Flying the Southern Cross

by Michael Molkentin

  As Southern Cross headed out towards the open ocean, Kingsford Smith felt a wave of relief—a reprieve from the ‘worries and anxieties’ of the past nine months—and in the same instant, ‘a tremendous elation’ at the prospect ahead.

  Organising the flight

  The jubilant handshake Ulm and Kingsford Smith shared over San Francisco marked not only a successful take-off but also the end of a ten-month struggle to get the Pacific flight ‘off the ground’, in the figurative sense. Those months tested the two aviators’ resilience almost as much, they reckoned, as the flight itself.

  Kingsford Smith, Ulm and Keith Anderson left Sydney in July 1927 with what they thought were definite plans. With an aircraft purchased by their sponsor Vacuum Oil, they would enter the Dole Air Race, and compete for its $25,000 prize for the fastest flight from San Francisco to Hawaii. In Honolulu they would fit the aircraft with floats and continue to Australia in several short hops. The whole thing, they told the newspapers, would cost £7,000. As Ulm later admitted, though, he had devised the whole plan with ‘gay abandon’ and ‘wild groping in the dark’.

  Newspapers followed the progress of Southern Cross eagerly, making sure readers knew precise details and could visualise the flight.

  Arrival in San Francisco cured their naivety. The best Vacuum Oil had been able to arrange at short notice was an old biplane, obviously unsuited to a long ocean flight. This forced the Australians to forego an entry into the air race, which started a week after their arrival in the United States. It was disappointing, but serendipitous as things turned out. The race was a fiasco; three pilots were killed on practice flights and another six died during the race and subsequent search effort. Of the eight starting aircraft, only two made it to Hawaii. Flying across the Pacific—even as far as Hawaii—evidently involved much more than the three Australians had initially anticipated. Cables from Australia urged the trio to abandon their attempt and The Sun offered to pay for their sea passage home.

  Kingsford Smith, Ulm and Anderson established an office at Vacuum Oil and, with help from company representative Locke Harper, they set about reconceiving the whole venture. Research into previous long flights suggested the importance of multiple engines and radio-assisted navigation equipment. They noted the good reputation of the tri-motor Fokker F.VII which, in fact, had made the first California to Hawaii crossing the previous year.

  San Leandro, California, a suburb of Oakland, in 1928.

  The Mission District, heart of old San Francisco, as it appeared to Anderson, Ulm and Kingsford Smith in January 1928.

  Although Fokker F.VIIs were rare in the United States at this time, the Australians had the remarkable good fortune to hear that one had gone on the market just days after their arrival. It belonged to the renowned Australian explorer George Wilkins who had used it during an abortive Arctic expedition in 1926. Ulm inspected the Fokker in Seattle and, finding it ‘in excellent condition’, convinced Wilkins to sell it for £3,000 without engines or instruments. It was an attractive deal, but buying the plane practically exhausted the partnership’s funds. Kingsford Smith used his contacts in the politically influential Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia to secure the promise of another £1,000 from Premier Lang, and Ulm convinced the Melbourne department store owner Sidney Myer to pitch in £1,500. Myer agreed on the condition that he would have no further association with the flight; he believed they were certain to be killed.

  With the extra finances ‘the clouds seemed to be revealing a silver lining both literally and figuratively’, as Ulm put it. He pulled diplomatic strings to have an order for three Wright Whirlwind engines supplied with priority and arranged for the Boeing factory in Seattle to fit the Fokker with special long-range fuel tanks and reinforced landing gear. To instruct Kingsford Smith in handling the tri-motor and flying in low visibility using instruments only, Ulm hired experienced naval pilot Lieutenant George Pond. Keith Anderson, meanwhile, sailed to Hawaii to scout for suitable landing grounds. ‘When you’ve got a big job to do’, explained Ulm of his management philosophy, ‘look after the little things and see to it that every human element of the enterprise is up to standard’.

  Kingsford Smith with Sir George Hubert Wilkins. Ulm appreciated the Australian explorer’s ‘exceptional ability’ but regarded him ‘an idealist’ and ‘more or less ignorant of true business principles’.

