Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men

by P Fitzsimons

Even higher than Kingsford Smith had been when he spotted the two German planes, a third Hun fighter had been lurking in the clouds, and while he had been stalking the pair below, he was being stalked himself. Instinctively, Kingsford Smith stamped his feet to hurl his rudder to the left and right to enable his plane to swerve but the fighter above had his measure. It seemed that whichever way he turned, nothing stopped the bullets that kept pouring into his plane. In the midst of the maelstrom the Australian was dimly aware that he had been hit in the left foot, and that…from nowhere…a fog of blackness…was…filling his cockpit…no…maybe just…his head…Must…turn…and get back…have another go…at the…bastard…who had…got him…Must. His nostrils filled, as he later recounted, ‘with the unmistakable odour of the German tracer bullets as they streamed past like a jet from a hose’,19 even as he was also dimly aware that his left boot was all sticky and wet.

  From above, the German pilot, satisfied to see the Allied plane tumble off into a death roll and spiral down towards the earth, stopped firing. From 4000 feet on high, Kingsford Smith’s plane, travelling at a rate now of around 220 miles per hour, had barely a few seconds before it would hit the ground and…

  Suddenly the fog cleared a little. Kingsford Smith opened his eyes to see a crazy quilt of beautiful French countryside spinning like a top and hurtling up towards him. Instinct took over. Not quite knowing what he was doing, but doing it anyway as he dimly remembered something from his training in England, he pushed on his joystick, and somehow, almost impossibly from the point of view of observers on the ground, his plane pulled out of the spin and flattened out just a bare 100 feet above the ground, caressing mother earth with an air kiss, instead of slamming into her.

  The fog in Kingsford Smith’s head didn’t lift entirely, but at least enough that the wounded airman was able to make it back to base and land, whereupon he again lost consciousness and was unable to climb out of the cockpit. After base medical staff had carefully lifted him out and rushed him to hospital, mechanics set to work on his plane and were astonished that it had been able to fly at all. They counted over 180 bullet holes in the fuselage; including dozens in the spot where the pilot’s head would have been had he not lost consciousness and slumped forward. How on earth had he managed to survive such an attack?

  When Kingsford Smith came to, he was in a local French hospital, groggily aware that his foot was heavily bandaged. Apart from a massive loss of blood, he was missing two toes and a rather large chunk of his foot. Now, for some pilots, such a wound would have been a godsend, providing an honourable exit from all the carnage and likely ensuring their survival until the war was over. This, however, was not Smithy’s primary emotion. Mostly what he felt was severe disappointment that, for the moment at least, his flying was over. All he wanted to do now was to recover as quickly as possible and get back into the air

  God he hated this job. It had been great, at first, a fairly cushy job, riding all over Sydney’s lower North Shore, frequently being the bearer of glad tidings, of congratulations for births, news of engagements, weddings and varied great achievements. Before 1915, it had only occasionally been news of terrible deaths, but now…

  Now, being a telegraph boy was a long-running nightmare, with people trembling at his very sight on their doorsteps, because they knew what a fellow in that uniform of the Telegraph Office meant in most cases.

  And the worst of it was he never knew until they tore it open just what it said, whether it was good news, or bad news. On this occasion he had to deliver a cable to a family in Neutral Bay, and he had no sooner knocked on the door than it was opened by a rather elderly woman whose right hand flew to her mouth at his very sight, then her left hand took the envelope from him, shaking. In an instant she had opened it…and seemed to relax a little, which was merciful. Whatever it was, it surely wasn’t the death of her loved one.

  In fact, in her hand, Catherine Kingsford Smith held the following cable:

  August 21. Regret to inform you that 2nd Lieutenant C.K. Smith, RFC 23 Squadron was wounded August 14 and admitted No.2 Stationary Hospital Abbeville with gunshot wounds foot. Condition satisfactory. Further news sent when received.

