‘He tried to enlist a couple of times in Australia but was knocked back on medical grounds.’
Papers held in the Keith Macpherson Smith collection at the Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide, show he was twice rejected for military service in Adelaide on the grounds of ‘physical unfitness’, in July and October 1916. No reason is given, however I once read a reference to Keith having an operation for varicose veins (a common reason for rejection in World War I) before recuperating on a ship en route to England. I should reinforce that there’s no proof the medical condition was varicose veins. The Barr Smith Library collection includes a Royal Flying Corps certificate, showing Keith qualified to become a pilot on February 24th 1918. His RFC service records held in the National Archives in Britain show Keith served as an instructor in the final year of the war, which was no mean feat. In Australian Flying Corps, Ian Hodges states that the average trainee pilot in the Royal Flying Corps destroyed two aircraft and wrecked six undercarriages. Instructors like Keith, who were up in the aircraft with them, risked their lives daily to train these unskilled young men.
Ross peeled off his overalls. ‘I’m buying us all dinner at the Hand & Spear and you two can fill Keith in on the Vimy.’
Letters written by Ross Smith to family and friends just before the flight, and which subsequently became some of the first international airmail to reach Australia, reference the Hand & Spear as his address. The pub is still operating just outside Brooklands Museum in Weybridge.
‘Gee, Keith, you’ve got even more like Dad,’ said Ross, nodding at the open notebook. ‘His station records were more thorough than the Holy Bible.’
Ross and Keith’s father Andrew Smith ran Mutooroo Station, on the South Australian border near Broken Hill, for pioneer pastoralist Peter Waite. Smith senior was credited with converting the waterless, 3,000 sqm property into productive wool country supporting nearly 130,000 sheep. Waite’s great-grandson Jim Morgan writes in his essay Knights of the Air that Smith and Waite established ‘giant earth tanks, pipelines as long as thirty miles, the buildings necessary to such an enterprise and, above all, fencing’. The result was 300 paddocks where there had been nothing. ‘I’ve held in my hand his little black notebook, maybe only three inches by four or five, covering several years in the early 1890s, showing woolclips, total income and expenses both capital and running … full of facts and disciplined activity recorded by the day.’
‘It was worse in South Australia,’ said Ross. ‘We had the highest “No” vote of any state. Lousy lot.’
A letter to Keith in June 1916, held in the State Library of South Australia, illustrates Ross’s disgust at the apathy of Australian men towards enlistment, and his support for conscription. ‘ … for goodness sake try to get them to stop wasting money in sending those idiotic, recruiting trains about the country,’ he writes. ‘Everyone over here is positively disgusted with the idea, and I feel positively ashamed to think we have to stoop to such levels to get men … What must the Germans think of us? It’s all a ridiculous farce, and the sooner compulsion is passed the sooner do we stop making fools of ourselves.’
Australians voted against conscription in October 1916 and again in December 1917 (joining India and South Africa as the only participating countries not to introduce subscription in World War I). In the first referendum, South Australia joined New South Wales with the largest ‘No’ votes of around 57 per cent. ‘Yes’ majorities were recorded in Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and the federal territories. In The Crying Years, Paul Stanley notes that in the second referendum, all states and territories except Tasmania and Western Australia voted ‘No’.
Rex Pierson had shown us a newspaper clipping from the New York Times that said Christopher Columbus didn’t take one tenth of the risks the air pioneers would face on the race to Australia.
The New York Times article, published on October 18th 1919, offered a sobering view of the task facing air race competitors: ‘Columbus in his caravel did not take a tenth of the risks that these bold air pioneers will have to face. Luck be with them, but they will be throwing dice with Death.’
CHAPTER 15
I think Keith Murdoch took one look at Ross and knew if any pilot was going to make it home to Australia, it was him.
