Flying the Southern Cross

by Michael Molkentin

  ‘Give us a chance. We do not know yet’: The nervous tension of the previous night is written all over Ulm’s face as he and Kingsford Smith battle through the crowd at Albert Park.

  Meanwhile, around the world, the four Pacific fliers had made an overnight transition from relative obscurity to household names. Their personal lives and pasts suddenly became fair game for the pressmen. The LA Examiner, for example, tracked down the estranged wives of Warner and Lyon, both of whom professed hopes for reconciliation with their now-famous husbands. The interest in the fliers’ personal lives, augmented by the press’ insatiable appetite for a ‘scoop’, spread the limelight from Kingsford Smith to the party’s other members. Ulm even received this fitting tribute from Hobart’s Mercury, in a story on the ‘trying ordeal’ of his wife Jo, whom he had married a fortnight before leaving Australia and had not seen in almost a year.

  Mrs Ulm absolutely radiates confidence, pointing to the optimistic tone of all the letters she has received, and also to the fact that never before was an endurance flight embarked on with such wonderful organising. The work is very largely due to Ulm, whose energy and devotion to detail are amazing.

  Ulm and the Americans spent the rest of the day being whisked from one reception to another. After lunch with the Governor, they attended a civic event in Suva’s town hall where the townsfolk showered them with gifts. From Fiji’s oldest chief, Ulm accepted a whale’s tooth, a traditional symbol of best wishes, and from Suva’s schoolchildren, Lyon and Warner received an American flag made of flowers. The ex-servicemen of Suva hosted the airmen for afternoon tea at a luxurious villa in the ‘picturesque heights’ of Tamavua, overlooking the town and bay. Ulm later admitted that all this lavish hospitality was lost on him. He was weary and anxious to press on with the journey’s final stage.

  That evening the fliers attended a ball at the Pacific Grand Hotel, joined by Suva’s ‘youth and beauty’. They proved a hit with the local girls who badgered them for dances all night. The Americans, sporting new blue dinner suits, obliged but Ulm, wearing the riding boots, shirt and breeches he had left Oakland in, spent most of the night attending to business. During dinner Kingsford Smith returned from his day-long reconnaissance to report that he had found a suitable runway on Naselai beach. To the soundtrack of foxtrots and waltzes, Ulm made hurried arrangements with the Mayor and his staff to have fuel and supplies shipped to Naselai. Before the final dance, work gangs at the harbour were loading stocks of timber, fuel, oil and tools onto the government’s boat Pioneer, ready to sail the following morning.

  The evening ended with the presentation to the fliers of a turtle shell chest containing 200 gold sovereigns. They were seen out of the ballroom by a line of young ladies, most of whom were content with a handshake, although a few stole a kiss. Warner described the ball ‘an affair worth remembering’, and recalled how Lyon finished asleep on the Governor’s shoulder, something Sir Eyre Hutson ‘bore with becoming modesty’.

  The following day, The Sun published a cable from Kingsford Smith (though it almost certainly came from Ulm) announcing that despite their engagement officially ending in Fiji, the Americans had been invited to fly to Brisbane ‘where they will finally leave the expedition’. The cable claimed that the Australians had done this out of their ‘sincere appreciation’ and as ‘a sportsmanlike act’.

  What the cable, which newspapers around Australia and the United States quickly reproduced, did not reveal, however, was that Ulm and Kingsford Smith had more pragmatic motives. We know from a scribbled note at the back of the log that during the flight from Kauai to Suva Ulm had started having second thoughts about taking Warner on to Brisbane. The dangerous tropical weather had evidently demonstrated the value of having a wireless operator, who could assist with radio navigation and call for help in an emergency, not to mention supply the press with exciting progress updates that would fuel public interest in the expedition. We also know from another note in the back of the log during the Hawaii–Fiji leg that Ulm had lost some confidence in Lyon. In a scribbled conversation with Kingsford Smith, Ulm expressed concern ‘that Harry had beggered up the long[itude]’ using the artificial horizon on his sextant. He went to visit his Navy friends at Pearl Harbor to have it calibrated, but Ulm believed Lyon had instead ‘got drunk’ with them.

