Flying the Southern Cross

by Michael Molkentin

  Ulm’s parents insisted on his discharge as a minor following his wounding at Gallipoli in 1915. He re-enlisted with their blessing two years later once he had turned 18.

  With their permission, Ulm re-enlisted in 1917, following his 18th birthday. He arrived in France in late June 1918 but suffered shrapnel wounds to his right leg just two weeks later.

  Kingsford Smith relished the opportunity to work as a motorcycle dispatch rider in Egypt and France.

  ‘Private Charles Jackson’—the pseudonym Ulm used to enlist in 1914—has a formal portrait taken in Egypt in 1915.

  Kingsford Smith wore these Royal Flying Corps wings in combat over the Western Front in 1917. Eighty-eight years later, Australian astronaut Andy Thomas would carry them into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.

  Like most Australian soldiers, Ulm played the part of tourist well and made the most of the exotic locations in which he found himself.

  The injury’s severity kept him out of front-line service for the rest of the war. It was during this brief second stint of active service that Ulm had an introduction to aviation when, while training in Britain, a friend in the Royal Flying Corps took him on several joyflights. Ulm considered the experience a ‘revelation’ and immediately perceived the ‘vast potentialities’ of ‘money and public prominence’ aeroplanes represented.

  Also keen to get to the front, Kingsford Smith enlisted on 10 February 1915, the day after his 18th birthday. In hindsight, he would consider it the defining moment of his life. He fought at Gallipoli in late 1915 and afterwards served in Egypt as a motorcycle dispatch rider.

  Along with most of the Australian Imperial Force, Kingsford Smith went to France in early 1916. Although enamoured with his motorcycle, he seized an opportunity to apply for the Royal Flying Corps, his youth, private school education and experience with

  Gallipoli experience and a resolute personality marked Ulm as an ideal non-commissioned officer when he re-enlisted in 1917.

  In early 1917 Kingsford Smith (right) attended the School of Military Aeronautics at Oxford to learn the business of being an officer in the Royal Flying Corps.

  machines making him an ideal candidate for training as a pilot. With 36 hours of solo flying experience, he went to the front as a fighter pilot in June 1917, just in time to participate in some of the heaviest aerial fighting of the war above the Ypres Salient. A seemingly natural flier, Kingsford Smith earned a Military Cross for shooting down four enemy aircraft in his first month at the front. Shot down himself in August, he suffered wounds and mental strain that would detain him in Britain as an instructor for the rest of the war. The experience, however, failed to dampen his enthusiasm. He finished the war determined to make a career of aviation. As he told his mother in a letter from Britain, ‘flying has a good future, just you wait and see’.

  The war had introduced both men to the wonders, thrills and commercial possibilities of flying, an effect it also had on the wider world. For all the turmoil and devastation it left in its wake, the Great War also focused an immense amount of creative energy into the development of aviation. By the end of the war, aircraft could fly substantially higher, faster and longer than they had just four years previously. And from the war emerged vast stockpiles of surplus aircraft and thousands of unemployed pilots—men, who, like Kingsford Smith, hoped to make a living out of their newfound thrill. Within months of the Armistice these ex-war fliers were establishing the world’s first airmail and passenger services around Europe and the United States, rapidly transforming transportation as people knew it.

  ‘A care-free, cigarette-smoking, leave-seeking lot of young devils who feared nothing, except being brought down behind enemy lines’, is how Kingsford Smith (second row, second from the right) later recalled his fellow officers in No. 19 Squadron RFC. The reality of aerial combat was in fact somewhat darker.

  Recognising the potential of aviation for a vast, sparsely populated country like Australia, in March 1919 the federal government announced a £10,000 prize for the first aviator to fly from England to Australia in under 30 days. Kingsford Smith and some ex-Flying Corps mates attempted to enter but struggled to find an aircraft manufacturer to back them. In the slack months following the war they had skylarked around England in a barnstorming outfit, becoming notorious for reckless flying and, some alleged, insurance fraud.

