The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller

by Carol Baxter

  But as the plane reached 150 feet, their cheers petered out. Hands covered mouths with a collective gasp of horror. The Red Rose had faltered and was dropping like a stone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Chubbie was sitting calmly in her front cockpit when it happened. For a moment, it had seemed like any other take-off, with Bill’s skills as an airman triumphing over the vicissitudes of yet another inadequate airfield. Ahead was a hillside densely covered in trees and houses, but she knew that the power of the Red Rose’s engine would carry them over the hilltop and on towards Batavia.

  Suddenly everything went silent.

  What was happening? Was Bill planning to land again? Why would he do that?

  The plane gave a sickening lurch.

  That was when she realised something was seriously wrong. And at only 150 feet, Bill had little room to manoeuvre.

  She looked at the hillside in front of them. If he maintained their forward trajectory, the Avian would plunge into it and they would probably be killed. Yet there wasn’t enough time for him to turn the plane around in an effort to save them. Even powerless, the plane’s momentum was carrying them towards an almost certain death.

  Then the right wing dropped and the plane began to fall sideways out of the sky.

  For an interminable moment she sat there, feeling the odd weightlessness of free fall. People were regularly killed or maimed when they fell from thirty-foot buildings, yet here they were plummeting towards Earth from five times that height. She felt strangely fatalistic in that drawn-out moment. What will be, will be.

  With a sickening crunch, the right wing slammed into the ground. Then the propeller struck the ground and the plane somersaulted. A moment later, it settled on the landing field, upside down and facing the opposite direction.

  After the first momentary shock, when she realised that the plane was no longer moving and that she was still alive, she found herself hanging upside down, kept in place by her seatbelt. Her face ached as if someone had punched it. As she looked around, she realised that she was trapped in a mesh of wires and wreckage and was drenched in petrol. If a fire broke out, she would have little chance of survival.

  She called out to Bill. He didn’t respond.

  There was no time to wait for help. She had to get out of the plane as quickly as possible. She tried to push aside the wreckage that trapped her, without success. As she tugged at it, she spotted a possible exit—tiny, yet so was she. She twisted around like a screw being rotated from its socket, feeling as if she were removing skin-layers in the process. Eventually, she twisted herself right out of the wreckage.

  She stood beside the plane for a moment, looking at it. An overwhelming feeling of relief swept over her, relief at being free from what remained of the Red Rose and from the horrific image of their precious plane as her funeral pyre.

  She slipped under the plane and looked inside Bill’s cockpit. He wasn’t there. Glancing around, she saw him lying face down in front of the plane. He wasn’t moving. For a moment she thought, ‘If he has gone and got killed, what am I to do?’

  Racing to his side, she turned him over. Blood was pouring from his mouth. She lifted him into a sitting position, leaning his body against her own so the blood wouldn’t choke him. His eyes flickered. Relief swept over her: he wasn’t dead.

  As his eyes closed again, she saw that his teeth had gone through the fleshy area just below his bottom lip. She lifted the flesh off his teeth and tried to stop the bleeding, to no avail.

  By this time, she was surrounded by people who had rushed to their assistance. They looked aghast at the sight of her. It turned out that she too was covered in blood. Bleakly returning their gaze, she said, ‘Only 1800 miles from Australia and we have now smashed our bus.’

  When Bill regained consciousness, their Dutch well-wishers told them that they would take them both to hospital. She and Bill both protested, saying that they needed to see how badly their plane was damaged. But their supporters convinced them of their need for medical attention. They were also kind enough not to put the obvious into words: the plane wasn’t going anywhere—with or without them.

  At the hospital, the doctors cleaned off the blood and painted Chubbie’s scratches with iodine. They worked on her broken nose but could do nothing about her bruises or her two rapidly blackening eyes. She would look a sorry sight for some time to come.