  Despite the Americans’ dissatisfaction with their contracts, the Pacific fliers managed to maintain a united front for the cameras.

  After arriving in Suva, another force came to bear on the decision when Ulm and Kingsford Smith began receiving telegrams urging them to bring the Americans to Australia. Newspapers were beginning to question the fairness of leaving them in Fiji and the Australian public had developed quite a curiosity in the expedition’s ‘invisible’ members, especially Warner, whose staccato dots and dashes had held them glued to their wireless sets. Kingsford Smith’s father allegedly cabled a warning to his son not to bother coming to Australia if he left the Americans behind.

  The issue came up back in the hotel suite following the ball. Everyone was weary, at the end of a boozy afternoon and evening, and probably not in their best form. Ulm, it appears, remained opposed to Lyon completing the air journey to Australia, but suggested as a compromise that he follow Southern Cross to Brisbane by sea. Losing his temper, Lyon slammed Ulm up against the hotel wall and was about to start with his fists when Kingsford Smith stepped in and convinced Ulm to change his mind.

  The following morning Ulm employed a local solicitor to draw up new contracts for the Americans, offering them an additional £100 (approximately $7,000 today) each ‘as an act of grace’ to continue with Southern Cross to Brisbane ‘but not further’. Warner and Lyon signed, but resented what they perceived as Ulm’s unnecessarily bureaucratic approach and avaricious spirit. Ulm saw things more pragmatically. The contract described him and Kingsford Smith as the flight’s ‘owners’ and noted that they had ‘incurred a personal liability of upwards of US$50,000’ in organising it. Ulm considered the Americans employees being paid a generous wage for a finite period. The contract carefully specified they had no claim to any further share of wealth that the flight should generate.

  Ulm and Kingsford Smith, with The Sun ’s help, managed to keep the whole fractious incident out of the Australian press. Presenting a scoop on the new plans the following day, The Sun claimed rather opaquely that

  after breakfast a hurried conference of the two Australians resulted in gladdening the Americans’ hearts as in truly sportsmanlike manner they offered them a passage to Australia, despite the fact that their contracts finished at Suva, and that their presence was unnecessary for the next span.

  Warner, who bore out the incident with a cynical passivity, would later attempt to set the record straight by publishing the entire contents of the contract in an account of the flight he wrote for American magazine Liberty, in April 1930. ‘Isn’t it cute’, he concluded sardonically. ‘Yes, we signed it. You know the saying. “When in Rome, act like a Roman candle!” Well, when in the company of sportsmen, reward true munificence by a like gesture; in other words, act like a true sport.’

  Delayed at Naselai, 7 June

  The following morning, Kingsford Smith flew Southern Cross from Albert Park to Naselai. To get off the ground with such a short run, he took minimum fuel and left Ulm and the Americans behind to make the journey by sea. Even with the barest load, Southern Cross cleared the park’s western embankment by only 6 metres. Thousands had gathered and they cheered as Kingsford Smith circled, waved and then set out over the bay. The people of Suva then went to work, something one journalist reckoned they had not done since Southern Cross ’ arrival two days before.

  Arriving at Naselai in mid-afternoon, it pleased Ulm to find things on schedule. Fijians, with ‘gleaming bronze bodies’, ferried drums of fuel from Pioneer onto the beach, riding the breakers in their canoes, Ulm observed, ‘with the same certainty as the club boats on Sydney’s beaches’. Throughout the afternoon, the crew made preparations
to take off before sunset. Watching the activity around Southern Cross that afternoon, a correspondent for The Sun made a neat pen-sketch of the four very different characters who comprised its crew.

  Ulm was already busy supervising every detail, his clean white shirt already oil stained. He was strung at high tension. Kingsford Smith, the imperturbable, was in the navigator’s cabin aft reading the local press reports and finding the press accounts more wonderful than the flight itself. With Lyon still full of beans and jovial and Warner, still immaculate, they form a happy brotherly band of gallant, modest men.

