Long Flight Home

by Lainie Anderson

  Britain’s Daily Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere first offered this prize in April 1913 (well before World War I), and reignited interest in the race in the wake of the war. John Alcock and Arthur Brown won the race with a 16.5-hour flight on 14—15 June 1919.

  The Captain leaned over to chink Biffy’s whisky tumbler. ‘Here’s hoping the rules allow you to come along, General. You’re almost an honorary Australian these days.’

  Ross and Biffy were the best of mates, but Ross only ever addressed him as ‘General’, including in letters sent after the race. This is completely normal when addressing superiors in the armed forces—as weird as it might sound to the rest of us. Their deep friendship was never more evident than in a condolence letter to Mrs Jessie Smith after Ross’s death. Biffy writes that he had come to regard his friend ‘in the light of a favourite brother; his was such a lovable character, so essentially upright and straightforward and as unaffected by distinction and success as he was by dangers and difficulties which he regarded merely as incidents to be met and overcome’.

  CHAPTER 9

  ‘I know a thing or two about gardening, sir,’ I said. ‘Feel free to use me while I’m here.’

  Letters written in the 1960s from Biffy to Smith brothers biographer Grenfell A. Price, author of The Skies Remember, reveal the friendship that developed between Wally and the Colonel. ‘During the weeks they were waiting for their Vimy, they made my home theirs,’ Biffy wrote. ‘Shiers endeared himself to my father who admired his head for heights when put on to prune the top branches of the tallest trees.’ Price’s book also notes that ‘the mechanics attempted to repay the General’s kindness by rehabilitating his electric power plant and two of his motor cars’. The National Library of Australia also holds a letter from Laura Borton to Wally, sent before the flight with some photos of the crew and the Borton family in the Cheveney garden. It ends: ‘Thank you again so much for all you did for us while you were here.’

  CHAPTER 10

  ‘Welcome to a Borton breakfast tradition, chaps,’ Biffy said.

  I got the idea for this little breakfast poetry competition from Guy Slater’s book My Warrior Sons. It notes numerous poems jotted down by the Colonel, including one written on the back of an envelope ‘on seeing the marriage of a Day to a Miss Week in the Morning Post’. As for other poems featured, I learned about hopping and the little hopper ditty in J.M. Maloney’s The Sisters of Battle Road. The two poems about dying airmen are from L.W. Sutherland’s Australian Flying Corps memoir Aces and Kings.

  I had no papers from India—none of us did.

  The service records of Ross, Wally and Benny all state, in the same handwriting, ‘Not considered necessary to apply to India for documents’ before briefly recounting their service since the war. Interestingly, the records suggest that Wally and Jim arrived in London from Bombay, India, a few days before Ross. I’ve always wondered whether he stopped off briefly in Europe to visit the war grave of his younger brother Colin, who was buried at Belgium’s Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery after dying of wounds at Passchendaele in October 1917.

  Biffy lit a cigarette, settled back into his seat and nodded to the open notebook on the table. ‘Right, who are we up against?’

  Considering it was written decades before the wonders of the internet, The Greatest Air Race by Nelson Eustis contains a treasure trove of facts about the other competitors, including Etienne Poulet. For other sources, see the bibliography.

  CHAPTER 11

  ‘How much they asking for one of those Avro biplanes?’

  There was a huge glut of surplus aircraft in Britain after the war. Many were gifted to dominions such as Australia for the purpose of establishing independent air forces throughout the Empire. This included 128 aircraft for Australia, according to George Odgers in his Pictorial History of the Royal Australian Air Force. In Smithy: The life of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, Ian Mackersey highlights a letter from Kingsford Smith to his parents in Sydney in 1919, which shows just how cheap the aircraft were: ‘ … we are getting three or four machines for about £50 each and, after paying freight to Australia, they will have cost us somewhere about £100 each.’

  Christmas hams piped up. ‘You’re the reason they’ve delayed the bloody race.’