It’s unknown how the Smith brothers met Keith Murdoch, but given their shared Scottish Australian heritage and Keith’s work in London on the 1917 conscription referendum, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the two Keiths had met well before the air race. Documents held in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, England, include a letter dated December 9th 1919 from Keith Murdoch to the Rt.-Hon. Lord Stamfordham, Private Secretary to His Majesty the King, which confirms that the then United Cable Service managing editor was receiving telegrams from Ross during the race. ‘Sir,’ it says, ‘We understand that His Majesty has expressed some interest in the superb flight of Captain Ross Smith … to Australia. As we have received the enclosed personal wires from Captain Ross Smith, we have pleasure in forwarding them to you in case they may be of further interest to His Majesty.’ Throughout the race, Australian newspapers including the Herald and the Weekly Times in Melbourne, the Sydney Sun and other papers signed up to the wire service splashed ‘Exclusive Messages’ directly quoting Ross from landing spots along the route. Just before their record-breaking flight, the Smith brothers also dined with Murdoch in London. In If I Remember Rightly: The memoirs of W.S. Robinson 1876—1963, industrialist William Sydney Robinson recalls the dinner with the Smith brothers and his friend Keith Murdoch at the British Empire Club in St James’s Square.
‘Do you reckon you can survive the Blazing Trail?’
By late 1919, Australian newspapers including the Melbourne Herald were also reporting on the large number of deaths occurring among airmen on ‘The Blazing Trail’ from London to Cairo. Colonel Lawrence crashed near Rome’s Centocelle aerodrome, where the Smith crew landed on their way through Italy.
Two boxes had arrived that morning. One was from Kodak Ltd.
The March 1920 edition of the Australasian Photo Review reveals all four men had a Kodak and a supply of Kodak Speed Film, and took some of the first aerial photos ever captured along parts of the route. The £800 cheque for first prize was awarded to Ross, although Keith took most of the photos and the prize money was split between the four men.
CHAPTER 17
Lyons, France, November 12th 1919
Many place names along the route have changed since the air race—or differ from Ross Smith’s Anglicised spelling. However, I have stuck with 1919 references for consistency with earlier non-fiction books on the race. Also, I am not going into vast detail here about the facts of the race, because I’d simply be repeating fantastic resources already available (as noted in the bibliography).
‘Wonder if they’re playing funny buggers to buy Poulet some more time.’
The scene in Lyons is largely drawn from Ross’s recollection in 14,000 Miles through the Air, with embellishment for dramatic effect. However, I do think it’s entirely plausible that the French airmen would have favoured Poulet over any English crews—especially given that he entered the race to honour the revered French aviator Jules Védrines, who had died in an accident not far from Lyons.
The Leaning Tower was right across the fields from the aerodrome.
A photograph taken by Biffy Borton on his 1918 flight from London to Cairo in the Handley Page, and featured in Clive Semple’s Airway to the East, shows the Pisa aerodrome was once located in sight of the Leaning Tower. It’s true that on landing, Wally said it looked like the architect had drunk too much Johnnie Walker.
CHAPTER 18
In the middle of all that, Keith pushed through and tapped me on the shoulder and announced: ‘Shiers, your engine’s sick.’
According to Wally’s interview with Hazel de Berg, this actually happened, although I’ve ramped up the animosity for dramatic effect. In the same scene I mention Benny rolling his eyes at being tol
d by Keith to sit down in the aft cockpit because he was slowing down the plane. This is taken from a line in Keith’s flight diary, now held in the State Library of South Australia, in which he makes a note to himself and/or Ross: ‘I would tell Bennett not to stand up for too long at a time, it must take at least 5 mph off our speed.’
‘What about a poultice that wrapped around the pipe and plugged the crack without burning?’ I called up to Benny. ‘Mate, hand me the chewing gum from the emergency rations.’
Ross Smith’s 14,000 Miles through the Air makes no mention of Wally’s chewing gum idea, and I wonder if this was part of a deliberate strategy immediately after the flight to understate any real trouble with the Rolls-Royce engines. This is reinforced by a confidential letter from Ross Smith to Vickers (held in the State Library of South Australia) after the crew’s arrival in Australia and the subsequent breakdown of the aircraft. ‘I have made certain guarded statements to the Press about our trouble and sent a wire to the Sydney Sun,’ Ross writes. ‘I thought that the best course as otherwise all sorts of rumours get about. I think that our best way will be to partially blame the vibration caused by the mended propeller and the fact of not being able to give the engines overhaul before. As I have said I do not think the latter reason had anything to do with it, but we do not want the Vimy’s reputation or Rolls Royce to suffer in any way.’ The first published reference to the chewing gum incident appeared in A. Grenfell Price’s The Skies Remember, in which he quotes from Wally’s 1966 taped interview with Hazel de Berg and confirms it is ‘vouched for by Lady Smith and friends of the family’.