  On 11 October 1927—remarkably, just nine weeks after arriving in the United States— Kingsford Smith flew the Fokker from Seattle to San Francisco, covering the 1,100 kilometres in eight hours. ‘The plane rode a heavy gale splendidly’, he afterwards told reporters. On Anderson’s suggestion, they dubbed the aircraft Southern Cross.

  Ulm told reporters that they planned to start the flight at the end of October. But they still needed radio and navigational equipment and had by this stage accrued a staggering debt. What appeared to Ulm as the ‘eternal problem of finances’ came to a head in the middle of the month when the Lang government lost office to Thomas Bavin’s National Party. The new Premier withdrew the state’s financial support and publically urged the airmen to sell the aircraft and return to Australia immediately. By this stage, Ulm claimed they had spent about £20,000 on the aircraft and still needed at least another £6,000—almost as much as he had originally anticipated the whole venture would cost. Despite this, they refused to abandon their plans; as a temporary solution Ulm borrowed the money from Harper and mortgaged Southern Cross to cover the most immediate debts. At Ulm’s insistence, Anderson also reluctantly borrowed money from his family to help finance Southern Cross ’ outfitting.

  To cover additional costs, Ulm secured sponsorship from a Californian oil company to attempt a flying endurance record. During the American winter, Kingsford Smith and Pond made five attempts to stay airborne over San Francisco Bay for longer than the current record of 52 hours and 22 minutes. By the fourth attempt they had come within two hours of their goal. Kingsford Smith described their fifth and final effort on 17 January 1928:

  The fifty hours which I spent in the air with Pond circling round and round San Francisco Bay will always remain a nightmare to me. It was bitterly cold; we could only communicate with penciled notes to each other; we were cramped in the cockpit, since the passage way to the rear compartment was filled with petrol tanks; we couldn’t smoke we couldn’t sleep; we had to maintain our wits at their sharpest, for at our low flying speed we were always near to stalling.

  Although useful experience for the Pacific flight, Southern Cross ran out of fuel two and a half hours short of the record. ‘We were all three bitterly disappointed’, recalled Kingsford Smith.

  The close association Vacuum Oil Company had with the venture is illustrated in this clock it presented Kingsford Smith after the Pacific flight.

  By the end of January 1928 the whole venture appeared to be disintegrating. ‘We were so poor’, admitted Kingsford Smith, ‘that we had not even loose cash in our pockets to purchase cigarettes or a meal’. Ulm recalled how they took to sneaking out of hotels without paying and deliberately avoiding their creditors, who were making increasingly strident demands for remuneration. ‘Bitter arguments and petty squabbles’ became common among the three Australians and Anderson and Kingsford Smith began to consider going home.

  Ulm, however, remained dogmatically committed to the venture. During February and March he exerted a staggering amount of energy preparing business proposals and presenting them in boardrooms all around California to raise sponsorship for the flight. The detail and scope of business vision in these proposals is truly remarkable, yet they also suggest desperation. To the Atlantic Union Oil Company, for example, he offered ownership of Southern Cross, to work for them as an ambassador in Australia without pay and to reimburse any costs incurred on the flight within six months. Kingsford Smith contributed in his own way, telling reporters that he would sell seats on Southern Cross to young ladies for £3,000 each. Neither approach found any backers, forcing them t
o put the aircraft up for sale. Anderson decided to go home at the end of February.

  ‘When you’ve got a big job to do look after the little things’: Ulm gets his hands dirty with the details at a fuel pump in 1928.

  In mid-March, in the midst of ‘frantic’ attempts to sell the aircraft, they approached the Californian Bank’s president to help find a buyer. He introduced them to George Allan Hancock, a millionaire oil magnate with a strong interest in maritime navigation. To their initial disappointment, Hancock declined to make an offer on Southern Cross but surprisingly invited them on a yacht cruise to Mexico. Ulm, who thought the American must have felt sorry for them, accepted, reasoning that ‘at least we would be well fed for a while’.

  During the 12-day voyage Hancock treated the two Australians to lavish hospitality. It was a glorious change from the flophouses and sparse meals on which they had subsisted for months. Ulm relished the break from business stress and even began to reconcile himself to the failure of their plans. Hancock showed ‘a sincere and almost intense interest’, in Ulm’s words, in their Pacific flight plans and at the end of the voyage quite suddenly offered to purchase Southern Cross . He would take care of their debts and then allow them to fly the plane to Australia as planned. He was also prepared to advance them cash to cover living expenses and purchase the remaining equipment for the flight. It was a timely offer; leaving the yacht on 2 April 1928, Ulm learned that bailiffs had seized Southern Cross .