  Bitterly disappointed, Kingsford Smith went to the United States hoping to find backing for a trans-Pacific flight to Australia. Given the aircraft of the day, it was a hopelessly optimistic proposition that found no support. He ended up working in Hollywood as a stunt pilot before returning to Australia in early 1921, restless and broke. For a few months Kingsford Smith flew for a cooperative known as Diggers Aviation Co., ferrying people around New South Wales. Dangerous flying and drinking cost him his job following a series of accidents. For the next two years Kingsford Smith worked on Australia’s first scheduled airmail service, flying between Geraldton and Derby for West Australian Airways Ltd, a company started by fellow ex-Royal Flying Corps pilot Norman Brearley.

  ‘I very soon realised that my flying life would be short indeed if I continued at that game for very long’: Kingsford Smith working as a stunt man in Hollywood in 1920, dangling from the undercarriage.

  Following a short-lived marriage and ‘bored with the monotony of it all’, Kingsford Smith revived his trans-Pacific aspirations and teamed up with colleague Keith Anderson. Like Kingsford Smith, Anderson had flown during the war, been wounded and was in his mid-20s. Both men had also spent time overseas during their childhoods, Kingsford Smith in Canada and Anderson in South Africa. The similarities ended there, however. In contrast to Kingsford Smith’s electrifying charisma and impetuosity, Anderson was quiet and reserved, almost painfully pleasant and measured in his thoughts and actions. Ulm would later sum him up as ‘a simple soul with a broad grin and an intensely parochial outlook’. Keith Anderson was, in short, the sort of man easily trammelled by more assertive peers.

  To raise capital for their attempt on the Pacific, Kingsford Smith, Anderson and Bob Hitchcock, a mechanic they had worked with in Western Australia, established an airline to operate out of Sydney. They returned east in January 1927, flying a pair of Bristol Tourer biplanes. Although they failed to break any records, the newspapers covered the flight, introducing the public to Kingsford Smith for the first time.

  Keith Anderson (left) and Bob Hitchcock (right) had a troubled association with Kingsford Smith and Ulm that would eventually have tragic consequences.

  Meanwhile, Ulm had returned to Sydney from the war also determined to go into the aviation business. ‘Make no mistake’, he confidently told an ex-soldier mate, ‘the whole world will be on wings soon and I’m going to put it there’. With £1,000 he had shrewdly made from a £50 investment in London, Ulm established the Aviation Service Company to provide regular services around New South Wales. The venture, in his words, turned out a ‘complete and unmitigated disaster’, promptly going into insolvency. It marked the beginning of a string of failures for Ulm, the Australian Aero Club recording that by 1926 he held ‘the record’ of being associated with ‘no fewer than five extinct aviation companies’. ‘I began to realise’, he later wrote, ‘that the greatest risk to life in aviation was probably starvation’. Ulm had married in 1919—a son, John, following two years later— but his financial woes led to divorce. Following the break-up, John stayed with his mother and would only see his father occasionally.

  Ulm was surveying his business prospects in January 1927 when he read about Kingsford Smith and Anderson’s flight from Perth. Approaching the two pilots, he convinced them to take him into the partnership to manage a bid for a government contract to run an air service between Adelaide and Perth. Plans were progressing when in May 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic earning worldwide fame and immense fortune. It prompted the three men to discuss an equivalent venture, Ulm and Kingsford Smith being surprised to learn that each other had envisag
ed a Pacific flight, independently, for several years. ‘Ulm had similar ideas to mine’, recalled Kingsford Smith. ‘He was ambitious; he wanted to do something which would make the world sit up; he had a good business head; in fact, he was a born organiser.’

  Surplus warplanes such as this Avro 504 spent the early 1920s—like Kingsford Smith, second from the right— barnstorming and stunting for a public enamoured with the novelty of flight.

