Burbank, California.
By the late 1940s, their careers were heading in different directions. Although he continued to race the midgets, Hellings, who was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, was also racing larger cars. He raced four times in the Indianapolis 500, each year from 1948 to 1951. His best year was 1948, when he finished in fifth place.
Hellings started his racing career on motorcycles. After World War II, he switched to midget cars, and quickly began setting track speed records and taking home first-place trophies. On Aug. 13, 1946, Hellings won a 30-lap race at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, in front of 65,000 fans -- a record crowd for midget racing. The attendance record was broken four days later in a 250-lap midget race at the Coliseum in Los Angeles, with Hellings finishing second.
Hellings tried out for the Indianapolis 500 in 1948 and, in typical Hellings style, he won $500 by setting the day's fastest qualifying time. Hellings started the race in the 21st position, and finished in fifth place. A month later, Hellings finished second – seven seconds behind the winner – in the 100-mile AAA national championship race at Langhorne Speedway in Langhorne, Pa.
In July 1947, Hellings, who gained the nicknames "Monopoly Mack" and "The Burbank Bombshell," won again in a 30-lap race at the Rose Bowl -- his fifth victory in eight races on the track. He also had eight wins in 11 starts at the Culver City Speedway.
Although he was racing the Indy cars, Hellings continued to race midgets. In August 1948, Hellings was seriously injured in a race at the Illinois State Fair when his car collided with another car on the opening lap, and rolled over three times. Hellings was hospitalized in serious condition with head injuries. He returned to racing six months later in a 50-lap midget race at the Carrell Speedway in Gardena -- and win.
On the morning of Sunday, Nov. 11, 1951, Hellings, 36, and Barker, 33, boarded a rented, single-engine, four-seat Piper Pacer airplane at Brackett Field in Pomona, Calif. Hellings was scheduled to race that evening at Bay Meadows Racetrack in San Mateo, just south of San Francisco. The pilot of the plane was Robert Harris, 38, of Arcadia, Calif., one of Barker’s co-workers at the Lockheed plant and 28-year-old George Lee Harvey Jr., an official photographer for the United Racing Association for Speed Age
The wreckage of the plane and the bodies of the four men were found on Thursday, Nov. 15, at the 4,000-foot level in the Tehachapi Mountains in Kern County, Calif.
Hellings and Barker were buried next to each other in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, Calif.