  Kingsford Smith and Ulm cabled the good news to Anderson, but he refused to return to the United States. Kingsford Smith’s biographer, Ian Mackersey, provides a sharp analysis of the cables that flew back and forth across the Pacific for several days following Hancock’s purchase of Southern Cross , pointing out culpability on both sides. Kingsford Smith and Ulm were vague in reporting the fortunate turn of events, leaving Anderson unclear on the sort of aircraft they had ‘re-purchased’, who had refinanced them and their planned route. For his part, Anderson was broke and could not raise funds for a first-class sea passage, but refused to settle for a second-class ticket or work his way across the Pacific. Why Kingsford Smith and Ulm did not approach Hancock to fund Anderson’s passage is unclear: perhaps they resented him for ‘abandoning’ the partnership; perhaps Ulm—still not a licensed pilot—felt that Anderson’s involvement would make his part in the flight redundant. In any case, Ulm concluded the matter by bluntly informing Anderson that he forfeited any claim to future profits from the flight.

  Since arriving in San Francisco Ulm had been looking for a navigator. He hoped to secure an ‘Aussie’, or at least ‘a Britisher’, and had approached Wilkins, but the famous explorer had his own adventures planned. Time constraints forced them to settle for an American. While having Southern Cross ’ navigational equipment calibrated by the United States Navy Hydrographic Office, they met Harry Lyon, an ex-merchant marine navigator with a colourful past and considerable ocean-going experience. He had rounded Cape Horn on a sailing ship as a 21-year-old in 1906 and spent the next decade working cargo ships around the Pacific. His memoir reads like a pulp adventure novella, describing a life of hard drinking, fist fights, shipwrecks and mutinies. After a more respectable stint commanding a United States Navy transport during the Great War, he returned to a chequered existence, smuggling alcohol and becoming caught up in the Mexican Revolution. Finding his ‘adventurous nature and clear thinking’ immediately appealing, Kingsford Smith and Ulm asked him to be their navigator.

  With the aircraft now equipped with state-of-the-art radio and navigational equipment, the crew spent the second half of May making test flights 80 kilometres out to sea. The exercises were useful to Lyon, who had only flown once before and had never navigated from the air. On the ground, Southern Cross underwent final modifications and fine-tuning. With Hancock’s chequebook at his disposal, Ulm spared no expense. To service the aircraft’s three Wright Whirlwind engines he hired the best engineer he could find, Cecil ‘Doc’ Maidment, who worked for the Wright Company and had gained prominence in the aviation community as Lindbergh’s mechanic.

  They still lacked a radio operator; Kingsford Smith and Ulm had considered several but failed to settle on one. Then, five days before their planned departure date, Lyon suggested an old shipmate, Jim Warner. The product of a tough, orphaned upbringing, Warner had joined the Navy in 1911 and during the Great War served as a wireless operator on the USS St Louis where he met Lyon. Warner left the Navy in 1927 and again fell on hard times. When Kingsford Smith and Ulm met him he was selling suits door to door. Despite having never flown before and being prone to anxiety, Warner promptly accepted their offer and spent the few remaining days familiarising himself with Southern Cross ’ radio.

  ‘A good business head’: organising the Pacific flight would stretch Ulm’s managerial skills and resolve to the limit.

  Warner and Ulm clashed almost immediately. On the night before leaving, Ulm presented (‘sprung’ in Warner’s words) the Americans with contracts dated ten days previously. ‘After reading it I didn’t know whether to laugh or get peeved’, recalled Warner. It offered them a weekly wage until they arrived in Fiji in addition to $1,000 at the completion of the flight. They would return to the United States by sea while Ulm and Kingsford Smith completed the flight to Brisbane. In return, Warner and Lyon had to waive all claims for injury and agree not to speak to the press before their return to America.