  Indeed, in less than a month, Ulm hatched a plan to fly around Australia to generate publicity and gain experience for their attempt on the Pacific. He financed the flight by selling exclusive coverage to The Sun , and in doing so cultivated an important relationship with the newspaper’s wealthy and influential owner, H. Campbell Jones. Ulm also arranged a sponsorship deal with the Vacuum Oil Company to supply fuel to remote locations around the continent, in some instances, using camels. Although remarkably effective, Ulm’s autocratic management style and abrasive efficiency alienated some of Kingsford Smith’s associates. Keith Anderson, in particular, was furious to learn that he would be excluded from the venture, with Ulm (who did not have a pilot’s licence) accompanying Kingsford Smith in the twin-seat Bristol biplane. Unlike Anderson, a pilot of considerable experience, Ulm had been prevented by his war injury from gaining any formal flying qualifications. At this stage he probably only had a handful of hours in the air with friends and colleagues.

  Ulm and Kingsford Smith set out from Sydney on 19 June 1927. What followed, in Kingsford Smith’s words, was ‘10 days of the hardest work I had ever experienced’. Each day they flew long stretches, up to 1,400 kilometres over wild country and between improvised airfields with absolutely no aviation infrastructure. Most nights they spent repairing the battered old biplane and at one stage went 39 hours without sleep. At each stop, Ulm cabled updates to The Sun, whose stories and editorials began to cultivate public interest in the pair. The toughest stage occurred between Broome and Perth when storms forced them to fly at 50 feet. The conditions ‘would have made any flying man blanch’, reckoned Ulm. As things would turn out, it was all highly pertinent to what lay in store over the Pacific.

  Ulm and Kingsford Smith made it back to Sydney having circumnavigated the continent by air in just over ten days. They had broken the previous record in half. ‘Australia began to talk about us’, remembered Kingsford Smith. ‘At a bound, we had jumped into prominence.’ At a luncheon in Sydney hosted by The Sun , Ulm seized on the attention and announced plans to fly across the Pacific. New South Wales Premier Jack Lang responded with a pledge of £3,500, the equivalent of almost a quarter of a million dollars today, and Vacuum Oil agreed to find an aeroplane for them in the United States.

  Although his relationship with Ulm had become strained, Anderson agreed to stay with the partnership. A fortnight of frenzied planning followed, during which Ulm somehow found time to remarry. On 14 July 1927, the trio signed a contract with Campbell Jones to again provide The Sun with exclusive updates during the flight. In exchange the newspaper paid them £1,000 and funded a first-class sea passage. With the ink on the contract drying, they ran from The Sun ’s offices down George Street to Circular Quay and boarded the SS Tahiti, bound for San Francisco.

  Describing Ulm and Kingsford Smith’s preparations ‘complete’, the newspapers predicted the three aviators’ return flight to Australia in a matter of weeks. As things happened, their triumphal landing in Brisbane would not take place for almost 11 months, during which time their supposedly ‘complete’ preparations would unravel completely, almost forcing Ulm to add another to his failed aviation ventures. Most unexpected of all, however, was that when they did return it would not be Anderson stepping out of Southern Cross, but rather, two Americans.

  Premier Jack Lang welcomes Kingsford Smith and Ulm back to Sydney at the conclusion of their round-Australia flight, Mascot aerodrome, June 1927.

  ‘OVER GOLDEN GATE

  1100 FEET’

  Take-off in San Francisco, 31 May 1928

  Like many airmen from their era, Kingsford Smith and Ulm respected superstition. The ‘Felix’ pin Kingsford Smith wore on his flying cap is evident in this 1929 photograph.

  Dawn barely broke over San Francisco Bay on 31 May 1928. Fog blanketed the water, obscuring the city’s prominent skyline to the hundreds of people gathered at Oakland aerodrome around a blue tri-engine monoplane, emblazoned with the words Southern Cross in large white letters along its fuselage. In spite of the morning’s damp heaviness, the atmosphere hummed with anticipation.