  Unanticipated delays: refuelling Southern Cross at Naselai beach, 7 June 1928.

  Ulm and Kingsford Smith had decided they only needed 3,406 litres (about three-quarters capacity) of fuel for this, the journey’s shortest leg. Nonetheless, man-handling the fuel ashore through heavy surf and up the beach to Southern Cross where it had to be filtered into the tanks through a chamois, took more time than Ulm had allowed. By his nominated take-off time of 4 pm it was obvious, to his immense irritation, that they were not going to get away before the tide again swallowed up much of the makeshift airstrip. Dejected, Ulm arranged for the labourers to haul Southern Cross up to the tree line and cover the engines for the night. Delaying take-off until the following (Friday) morning sounded the death knell to Ulm’s chances of eating in Sydney on Saturday night.

  Kingsford Smith, Ulm and Lyon spent the night offshore on Pioneer, enjoying the hospitality, including steaks, pineapples and cold beers, of its captain. Warner remained on the beach with a British police sergeant and his party of native constabulary to watch the aircraft. ‘My election to this post of honour was practically unanimous’, observed Warner wryly. ‘I won by a majority of something like seventy five per cent.’

  In the event, the evening provided Warner with a truly unique experience, one that would stand out in his mind as a highlight of the whole journey. Assured that Southern Cross was in safe hands with the police, the sergeant led Warner and a newspaper correspondent to a Fijian village, a few kilometres back from the beach. The chief hosted Warner in his home, at what the American described as a ‘gab fest’ among the village elders. With the police sergeant interpreting, Warner regaled them with the story of his journey across ‘the big water’. It left his audience bewildered; they attributed the humble American wireless operator, who a few weeks before had been a door-to-door salesman, with supernatural powers. ‘It was a humorous night’, reported the journalist, ‘watching the interpreter endeavouring to explain to the bewildered natives the mysteries of radio’. The elders honoured Warner with a kava ceremony and a traditional singing and dancing performance. Following several coconut shells of the brew (‘It looks like mud and tastes like Gregory powder’) Warner, concerned about its potency, asked to return to the aircraft.

  ‘Busy supervising every detail’: Ulm makes final checks before embarking on the journey’s last stretch, Naselai beach, 8 June 1928.

  Fijians provided the Pacific fliers with crucial assistance in preparing Southern Cross for take-off at Naselai.

  ‘One of the most charming little ceremonies I have ever witnessed’: Southern Cross’ crew partake in the kava ceremony before taking off.

  Returning to the beach a couple of kilometres from the aircraft, Warner and the police sergeant were horrified to see a huge fire. ‘It looked as though the Southern Cross was blazing merrily and we broke into a run, expecting any moment to hear the explosion that would mark the end of the first plane to cross the Pacific.’ Covering the distance ‘in nothing flat’, Warner discovered that the native police had built a huge bonfire ‘entirely too near’ the aircraft: it was showering sparks all over the blue fabric fuselage. Heaping sand onto the fire, they averted potential disaster. Warner retired to the aircraft’s cabin while the police sergeant berated his men. ‘He was so aroused that he dropped into English at times and I gathered that he was bringing up intimate details in the family life of the immediate ancestors of each man.’ Warner spent a chilled night on the timber floorboards, ‘a can for a pillow’.

  The following morning, Warner woke to find Southern Cross’ nose ‘nestling in the tropical scrub above the high water mark, and the sea lazily lapping her tail’. The tide would not expose enough of the beach for Southern Cross to take off until mid-afternoon. As it receded, the Fijian helpers manhandled the aircraft into position. A little after 2 pm, as the crew made ready to leave, the villagers appeared, led by a procession of girls in grass skirts bearing kava. Kingsford Smith recalled being ‘deeply touched by one of the most charming little ceremonies I have ever witnessed’.