  They told Bill he needed stitches, but he wouldn’t listen. He kept talking about cameras and photographs and insurance—thankfully, an insurance company had finally relented and covered them. He tried to leave the hospital, saying he would return later to have the stitches put in, but the medical staff wouldn’t let him. To pacify him, Chubbie organised to be taken back to the landing field so she could take the necessary pictures. When she returned, Bill was receiving the last of his stitches. Apart from a concussion, there was nothing seriously wrong with him, so the doctors let him leave the hospital to assess the plane’s damage.

  ‘I am broken-nosed and broken-hearted,’ Chubbie told the press after they had inspected the plane. It was a daunting sight. As she totted up the damage, all her energy and optimism, her spirit and heart—indeed every ounce of courage that had kept her going for three long months—seemed to drain out of her.

  Yet it could have been worse. Bill had again saved their lives. In the split second he’d had to make a decision, he had picked the one action that offered them a chance of surviving the inevitable crash. By side-slipping the plane, by forcing it to plummet towards the ground via the shortest route possible, he had avoided the deadly trees on the hillside in front of them.

  Chubbie decided that, since they had lived to tell the tale with only minor injuries, and since the old bus might be reparable, some luck might still be hanging around them after all. Never one to stay broken-hearted for long, she told the press, ‘Our spirit is undaunted.’ She also admitted that the distance was probably too great for their small engine. They should have changed engines at the halfway point, but they had lacked the funds to do so.

  They sent cables to the Avro company and others begging for assistance. Meanwhile, they decided that their wisest course would be to return to Singapore. They organised to have the Red Rose’s remains packed up and shipped to Singapore while their Dutch supporters booked them a passage on a small Chinese boat.

  Arriving in Singapore two days after their crash, they were taken to the Colonial Secretary’s bungalow to stay. A restful place with polished floors, soft comfortable lounges and silent-footed servants who attended to their every need, it provided the peace and tranquillity they needed to work out what they should do next.

  Of course, everyone wanted to know what had happened. The initial reports had said that the plane suffered a broken plunger axle. When questioned by the Singapore press, Bill claimed that there had been an air-lock or choke in the fuel pipe, the type of accident that could happen to any machine.

  Could the plane be fixed? Bill said that they hadn’t had time to conduct a thorough examination and would do so when the plane reached Singapore. From what he had seen, the wings were smashed, but the fuselage and tail didn’t seem to be in a bad condition. Whether it was reparable or not, he and Chubbie still hoped to succeed in their venture.

  They received many telegrams of sympathy, including words of relief and comfort from Chubbie’s husband and Bill’s parents and wife. His mother didn’t want him to continue the journey and seemed to think that, having provided some of the funding, her opinion carried weight. When faced with Bill’s eagerness to continue—and a few pithy words about the pointlessness of quitting when they were so close to setting a world record—she backed down. They also received many telegrams congratulating them on their achievements and praising them for their determination to continue. Ironically, one of Britain’s aviation authorities now praised the Red Rose’s flight as being among the greatest of British air achievements.

  By the weekend, Bill was able to advise the press that they would
remain in Singapore until the Red Rose was repaired and then continue their flight to Australia. The Avro company had told him that the flight would lack any advertising value unless they finished it in the same plane and the company promised to help them do so by expediting the repairs.

  There was little they could do until the new parts arrived in mid February. In between stripping and preparing the Red Rose, they lived the life of wealthy expatriates, enjoying luncheons and dinners, bridge games and other social get-togethers. And as January turned into February, as the hot humid days crawled past, they tried not to chafe at the interminable delay.

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, another Avro Avian was racing down Croydon’s runway. With the Red Rose possibly down for the count, Bert Hinkler had set his own sights on the light plane record to Australia. He would also try to smash the Smith brothers’ twenty-eight-day record in the process.