  Under the aircraft’s vast wing, Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm and their American companions, Harry Lyon and Jim Warner, milled about with mechanics, friends and reporters while police held back the spectators. For pioneering aviators, they all looked rather ordinary; their ties and suits suggested a day in the office more than a flight across the world’s largest ocean. Kingsford Smith and Ulm’s flying helmets and riding boots were all that suggested their true vocation, and distinguished them from their American colleagues, who had barely done any flying before. On his flying cap, Kingsford Smith wore his good-luck charm, a Felix the Cat badge. When a journalist asked him where he got it he blushed before responding, ‘A young lady. It was so romantic’. At the journalist’s request, Ulm and Lyon spoke about their charms too. Lyon, a natural extrovert, munched on peanuts as he showed off the ‘plain pin’ he wore ‘for luck’, while Ulm revealed a small Buddha statue containing a rattlesnake’s tail. He wasn’t sure of the significance: one of his old digger mates had sent it out from Sydney. The quietest of the group, radio operator Jim Warner, said he didn’t have any tokens. ‘I have had a lot of bad luck in my life’, he explained. ‘Now I am due for a bit of good luck.’

  Friends farewell the crew of Southern Cross at Oakland in May 1928.

  While Ulm bustled about overseeing final preparations, Kingsford Smith regaled the reporters with his poise and charm. ‘I’ve waited many weary months for this day’, he told them. ‘We are fully prepared and if we fail, I haven’t a single regret.’ He then added: ‘We absolutely won’t fail. I shall be in Sydney before 10 June’. People gathered around him shaking his hand, pressing kisses on his grinning face and slapping him on the back. Things took an awkward turn, taking the sheen off Kingsford Smith’s optimism, when a sobbing old woman stepped forward and embraced him, pressing a ring into his hand. It belonged to her son Alvin Eichwaldt, one of six pilots killed attempting to fly to Hawaii in the disastrous Dole Air Race ten months before. Visibly embarrassed, Kingsford Smith agreed to wear it and promptly climbed up into the cockpit. He regained his composure enough to manage a ‘cheerio’ to the crowd as he did. The Americans boarded through the fuselage door and, finally satisfied everything was in order, Ulm took his place in the cockpit next to Kingsford Smith.

  A crowd farewells Southern Cross at Long Beach, Los Angeles, on 23 May 1928—a week before it embarked on the flight to Hawaii.

  With a cough and a belch of smoke the three engines thundered to life, instantly overwhelming all other noise and making conversation inside the aircraft impossible. As the engines warmed, Ulm opened the brown notebook he had purchased to serve as a log and started a brief conversation with Kingsford Smith with pencilled notes. How much runway would they need? Although Southern Cross could lift off in 120 metres with a regular fuel load, the additional 2 tonnes of equipment and petrol on board would considerably extend its take-off run. Kingsford Smith scribbled a couple of predictions, settling on ‘2500 feet’ (760 metres). They had 1500 metres of runway in any case, with a United States Army Air Corps fire wagon at the end should there be an accident.

  Pushing the three throttle levers, Kingsford Smith coaxed Southern Cross forward. It began to gather speed but had run for less than 250 metres when, in a moment of monumental anti-climax, the centre engine stalled. Mechanics rushed out to push the aircraft back, but Kingsford Smith waved them away: climbing aboard, he and Ulm had noticed the San Francisco sheriff trying to battle his way through the crowd.
They suspected he had a legal order grounding them for debts they had no hope of paying. Kingsford Smith had only a single American dollar on him, while nine copper cents jingled about in the pockets of Ulm’s suit.

  Kingsford Smith opened the throttles up. ‘The roar of those three great engines quickly assumed for us the pleasing grandeur of a symphony of great music’, recalled Ulm. With the emergency vehicle approaching, Southern Cross rose, and then settled back down. It hit 140 kilometres per hour and lifted again to narrowly clear the embankment at the runway’s end.

  Observers on the ground saw the silver wing gleam in the morning sun as the lumbering aircraft cleared the fog and climbed out over the city. It took Kingsford Smith two minutes to cajole the overladen machine to 100 feet. As they passed the city, the tallest skyscrapers towering above them, thousands of people stopped and peered up. Over the past few months, the monoplane had regularly thundered over their homes and offices on test flights. Kingsford Smith eased the throttles back, the engine roar subsiding ever so slightly.

  He and Ulm shook hands enthusiastically and four minutes later they passed over the Golden Gate Bridge, clearing its pylons by a mere 400 feet. Ulm fixed a small Australian flag to the instrument panel, but within minutes the wind roaring through the cockpit’s open sides had shredded it.