Our Most Renowned Aviator
Sir Charles Edward Kingsford-Smith, known to the world as Smithy remains one of
the most celebrated pilots of international aviation’s golden age.
For seven years, from 1928 to his death in 1935, he was the most revered public
hero in Australia. His epic and dangerous oceanic flights, through destructive
weather in fragile aeroplanes, were followed on radio around the world like the
moon missions of 40 years later.
At the end of his great pioneer journeys crowds of 200,000 would flock to Sydney’s
Mascot aerodrome to cheer and chant and hoist him shoulder high. He was treated
like royalty – and infinitely more publicised than the country’s leaders, or any
Hollywood star.
A small man with a craggy face, rapid wit and speech, whose party trick was to
drink beer standing on his head, his trademark was a famously broad grin around
the jutting cigarettes he chain-smoked.
His life was lived frenetically and often outrageously. From the horrors of the First World War, in which some
of his toes were shot off in aerial combat, he emerged with a contempt for authority and a determination to
live life hedonistically and recklessly.
He created for himself a world
compulsively ruled by flying, alcohol and
women. Yet he was universally loved and
worshipped. He remained totally
unaffected by fame – quite disarmingly
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... the country's economy.While there is ample evidence suggesting that World War II increased the opportunities for Argentine industrialization and ... experienced any economic growth at all during the Second World War.Professor Diaz' argument is further supported by University of ... Publishers, 1969.Humphreys, R. A.. Latin America and the Second World War: Volume One 1939-1942. London: Athlone Press, ...
humble and accessible, constantly
drawing into his orbit men and women
dazzled by his warmth, his enthusiasms
and his unique charisma.
But behind the permanent grin he wore
and the stream of his repartee, behind his
image of flying genius and
indestructibility, there lay a more frail
human being – increasingly affected by
the stresses of his often terrifying flights
and the awesome pressures of great fame.
Smithy was born at Hamilton, Brisbane
Australia on February 9th 1897. In the
1914-18 war he served in the Royal
Flying Corps, was injured and awarded
the Military Cross. In 1918 he became an
instructor in the Royal Air Force and then
moved to commercial flying in 1919.
The Fokker Trimotor
The Fokker Trimotor, more correctly
known as the Fokker F.VII-3m, was the
plane which opened up the first really
long-distance routes to air traffic. The
most famous of the Fokker Trimotors was
the Southern Cross, owned and piloted by
the Australian Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith
(known as Smithy to his friends and
admirers.) Southern Cross was built from the wreckage of two damaged Fokkers.
Kingsford-Smith, a former squadron leader in World War I, and Charles T.P. Ulm decided to try the first
crossing of the Pacific. In 1927 they bought, from the Australian polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins, the Fokker
wreckage without engines or instruments. With the help of the Boeing company, the plane was rebuilt and
modified with new engines for increased range. She was filled with the newest radio and navigation
equipment. Named Southern Cross, and later affectionately nicknamed the old bus, the plane was to become
the most popular individual aircraft of its era.
After getting financial support from a wealthy Californian, Kingsford-Smith and Ulm made test flights to
determine the maximum fuel load which would allow the Southern Cross just barely to take off and fly. A flight
around Australia in just over 10 days was used as a test for the Pacific crossing and the Southern Cross
was shipped to North America early in 1928.
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Crossing of the Pacific
Aviation’s last great ocean barrier, the Pacific, was conquered in 1928 by Australians Charles
Kingsford-Smith and Charles Ulm in the Fokker F. VII/3m Southern Cross.
The Australians employed two Americans, Harry Lyon and James Warner, as navigator and radio operator.
Aware that it would take bull’s-eye accuracy to hit their refueling stops, the Hawaiian and Fijian islands,
they equipped their tri-motor Fokker with the latest blind flying instruments and radio equipment.
During flight tests they gradually increased the Fokker’s take-off weight to 15,800 pounds – over twice its
empty weight – enabling them to carry the 1,300 gallons of fuel required on the critical 3,200-mile Hawaii to
Fiji leg.
The flight from Oakland to Hawaii went without a hitch, but the 33-hour haul to Fiji was a nightmare of
storms, torrential rain, headwinds, and turbulence.
It frequently took the combined strength of both pilots to control the plane and at one stage it appeared they
would run out of fuel before reaching Fiji. They eventually landed on Fiji’s largest clearing – a 1,300-foot
athletic field.
With no brakes, Kingsford-Smith performed a controlled ground-loop to prevent going into the trees. After
taking off from a nearby beach on the final leg to Brisbane, Australia, the airmen again encountered terrible
conditions.
“One after another, rainstorms charged us. There was
no lull. We flew in a black void as raking winds jolted
the plane,” Kingsford-Smith recalled.
Smithy Acknowledged by Government
In 1932, Kingsford-Smith was knighted for his
services to aviation. He made his last flight in
‘Southern Cross’ in July 1935. The plane was
acquired by the Australian National Museum in
Canberra in 1941. It was restored to flying condition
in 1945, made its last flight in 1946. In 1958 it went
on permanent display in its own hall at Eagle Farm
Airport, Brisbane.
Other notable flights undertaken by ‘Smithy’ included breaking the existing record of Squadron Leader
Hinkler by flying from England to Australia in ten and a half days in October 1930, flying the first
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Which areas of Australia are prone to bush fires and why? The Australian climate is mostly hot, dry and prone to bushfires. In the southeast, occasional strong winds with summertime cold fronts can lead to extreme fire danger. Many of Australia's native plants burn easily. The eucalypts' high oil content makes them particularly fire prone. The big areas of dry grass common in mid-to-late summer ...
all-Australian air mail flight to England and back in 1931 and beating his own record by flying from England
to Australia in seven days, 4 hours and 50 minutes in 1933.
A plague has erected in the Passenger Terminal at Archerfield airport commemorating the first flight across
the Pacific Ocean from Australia to the United States when Sir Charles Kingsford Smith took off from
Archerfield Aerodrome on 21 October 1934.
The Final Flight
The fate of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith remains one of aviation’s great unsolved mysteries. At dusk on 7
November 1935 he and his co-pilot mechanic, Tommy Pethybridge, took off from Allahabad in India to fly
non-stop through the night to Singapore. They were seen to pass over Calcutta, Akyab and Rangoon –
which they overflew at 1.30 am.
Sometime around 2.50 that morning, 8 November, another Australian pilot, Jimmy Melrose who was heading
south from Rangoon in a much slower plane, a Percival Gull, was excited to see the Altair overtake him over
the Andaman Sea. On arrival in Singapore later that day Melrose was surprised to learn that the Lady
Southern Cross had not arrived.
Despite a huge search of the entire Rangoon-Singapore route by squadrons of RAF aircraft no trace of the
Altair was found for 18 months. In May 1937 its starboard undercarriage leg was picked up by Burmese
fishermen on the rocky shore of Aye Island off the south coast of Burma about 140 miles south-east of
Rangoon.
The theory grew that Smithy had flown into the 460-foot top of the jungle-covered island and the aircraft
had plunged into the sea, the wheel breaking off and floating ashore. But an Australian expedition to the
island in 1983 searched the seabed without success.
However, if Melrose had genuinely seen the Altair overtake him, and they were the only two aircraft in
Burma airspace that night, then Smithy would have crashed at least 100 miles south of Aye – and the wheel
drifted north. The conclusions that five years research into the mystery led Ian Mackersey finally to arrive at
are fully detailed in his book.