CHAPTER 19
The Vimy’s wheels had barely rolled to a stop when a lanky bloke with a wide forehead and an easy smile came striding out to meet us.
This long-awaited meeting with Poulet in Akyab is recorded as it happened. ‘Poulet was the first to greet us on landing,’ Ross Smith writes in 14,000 Miles through the Air. ‘He came forward with a cheery smile and outstretched hand—a true sportsman, the hero of a gallant and daring enterprise.’ Newspaper clippings from the time also describe Poulet as a likeable character.
Ross held up a hand, silencing his brother. ‘I’ll say this just one more time. We are not leaving without Poulet.’
In truth, it’s unlikely there was any opposition from the crew to Ross’s idea of flying to Bangkok in tandem with Poulet. As Ross notes in 14,000 Miles, ‘The way to Bangkok lay across high ranges and dense jungle, and the mutual advantage in making the journey together over this unfrequented and practically unknown country, should a forced landing have to be made by one of us, was obvious.’
CHAPTER 20
In the eerie gloom, the foreman stepped forward and delivered a vicious blow with a long, thin piece of bamboo, striking a worker’s bare arm with a nasty crack.
It’s only fair to note that the Smith crew weren’t quite as kind-hearted as I make them out to be in this scene. It was, after all, 1919 and they were on a tight schedule to reach Australia within 30 days. In 14,000 Miles through the Air, Ross explains that the ‘coolies’ were given a pay increase to do the work, but when they went on strike again within 15 minutes he called the foreman. ‘There was a different kind of strike, and so the work proceeded.’
I slumped back on my seat and fell asleep until we bounced to earth at Don Muang aerodrome.
During the 1919 flight, Ross Smith told Bangkok’s Siam Observer that the Don Muang aerodrome was the best he’d struck since England ‘and expressed himself as delighted with the arrangements made and the very efficient administration’. During my Churchill Fellowship in 2017, I visited the National Aviation Museum of the Royal Thai Air Force in Bangkok and learned that the Thai Royal Family was an early adopter of aviation technology. In 1912 three officers were sent to France for flight training, before returning to create the Royal Thai Air Force. In June 1918, Thailand sent an aviation regiment to support the Allies in France, and by 1919 airmail services had begun and the ‘Army Air Division’ was well advanced. When the Vimy flew out of Bangkok, four aircraft formed a military escort for 50 miles.
‘Old man Shiers was one of a dozen convicts to escape Van Diemen’s Land in a small stolen ship. He got all the way to Chile before he was caught.’
True story, as told in Adam Courtenay’s 2018 book The Ship That Never Was: The greatest escape story of Australian colonial history.
Sometime around midnight, Keith had come up with a plan. We’d ask for more matting from the villagers and lay an entire runway.
This is a true story, but it’s not so clear whether all local villagers gave up the walls of their homes willingly, or were coerced to help out. However, the crew did take many photographs of villagers happily pitching in that morning to lay ‘Matting Road’ and get the crew on their way.
CHAPTER 21
I turned to check if I could still see the HMAS Sydney … I hoped they rescued Keith’s pickle jar before it sank into the waves.
The final leg of the flight over the Timor Sea into Port Darwin was one of the most dangerous, so you can imagine how happy the Vimy crew were to sight the HMAS Sydney about 180 miles off the coast. With no radio on board, Keith dropped an Escoffier pickle jar complete with a parachute tied with string. The pencil message read ‘The Air, 10/12/19, Vickers Vimy, The Commander, H.M.A.S., Very glad to see you. Many thanks for looking after us. Going strong. Keith Smith, Ross Smith, Sgt J. Bennett, Sgt W.H. Shiers.’ The jar and message were donated to the Library of New South Wales by the Captain H. Cayley, Commander of HMAS Sydney, in 1922.