  This bar scene—and the pre-race angst about Ross Smith gaining an unfair advantage against his competitors—is fictional. However, the frustration of both Bert Hinkler and Charles Kingsford Smith at not being able to race is well documented. Kingsford Smith later famously referred to Prime Minister Billy Hughes as a ‘nigger in the woodpile’ for standing in his way. Hinkler also held a grudge for years at being denied the chance to race the route solo. ‘I get wild whenever I think of that time,’ he wrote years later. ‘I was all dressed up and no place to go.’

  The drama surrounding the delay generally—and Kingsford Smith’s removal more specifically—is recounted in These Are Facts, the autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams. Sir Richard (or ‘Dicky’) was asked to represent the Australian government in matters relating to the race. According to his autobiography, he made the decision to delay the departure because conversations with Val Rendle (of the Blackburn Kangaroo team) and George Matthews (Sopwith Wallaby) led him to believe crews were planning to set out ‘without adequate arrangements being made, taking risks and perhaps not informing us fully about their route’. He believed the result could be ‘much loss of life’ and a ‘great deal of harm’ to the aviation industry. According to Sir Richard, it was the manager of the Blackburn Aircraft Company in London who replaced Kingsford Smith. ‘I was interested to know why the Blackburn Aircraft Company desired a change and was informed that the pilot concerned had, with his friends, purchased an aircraft from government disposals and was barnstorming in the country and contrary to civil air regulations was landing in fields not approved for that purpose,’ Sir Richard wrote. ‘I was also told that he had found that he could insure his aircraft for an amount in excess of that for which he could replace it and there had been some crashes. The Blackburn Company’s view was that this was undermining not only civil aviation control … but it was also damaging aviation insurance which was just getting established.’

  Secret cablegrams held in the Australian Archives (copies of which are held in the Crome collection in the National Library of Australia) show Prime Minister Billy Hughes, in Paris, was eager for race crews to start as early as April, but Acting Prime Minister William Watt, in Melbourne, urged a delay to give airmen in Australia time to get to London to compete. Watt feared a ‘great clamour’ if they were denied the opportunity. In June, Hughes wrote to say that after speaking with Richard Williams and British Air Ministry officials, he’d changed his mind about starting immediately. He now proposed to postpone the flight ‘until we have information that depots are established [to provide fuel and oil along the route], landing places marked out, and all arrangements made’. The race rules were formally announced by the Royal Aero Club of the United Kingdom on May 22nd 1919, with supplementary regulations announced in June stating that no aircraft could start until September 8th.

  To create a sense of tension between Ross Smith and the other competitors, I used a booklet printed and widely distributed by the grieving father of Cedric Howell in the wake of the young aviator’s death off the island of Corfu. The pamphlet, held among the papers of A. Grenfell Price in the State Library of South Australia, is titled The Last Flight of the Late Capt. C.E. Howell DSO, MC, DFC, RAF and his mysterious death at Corfu. AN APPEAL and goes to great lengths to raise questions about the race process and the circumstances in which Howell died. On the final page of the 20-page pamphlet, Mr Howell says an enquiry into the race would clear up the following four questions: ‘Was the race postponed to allow Ross Smith to compete? Was the race made to suit Ross Smith, regardless of the interests and lives of the other competitors? Were the alterations ordered on all machines as a result of Ross Smith’s report necessary, and were they the cause of the death of four of t
he competitors? Were the conditions fair to all competitors, or all in favour of one?’

  Three related documents are also contained among the papers of A. Grenfell Price. The first is a letter dated September 9th 1920 from race competitor George Matthews, debunking allegations raised by Mr Howell and offering unqualified support to Ross Smith. ‘As one of the unsuccessful competitors I deeply regret that the brilliant success of yourself and the Vimy crew should meet with such unjust criticism as embodied in the above pamphlet and in the event of an enquiry taking place shall be only too pleased to attend in support of the foregoing statements,’ Matthews wrote.

  The second related document is a letter dated 10th September 1920 from Ross Smith to the Minister for Defence, in which he too demands a public enquiry to clear his name. ‘I need hardly to say that there is absolutely no truth in or foundation for these charges; but they so seriously reflect upon my character and are made so publicly that I feel that some step ought to be taken to prevent a repetition of the charges and to secure their public refutation,’ Ross wrote. ‘I make every allowance for Mr Howell’s grief and mental disturbances due to the tragic loss of his son and have no wish to punish him by the bringing of a libel action against him, which indeed is not a satisfactory method of settling a matter of this kind. Mr Howell has demanded a public enquiry, and I too feel that a public enquiry is the proper means of putting a stop to these calumnies and of clearing me from the imputations made against me and incidentally against the government.’