  Travelling with extra fuel tanks and without the weight of a passenger, he flew 1200 miles to Rome on his first day, 7 February 1928. He reached Malta on the second day, then on the third made a much longer Mediterranean crossing to Benghazi and on to Tobruk. By the end of day six, he was at Basra, a destination Chubbie and Bill hadn’t reached until day twenty-seven of their more leisurely journey.

  Onwards he came. Calcutta on day ten. Rangoon on day eleven. Victoria Point on day twelve. Unless something went wrong, he would arrive in Singapore by nightfall on day thirteen: 19 February.

  Their spare parts would not reach them until the 20th.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chubbie and Bill had heard he was coming. Indeed, who could have missed the press reports with their increasingly excited tones at his outrageously fast flight? They wondered bitterly whether the ill-luck that had dogged their own flight would turn on him for even a moment.

  They were there to greet him when he landed in Singapore that evening. They helped him service his plane by torchlight. They took him out to dinner. Bill even slept in the plane overnight to protect it from their own friends, who were not only muttering comments about Bert ‘taking advantage of the misfortunes of others’ and ‘stealing records’ but had whispered the nasty word ‘sabotage’.

  Chubbie and Bill farewelled him the following morning and telegraphed their congratulations when he reached Darwin in an astonishing sixteen days.

  And tried to hide their devastation.

  What should they do next? There was no point in not continuing their flight. There were few accolades for those who came in second, and none for those who bowed out altogether. Should they race to follow him, snapping at his heels as a reminder to the world that they would have reached Australia first if not for their unbelievable run of misfortune? Or should they wait until ‘Hustling Hinkler’ fever had abated and the world had the energy to get excited about another record-setting endeavour?

  On Saturday, 25 February, three days after Bert reached Darwin, the Singapore press advised that the Red Rose’s repairs were completed and that the aviators would likely recommence their journey on the Monday or Tuesday. The report was premature. The repairs were proving more difficult than anyone had expected. It was harder to fix a broken plane than to assemble a new one. Nothing fitted. Everything had to be re-welded. With the assistance of Chinese mechanics, they worked on, day after day, in the merciless humidity.

  At last it was ready. On 10 March, the press reported that the Red Rose would be transported to the racecourse the following day. There it would take to the air once more, to complete the five-hour flight test required for an airworthiness certificate.

  Excitement gripped Singapore. While the world’s press had poured out its sympathy for the downed aviators, Singapore had felt personally devastated. Expatriates and islanders had turned out in force to cheer the aviators when they set off for Muntok on 9 January, and they had comforted the battered and dispirited pair on their ignominious return a few days later. In the weeks that followed, Singapore had tried to lift the duo’s spirits as well as helping with the plane’s repairs. It was as if Bill and Chubbie and the Red Rose were now part of the island’s fabric—honorary citizens in all but name.

  Carefully the plane was lifted onto a trailer attached to the back of a lorry. An advance guard was sent out to clear the road of other vehicles to help ensure a safe passage. Slowly the lorry moved out from the warehouse and began the fifteen-mile journey to the racecourse. No one would breathe comfortably until the lorry reached its destination.

  More locals—thousands more—waited at the racecourse and mobbed the plane, making it difficult for Bill to take to the air. At last a space was cleared and he took off, to fly around and around the racecourse for five hours. After he landed, he announced to the waiting press that they would leave for Muntok the following Tuesday.

  In truth, they would have preferred to bypass Banca Island. It seemed like tempting fate to go back to the site of their record-ruining crash. However, they had promised the kindly Dutch to visit them again when—or if—they were able to continue their flight.

  Bill continued, ‘Admiration has been expressed in all quarters at the determination of Mrs Miller to continue the flight, which has met with so much ill-luck.’

  The flight was all about Chubbie now. For many, her participation had been the most interesting feature of the Red Rose’s flight from the start. Now, she was all they had left. Bert Hinkler had beaten every record that Bill or the Red Rose had previously set by travelling farther, faster and solo. Chubbie alone would be their pathway to glory—the first woman to make the perilous flight from England to Australia—if nothing else went wrong on their journey to Darwin.