  Secretary War Office.20

  Though of course deeply upsetting, the main thing was that he was alive, and Chilla’s parents were further pleased to receive a letter shortly afterwards, from their youngest son’s Commanding Officer, a Major Wilkinson: ‘As you have probably heard by now, your son was wounded in an aerial combat yesterday. It was rather a nasty wound in the foot, and necessitated the removal of two of his toes; but it should not permanently affect him in any way. I went to the hospital yesterday and found him very cheerful. He goes to England tomorrow. We are most awfully sorry to lose him. I am especially sorry as he was one of the very best fighters I have had, full of grit and a splendid fighter pilot. He hasn’t been here with us for very long, but had done a lot in that short time and was universally popular. He hopes to be flying again in a few months’ time. There is no one I should welcome back more warmly to the squadron. Believe me, there was only one opinion of him out here, and that was “one of the best”.’21

  And clearly, Major Wilkinson was one of many who thought so, as Smithy received the news in hospital that he was to be awarded the Military Cross for his valour against the enemy. The young pilot was thrilled.

  In the Schwerin aircraft factory north-west of Berlin the workmen could sometimes be heard to whisper, ‘der Alte kommt’ (the old man is coming), at which point there would be a furious burst of activity all around. No matter that the old man in question was only twenty-four. Somehow, Anthony Fokker, their boss and paymaster, came across as being mature way beyond his years. Perhaps this was because of what he had achieved—now running a factory that was producing eight planes a day, every day, even on Sundays—or maybe because he looked so very, very tired. For as well as running the factory, hiring and firing, and ensuring that everything was as it should be, he was also extremely busy designing better, faster, more powerful planes, capable of being more and more lethal weapons in the air.

  And on this day, 28 August 1917, he was unveiling a beauty—the Fokker Dr.I—to Germany’s most celebrated air ace, Manfred von Richthofen. This pilot had fascinated Fokker from the time they had first met, on New Year’s Day 1916. Other pilots he met in the course of his travels swaggered, chased women madly and were chased in turn, and smoked and drank as if there were no tomorrow—as for many there wouldn’t be—but not the Red Baron. Even at New Year, Fokker found him courteous, slightly aloof without being arrogant, and entirely sober, as he was not a drinker or smoker of any note. In Fokker’s eyes, he was calm, cold and ambitious. ‘A born leader of men,’ he thought.

  Well, Fokker felt he had just the plane for von Richthofen to fly in—perhaps the perfect one to counter the plane the English called the ‘Sopwith Camel’, which had so recently been cutting a swathe through the German squadrons. (In fact, unbeknown to Fokker, the Camel had also cut a swathe through novice pilots, as the torque caused by the tremendous centrifugal momentum of its rotary engine, which made it so manoeuvrable in the hands of an expert, was hell itself for the inexperienced.)

  The Dutchman’s new machine was a triplane with three stubby wings extending from an open cockpit, behind an Oberursel UR.II nine-cylinder air-cooled rotary 110-horsepower engine, atop which sat twin synchronised Spandau machine guns. The fact that it had large ailerons on the upper wings enabled it to turn on a Pfennig, and that the fuselage was made from welded steel tubing, rather than the usual timber, gave the plane enormous structural integrity and capacity to withstand strain.

  And, of course, it was all painted in pure, glaring red.

  The most important thing was that von Richthofen loved the plane from the first moment he tried it, saying, in a moment of uncharacteristic public enthusiasm that the Dr.I had ‘geklettert wie ein Affe und wie der Teufel manövriert’ (climbed like a monkey and manoeuvred like the devil).22

  Bac
k in London still recovering, Smithy was finding the going tough, and not just physically. Emotionally and spiritually, he felt more than a little fragile, jumpy, panicky, teary, and among all that haunted by the horrifying things he had seen and done in the war, from the trenches of Gallipoli to the Western Front, to flying in the air war and, particularly, the killing of dozens of Germans in the culvert lined by the shattered poplars. He just couldn’t get it all out of his head, no matter how hard he tried.

  ‘My nerves have gone to the pack,’ Chilla wrote home to his parents. ‘I am afraid I am in for a breakdown if they get worse.’23 More than ever, he felt homesick, and longed to be with his parents and family once more, in the heat of a Sydney summer where death and destruction were absent and the sun’s rays might burn from him the worst of the memories.

  King George V, himself!

