Schneider Trophy - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• The Schneider Cup is frequently referred to in the 1992 animated film Porco Rosso, even to the extent of director Hayao Miyazaki naming the film's antagonist Donald Curtiss, after American aircraft designers Glenn Curtiss and Donald Douglas.

• In the song "Bill Hosie" by Archie Fisher, the protagonist rebuilds a Supermarine S.5 seaplane that survived the 1927 Schneider Trophy Race. The plane, race, and trophy are referred to throughout the song. (Bill Hosie and the replica were both real. Hosie competed in the 1985 and 1986 Digital Schneider Trophy Races, and DEC part-sponsored his rebuild of the S.5 replica. He crashed during a test-flight of this replica on 23 May 1987, near Mylor, in Cornwall in the UK, just one month before that year's Digital Schneider Trophy Race. Hosie was killed. Details of the crash and its cause are in AIB Bulletin 9/87 published by the Accidents Investigation Branch of the UK's Department of Transport, 1987.)

• The film The First of the Few (1942) starring Leslie Howard as R. J. Mitchell centers on Mitchell's life as the designer of multiple Schneider Trophy winning seaplanes and then the Spitfire fighter plane.