From Time magazine, January 6, 1933 issue: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,744913,00.html
The All-American Air Races at Miami are never as important to aeronautics as they are to Miami. Designers do not build special racing planes for the Miami meet as they do for the National Air Races in September. Speed records are rarely jeopardized. But there is a high degree of sociability and everyone has a pleasant time.
The fifth annual races, run off last week at Miami Municipal Airport, had been threatened by Depression. Prize money was reduced, few cups were donated. There was no free gasoline for contestants. The show needed an angel. Up stepped bristle-bearded Henry Latham Doherty, utility tycoon who lately bought swank Miami hotels and beach clubs. Alert to the promotion value of the meet he posted $2,500 and a cup for an amateur pilot's race from Daytona Beach to Miami, at the end of a pilgrimage sponsored by the U. S. Amateur Air Pilots' Association. Also he invited the contestants to be his guests for five days. Consequently, 87 planes entered the amateur cruise to Florida. (Last year there were .22.) Of the 87 entrants, 53 turned up at the meet on opening day; 25 more, delayed by weather, straggled in during the next two days. Winner of the trophy and $1.000 first prize was J. Heron Grossman III of Wilmington, N. C.
The races proper were entertaining but not remarkable. Fastest time was 205 m.p.h., scored in a free-for-all by spindly, one-eyed "Jimmy" Wedell whose Wedell-Williams speedsters hold transcontinental records in both directions. In stiff competition 205 m.p.h. would hardly place in a qualifying heat.
Fattest prize of the meet, the Col. E. H. R. Green "$6,500 trophy" plus $300 cash for planes of 125 h. p. or less, was won by Roy Liggett of Wichita. In a tiny red Cessna with clipped wings and retractable landing gear he easily led the field around the triangular course at 194 m.p.h. The Curtiss Trophy, for planes of 500 to 800 cu. in. piston displacement, went also to a Cessna flown by Alton B. Sherman of Hyannis, Mass.
The meet was happily free of fatalities, but at one point the shocked audience thought it was about to witness one. A half-dozen Marine planes came screaming down upon the field in a formation dive. All pulled out of it except one. piloted by Lieut. Glenn M. Britt, which continued to shoot earthward at 300 m.p.h. About 250 ft. above the ground Lieut. Britt jumped clear, pulled his ripcord. His 'chute barely billowed open before he struck the ground, just after his plane crashed in front of the grandstand. Lieut. Britt picked himself up, hurried to a microphone, greeted the crowd: "Hello, everybody! I'm not hurt, thank you."
A spectacular feature of the meet was the visit of the U. S. S. Akron. Visitors discovered that every road from which they could catch even a distant glimpse of the moored ship led also to the airport, that those roads were blocked by Miami policemen selling tickets to the meet. Before departing for Cuba the Akron hovered over the airport, launched her five planes which engaged in a mock fight and then, one by one, returned to be taken back into the belly of the mother ship.