  At 7 am on Tuesday, 13 March, they took off from the Singapore racecourse, eagerly watched by all their Singaporean well-wishers. The local press expressed everyone’s thoughts when it remarked: ‘Great interest is felt in the effort of the two aviators, who are continuing their flight after suffering set-backs which were enough to discourage even the stoutest heart.’

  It was impossible for Chubbie not to feel a sense of trepidation as the Red Rose lifted into the sky. She wondered if it would rise to the occasion or if something else was waiting in the wings—or in the fuselage or engine—that would announce its presence at the worst possible moment.

  But the flight to Muntok proved uneventful. Both the plane and engine worked perfectly. The landing site was also in better condition. The Singapore consul had written to the Muntok authorities, asking that the grass be cut before the Red Rose returned. The ground was still uneven, but they could at least see its undulations. They landed safely and were greeted affectionately by their many Dutch friends.

  In the early hours of the following morning, Chubbie was awoken by a loud noise. A Chinese funeral band was playing a mournful refrain accompanied by the monotonous beating of drums. She found it impossible to get back to sleep, not only because of the noise. A feeling of ill omen crept through her. Why a funeral dirge of all things, in Muntok of all places, on this morning of all mornings?

  They left for the landing field in the dark, wanting a dawn take-off so the journey would be completed before the worst of the day’s heat. Flying in humid tropical conditions was not only uncomfortable for them, it added further stress to their well-worn engine.

  The Red Rose faced the landing strip. A sense of déjà vu settled over everyone. The Muntok crash had been horrifying, not just for Chubbie and Bill but for all of the spectators.

  Bill pushed the throttle forward and the plane sped down the landing strip towards the tree-covered hillside. It lifted off the ground at exactly the same point as previously.

  Everyone held their breaths. The plane kept rising and soared over the hillside.

  Bill didn’t tempt fate by circling to dip his wing in farewell.

  As they left the island and began flying over the sea, Bill shrieked a single word that Chubbie could hear over the engine drone. ‘Alright!’ She turned around and saw that he was smiling.

  Rain pummelled them
again as they flew towards Batavia, but they were long past caring about a simple drenching. Rain and dense clouds enveloped them for much of the next day’s journey to Surabaya in West Java. They flew past a smoking volcano and were glad it didn’t pick that moment to erupt.

  Surabaya was their last ‘civilised’ landing place, although they had another two overnight stops before they attacked the Torres Strait. Bill sent a cable to the Shell Company requesting that fuel supplies be laid down for them at Darwin. He added optimistically that they anticipated the successful completion of their journey.

  Each day though, the weather conditions deteriorated as if the elements were conspiring against them. An hour out of Surabaya, they ran into another curtain of grey clouds and heavy tropical rain, the ugliest storm they had endured in their five-month journey.

  They stopped overnight at Bima on the island of Sumbawa. The next day they faced more torrential rain, more thick clouds in mountainous country, more hours when they couldn’t see the ground below them.

  When they reached Atambua in Dutch Timor (West Timor), their final overnight stop, they were dismayed. Not only was the landing field covered in long grass—except for a small mown strip in the middle—it was also covered in water. Bill managed to land safely, but he was uncertain whether he would be able to take off again.

  He asked the Dutch commander if more grass could be cut. Before long, the local gaol had disgorged a gang of convicts who, with hands and feet chained together, cleared a long wide landing strip.

  The commander and lieutenant offered to help service the plane. They jury-rigged a sun shelter—bamboo poles covered with a tarpaulin—to protect them all from the burning sun. Nothing protected them from the malarial mosquitoes, which feasted on their exposed flesh.

  At 5 pm, the heavens opened. Everyone crawled under the plane for protection. The water rose and continued rising. When it was a foot deep, Bill said it would be impossible to take off the next morning. They covered the plane with the tarpaulin and left it there until the rain eased.