  The third related document, dated October 12th 1920, is a response to Ross from the Department of Defence, in the form of a statement supplied by then Lieutenant Colonel Richard Williams and confirmed by another official who helped to oversee the race. The letter states that it is not proposed to institute a public enquiry. In his four-page statement, Williams categorically denies the allegations made by Mr Howell, including favouritism being shown to Ross Smith. ‘The Prime Minister was influenced by no-body when delaying the flight to the 8th September and at that time, neither he nor anybody else knew of Captain Ross Smith as a possible entrant for the flight …’

  Two days later we were in London again, Benny and me sitting at the back of a room filled with officials from the British Air Ministry, the Royal Aero Club and the Australian government.

  British aviation publications including the Aeroplane reported on this September meeting. In his letter to Ross Smith, dated September 9th 1920, George Matthews also confirms a meeting at ‘Air Ministry H.Q.’ in which ‘General Borton and yourself reported at length on aerodromes and conditions generally throughout the stage Calcutta—Darwin.’

  CHAPTER 12

  We stood watching the hop-pickers for a bit.

  I got the idea for the hop-picking scene from My Warrior Sons. During the war, the Colonel and Mrs Borton turned their local village hall into a makeshift hospital for injured soldiers, who were referred to throughout the diaries as ‘the Colonel’s cripples’. In one diary entry in August 1916, the Colonel talked of taking them hop-picking as part of their convalescence.

  Then Biffy brought in the heavy artillery: Major-General Salmond, who was back briefly in Britain from Cairo.

  A. Grenfell Price writes about the September 1919 meeting between Vickers heavyweights and Salmond in The Skies Remember, noting that everyone got ‘very enthusiastic’ and that the Vickers’ Board later offered ‘warm and interested approval’ and ‘the warmest recommendation to use Ross Smith and his men’. In a letter to Biffy Borton after the race, dated January 25th 1919, Ross Smith gives all the kudos to his friend: ‘I think [then Vickers Aviation second in command, Walter] Caddell must have felt very bucked at your persuading him to let us have the Vimy.’

  CHAPTER 13

  I couldn’t help but compare her, and she didn’t stack up.

  Wally spoke at length about his life, the air race and his first impressions of the Vickers Vimy in a taped interview with Hazel de Berg in 1966 (held in the National Library of Australia’s oral history collection). Given the plane was state-of-the-art at the time and only recently off the production line, chances are Wally’s recollections tend to exaggerate his initial view that the Vimy was incapable of making the flight. In later life I think Wally developed a reputation as a bit of a raconteur. In the late 1960s, Smith brothers biographer A. Grenfell Price asked Biffy Borton to read a draft of his book The Skies Remember. In responding, Biffy wrote: ‘I agree that Shiers’ contribution [by way of the taped interview with Hazel de Berg] is inimitable. I have not attempted to modify his occasional slight exaggerations, to do so would mar the delightful atmosphere. I should so much like to hear his version of how I got my nickname. It goes back 60 years, so I don’t know the answer; but I’ve no doubt Shiers has invented a good one!’

  The Vickers Vimy came too late for war.

  In Vickers Aircraft Since 1908, C.F. Andrews writes: ‘Behind the scenes in official quarters a controversy had raged between the protagonists of tactical and strategic bombing. This seems to have been resolved because of the need to retaliate against the night bombing of targets in Britain by German aeroplanes, which began in September 1917. In consequence, the Vimy was one of the new heavy bombers selected for production.’ Initial contracts of 150 and 200 aircraft were received, with subsequent contracts taking the total to 1,130. ‘Production during 1918 was to be reserved for aircraft for anti-submarine duties (carrying two torpedoes) and subsequent deliveries for night-bombing aircraft.’ By war’s end, when the government drastically cut orders, Vickers Crayford had made only seven aircraft and Weybridge six. ‘In October 1918 one Vimy bomber was flown to Nancy, in northeast France, to stand by for a series of long-range raids deep into Germany, including Berlin. The Armistice of 11 November 1918 cancelled this plan, and consequently the Vimy was not used operationally in the First Word War.’