  Southern Cross took off at 2.52 pm after a run of about 900 metres. Flying a much lighter plane than previously, Kingsford Smith could whip the aircraft back around and roar in low over the beach, and then across to Suva where the streets and Albert Park had once again filled with cheering locals, wishing them well for the journey’s final stretch.

  ‘WORST 2½ HOURS

  ON WHOLE FLIGHT’

  Pacific storm, 8–9 June 1928

  Sydneysiders read about Southern Cross’ take-off from Naselai just a few hours later, in Friday afternoon’s edition of The Sun.

  As Southern Cross climbed away from Suva to the south-west, Ulm passed a message through to Warner to transmit to The Sun.

  Well here we are on the way again with everything running OK. In 19 or 20 hours we will be in dear old Aussie again. Our landing in Brisbane will be the culmination of 10 months hard work and the realization of Smithy’s and my ambitions to be first to really cross the Pacific by air. After arrival in Brisbane will leave next day for Sydney by air but pleasure [sic] assure Brisbane public that we intend returning there on tour after a couple of weeks rest. Cheerio all, CTP Ulm KHAB

  After relaying the message, Warner probably tossed the handwritten original on the floor where it worked its way between the boards. It later ended up in the possession of Lachlan Gole, a Sydney man whose father claimed to have ‘done some work on Smithy’s plane’. Gole discovered the note among his father’s possessions in 2009 and would have discarded it as rubbish had he not recalled seeing the name ‘Ulm’ recently in the press, in connection with Ulm’s 88-year-old son John. Gole gave the note to John, who added it to his family’s papers at the National Library of Australia. Much of the Library’s collection relating to Ulm and Kingsford Smith shares similar provenance. Our national collections representing these two remarkable Australians have gradually grown over the years, as more and more material emerges from the private holdings of the many people whose lives briefly brushed up against theirs.

  The message Ulm had Warner transmit to The Sun shortly after leaving Suva. The neat, ink handwriting and HMCS Pioneer stationery suggest he wrote it while staying on the Fijian government launch off the coast at Naselai.

  Now confident of the flight’s success, Ulm also had Warner announce the identity of their chief benefactor: ‘We could never have made this flight without the generosity and wonderful help given us by Captain G. Allan Hancock of Los Angeles, California’. The announcement attributed Hancock with helping them in ways they could not explain in detail at this stage but that they wanted to publicly acknowledge him ‘in the most modern manner—that is, by radio, from the first aeroplane crossing the Pacific Ocean’. The announcement thrust Hancock, who had kept his benevolent involvement private, immediately into the limelight. He was intensely embarrassed with the sudden and overwhelming media attention and did his best to deflect it, arguing that he had no interest in profits, only assisting the achievement of what he considered a worthwhile scientific goal.

  Warner was part way through transmitting a similar acknowledgement of Sidney Myer’s financial assistance when the generator, spinning outside the port fuselage, stripped its pinion gear and failed. That made it all three legs on which Warner had lost the ability to charge both batteries and hence, use his wireless set to both send and receive. ‘I was getting used to doing with only one generator an
d almost forgot to cuss’, he recalled.

  Since take-off, Lyon had been having technical problems of his own (and indeed, of his own making). The Earth Inductor Compass, he discovered, was providing a different reading to his three other compasses. ‘Changing course all the while to find out what is wrong’, logged Ulm an hour after take-off. He concluded that the compass had been ‘inadvertently damaged’ on the beach and instructed Lyon to rely on his two ‘standard’ steering compasses and to check these against the Aperiodic compass, which, mounted in an immense frame, was supposed to be less subject to interference from metallic objects in the cabin and the effects of turbulence than standard compasses. Kingsford Smith later admitted that the Earth Inductor Compass’ demise resulted from negligence. Before leaving Naselai, Lyon had forgotten to oil its complex mechanical innards.

  Kingsford Smith flies Southern Cross from New Zealand back to Sydney on 29 March 1934 following a summer barnstorming tour. This is one among very few known airto-air photographs of Southern Cross.