  Warner felt he didn’t have any choice. ‘If I didn’t sign it I couldn’t go’, he reasoned. ‘If I didn’t go it would have looked as though I had suddenly developed an eleventh-hour case of cold feet.’ Lyon’s feelings went unrecorded, but like Warner, he signed the contract. The episode represented the best and worst of Charles Ulm, and, indeed, encapsulates the conundrum that he presents historians. On the one hand, in purely objective business terms, the contract represents a sound decision intended to protect his and Kingsford Smith’s considerable investment in the flight and the future commercial endeavours they hoped it might lead to. Also, it was generous: for Warner, the equivalent of about A$34,000 for a fortnight’s work by today’s standards. On the other hand, though, the contract could be construed as impersonal and somewhat ungracious, especially considering the benevolence Hancock had extended to Ulm and Kingsford Smith. And what’s more, the journey would expose all four crew to considerable danger in equal measures. Six aviators had died attempting the first leg less than a year before. Beyond Hawaii, flying lacked precedent altogether.

  ‘The world’s greatest aviator’: Kingsford Smith became famous for his winning smile as well as for his aerial feats.

  ‘OUR LAST SIGHT OF LAND

  FOR 24 HOURS’

  The first day’s flying, 31 May 1928

  Lyon used hydrographic charts to plot Southern Cross’ course, the ink representing his pre-determined route while in pencil he recorded the in-flight position checks.

  Twelve minutes after passing over San Francisco, the city’s skyline disappeared in the morning haze. ‘It seemed to stand, baseless and serene, like a magic city hanging in the clouds’, recalled Ulm. A few minutes later the craggy Farallon Islands emerged from the sea mist, 1,900 feet below. They represented, Ulm noted in the log, ‘our last sight of land for 24 hours’. In the aircraft’s rear cabin, Harry Lyon suddenly felt a sense of ‘utter loneliness’. Peering out of the fuselage window at the 4,000 kilometres of ocean and sky before them made him feel ‘like a pretty small speck in the universe’.

  Only four aircraft before Southern Cross had successfully flown from mainland United States to Hawaii. The first had been 11 months previously, when United States Army lieutenants Lester Maitland and Albert Hegenberger did it in a Fokker F.VII tri-motor, the same as Southern Cross, in 25 hours 49 minutes. Two civilians, Emory Bronte and Ernest Smith, made the crossing a month later in a single-engine Travel Air 5000, though they crashed on the island of Molokai after running out of fuel. The disastrous Dole Race produced the other two successful crossings in August 1927, w
hen two of the eight starting aircraft made it to Hawaii safely in 26 and 28 hours respectively.

  Southern Cross’ main tanks (three in the wings and one under the pilot’s seat) carried 1,858 litres of fuel. To extend the aircraft’s range, Ulm and Kingsford Smith had installed an additional 3,054-litre tank in the cabin from which they could pump fuel into the other tanks throughout the flight. It was positioned directly behind the wicker chairs they sat on, side by side in the cockpit, and blocked access to the aircraft’s rear cabin where Lyon and Warner worked. Everything depended on accurately predicting fuel consumption. Kingsford Smith estimated that with an average speed of 145 kilometres per hour, they had a maximum range of 5,866 kilometres; that is, 832 kilometres more than the journey’s longest leg between Hawaii and Fiji.

  If the unthinkable should happen, however, Ulm and Kingsford Smith believed themselves well prepared for an emergency. They anticipated that Southern Cross ’ 22-metre-long plywood wing would act as a giant life raft. With an emergency valve, they could quickly jettison fuel before ditching and then cut the engines free with hacksaws. A compartment in the wing carried emergency rations, a water distiller and wireless set. Before leaving, the crew had plotted the route of all ocean liners so they could call for assistance. Kingsford Smith and Ulm invested a lot of trust in these contingencies, refusing to take a life raft so as to save weight. Indeed, they even had Southern Cross’ wheel brakes removed to lighten the load.

  Behind the huge fuel tank, Warner and Lyon occupied the aircraft’s rear cabin: essentially a tubular steel frame covered in fabric and held square by a maze of bracing wires. The sides of the aircraft lacked any kind of insulation; just a few millimetres of varnished fabric separated the crew from the thunderous noise of the engines and the violent slipstream outside. The two Americans sat close together on a pair of wicker chairs purchased from a department store. Neither their seats, nor those in the cockpit, were anchored to the floor and there were no seatbelts.