  Then three months earlier, Alcock and Brown flew a Vimy into the record books across the Atlantic, and suddenly everyone had heard of them.

  Alcock and Brown’s Vickers Vimy (one of only two surviving original Vickers Vimy aircraft in the world—the other being the Smith crew’s Vimy housed at Adelaide Airport in South Australia) has been a centrepiece of Britain’s Science Museum since December 1919. A 1969 article in Vickers News notes the plane was taken back to Weybridge to be reconstructed and cleaned of mud from its illustrious landing in an Irish bog, before being transported up to the museum in London. One worker recalled that the windows had to be taken out of the building so they could get the Vimy inside. The museum’s collection numbers 200,000 objects, and in 2013 the Vimy was numbered among the top 112 key developments in science, technology and medicine that have shaped the modern world.

  ‘Men still do the specialist mechanical work, of course, but we had 25 girls dedicated to the build of each and every machine,’ Rex said.

  This conversation is lifted largely from Wally’s interview with Hazel de Berg in 1966. In May 1969, Vickers News published an article on ‘Vimy veterans’ to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alcock and Brown’s 1919 trans-Atlantic flight. Mrs Anne Boultwood spoke of her work as forewoman in the erecting and doping shop at Weybridge during the war, managing 300 girls sewing fabric on the planes and repairing damage to the fabric. They were part of an estimated 1.6 million British women who entered civilian employment during the war, taking over previously male roles in arms factories but also as bus crews, postal workers, farmhands and in many other areas of employment. In The Crying Years, Peter Stanley explains that the experience was vastly different in Australia. ‘While the war created work for some women in shops and offices, the lack of manufacturing or war industry, and the rejection of conscription, failed to bring about the widespread economic changes that occurred in Britain (and which Australian troops there noted with unease).’

  It was a story you couldn’t forget: dubious workers had christened the poor airship the Mayfly, because they thought it may fly, but it may not.

  According to C.F. Andrews in Vickers A
ircraft Since 1908, Vickers was awarded the £30,000 contract to build HMA (His Majesty’s Airship) No. 1 in 1909, and it wasn’t long before a series of delays and design changes led to its ‘opprobrious nickname’. The 512-ft airship, which cost more than twice the original allocation, was struck by a squall on launch and broke in two.

  CHAPTER 14

  ‘You’ll get used to him fellas,’ he said. ‘He’s the blunt one.’

  Ross Smith makes a direct reference to Keith’s blunt nature in 14,000 Miles through the Air, as he recalls his brother’s frustration with the French in Lyons: ‘My brother’s [whisker] growth, like his temper, is much more bristly than mine.’ A former Vickers Weybridge worker by the name of Charles Tullett, interviewed in 1969, told a similar story: ‘I knew both the Smith brothers … I think Keith (the navigator) was the more forceful of the two.’

  ‘It’s not right,’ I said, tapping angrily at my cigarette to drop its ash. ‘Should be Pard.’

  Throughout his life, Wally maintained the view that Ross’s former No. 1 Squadron observer Pard Mustard was ‘very disappointed’ at not being on the Vimy crew. In Wally’s interview with Hazel de Berg in 1966, he said that after being introduced to Keith in London, he said to Ross: ‘Well now you’ve broken the party up, Ross. You’d better let Mustard know.’

  Pard (who changed his surname from Mustard to Mustar after the war) debunks the myth. In D’Air Devil: The story of ‘Pard’ Mustar, author Frank Clune explains that Ross did ask Mustar to travel to England after the war, to take up aviation as a career, but he declined because he wanted to return to Australia. The pair spoke again after the 1919 flight, with Ross asking why Pard hadn’t come to England, as he’d wanted him on the trip. ‘Oh well, bad luck! thought Mustar,’ Clune writes. ‘It was just another of life’s little jokes that, after so many adventurous flights with Ross Smith, he should have missed the chance of taking part in the greatest flight of all.’