One of them was Hudson Fysh, an old mate of Ross’s from No. 1 Squadron who’d had the job of scratching aerodromes out of scrub and desert from Darwin to Brisbane in time to receive the air race crews.
Hudson Fysh and fellow Australian Flying Corps pilot Paul McGinness founded Qantas as a result of carving out the airfields across northern Australia for air race competitors in 1919. In his autobiography Qantas Rising, Sir Hudson describes seeing the Vimy appear as a little speck over the Timor Sea before coming in to land in Darwin. ‘It was one of the most moving sights I can remember—the termination of one of the greatest flights, if not the greatest, in the history of aviation, and a great fillip for civil aviation in Australia, for no one had ever flown across the world before.’
‘Sir’ Ross and ‘Sir’ Keith, it was now.
Ross and Keith were knighted by King George V within weeks of the Darwin landing, and the accolade didn’t sit easily with Ross. In January 1920 he writes to Biffy Borton, lamenting ‘I’m afraid it will only be a nuisance to me’. He continues: ‘All the “sharks” in the country are doing their best to get us into companies & all sorts of things but we have survived so far.’
Benny blamed the bastard who’d stolen Marmaduke II’s head.
In the same letter to Biffy Borton sent in January 1920, Ross reveals the fate of the crew’s little mascot. ‘At Darwin his “neck” got bent and the spring pulled out a bit. Bennett was mending him surrounded by a crowd of sightseers, one of whom stole Marmaduke’s head. The united efforts of ourselves & the police failed to recover the missing piece & I’m very sorry about him.’ Ross also confirms the Colonel’s wife Laura Borton donated the mascot, saying ‘ … please tell Mrs Borton that I will write & thank her for Marmaduke later on when things get quieter, it is almost impossible at present to do anything except listen to hot air & silly speeches’.
The temporary fix got us all the way to Charleville, over west of Brisbane, when the Vimy and her Rolls-Royce engines finally said enough and carked it.
In The Skies Remember, A. Grenfell Price gives an insight into the damage that occurred after the take-off at Charleville, when Wally heard ‘a terrific bang, and a flash of fire came out past Benny and me, and we wondered, and thought we were gone’. According to Price, the port engine was taken to Ipswich and needed ‘one new cylinder, two pistons, all the big ends, two connecting rods, six new valves, a new manifold, and the sump patched’. While a new propeller was b
eing made of Queensland maple, the Vimy back in Charleville was redoped, varnished and fitted with a new set of control wires. The repairs took ‘some fifty days’, nearly twice as long as the flight from London to Darwin.
Sir Ross leaned over and kissed my new wife.
A detailed article and photograph in Sydney’s the Sunday Times on February 22nd 1920 tells the story of Wally and Helena’s wedding. The garden party was hosted by prominent politician and theatre promoter Hugh McIntosh in honour of the Smith crew, and ‘was made intensely interesting’ by the fact that it doubled as Wally and Helena’s marriage ceremony. Guests included the New South Wales Premier William Holman and other politicians, Sydney socialites and highly distinguished soldiers. ‘As Capt. Chaplain Wilson remarked, the wedding was arranged by the photographers and not by the clergyman,’ the article says. ‘Sir Ross Smith was best man, and incidentally hastened to kiss the bride after the Chaplain had warned the bridegroom that he had better be quick if he wished to secure the first kiss.’
POSTSCRIPT
‘So what happened then, Wal?’
The events unfolded largely as Wally describes, and the facts are widely documented in non-fiction books and resources.
Hubert Wilkins, Val Rendle, David Williams and Garnsey Potts crashed out, too, with their Blackburn Kangaroo coming to rest in a ditch near a lunatic asylum on the island of Crete.
In The Last Explorer, Simon Nasht details the trials faced by the Blackburn Kangaroo crew and suggests sabotage may have occurred first in France and later on Crete. ‘For the rest of his life Rendle remained convinced that the Blackburn had been deliberately sabotaged and, though less certain, Wilkins agreed there was evidence that someone had tried to prevent them continuing,’ Nasht writes. ‘If so, it amounted to attempted murder, but none of the pilots would ever know who was responsible.’
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