  In a spacious chamber at Buckingham Palace, Charles Kingsford Smith, in full military dress, and other airmen who were to receive medals had been standing around drinking tea and making polite conversation with each other and scattered generals, admirals and commodores. Suddenly there was a rustle, a murmur, and an immediate discharge of electricity into the atmosphere. Everyone looked up, and there was His Majesty, George V, appearing slightly smaller than in the portraits of him that abounded all over the British Empire, but certainly every bit as regal and more. As one, every military man in the room removed his cap and bowed deeply.

  It was 10 am sharp on the morning of 12 November 1917, and an extremely significant day in the young Australian’s life. Charles Kingsford Smith was to receive his Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. The citation said: ‘His efforts and fine offensive spirit and disregard of danger have set a very fine example.’

  When the time came for Kingsford Smith to shuffle forward on his crutches, he was careful to follow strict protocol, just as he had been instructed, taking three small steps towards His Majesty, before bowing again, the best he could. As he straightened up, he was thrilled when the King even said a few words while pinning the medal on his chest: ‘Your mother will be proud of you, today.’

  The pilot murmured his thanks and tried to take the requisite three steps back from the King when disaster struck. Somehow his legs got tangled with his crutches, he lost his balance and went down, in the classic Australian lingo, ‘like a sack of spuds’. King George V himself rushed forward and helped him to his feet, whispering as he did so, ‘Just get out the easiest way.’ Which Kingsford Smith did, breaking all protocol, but giving him a story he could tell ever afterwards.

  ‘I was the only man there,’ he would say, ‘who could turn his back on the King…’24

  In his account of the ceremony to his parents, the young man made sure to playfully note: ‘Don’t forget to put Lieut. C. Kingsford Smith M.C. on letters!!!’25

  Not long after receiving his Military Cross, Kingsford Smith was granted medical leave to return to Australia until 5 May 1918, and boarded a ship for home shortly thereafter…

  And what a great pleasure it was particularly for Catherine, now the grey-haired matriarch of the Kingsford Smith clan, to have her youngest child once more nestled in the bounteous bosom of the family. Chilla was, just as always, making everyone laugh, telling stories, recounting something of his adventures and, as ever, acting as a magnet for friends and family from all over. True, it had been a bit of a shock to see him hobbling down the gangplank of his ship when it berthed at Circular Quay. But the injury to his foot was as nothing when you knew, as Catherine did from scanning the death lists every day in the newspapers, how many of his colleagues of the air had been killed outright, how many other mothers had nothing coming down that gangplank but haunted memories for the rest of their lives. (A bereaved mother in Sydney’s Glebe by the name of Mrs Pyke, wearing nothing but a faded white petticoat, would become locally famous for traipsing down Glebe Point Road, and heading to Circular Quay rain, hail or shine, every day for the rest of her life to see if her only son had finally returned from the war.26 Alas, he never did.)

  As it was, Chilla seemed to have every chance of making a complete recovery and Catherine could just enjoy him being home for as long as she could possibly keep him there. Other sons in the same circumstances might have felt that they had done their bit for the war effort and have stayed put, but her lad had made it clear pretty much from the moment of his arrival that he was home only to recuperate, and then he intended to get right back into it. That was just the way he was.

  And he was quietly ecstatic to see his return to Australia noted in two daily Sydney newspapers, in small articles entitled ‘AUSTRALIAN AIRMAN RETURNS’ and ‘FIGHT IN THE AIR—ODDS AGAINST AUSTRALIAN’. Such fame!27

  It was wonderful to be home…

  Zu Hause, endlich zu Hause! Home, finally home! He was home!

  And yet Baroness Kunigunde von Richthofen simply didn’t recognise her son, now the greatest hero in Germany, when he returned for a brief spot of leave in the first weeks of 1918 to the family’s ancestral estate near Breslau in the famed pine forests of Silesia. Whereas he once had been a man full of life and love, radiating happiness and warmth, he was now morose, aloof and distant—wounded in his soul and still bleeding. When she looked into his eyes there was something in them she had never seen before, something harsh and agonised, as though he was being tortured. When she would try to talk to him about his future, about what he might do nach dem Krieg (after the war), he gave the impression that he wasn’t even sure if there would be a nach-dem-Krieg for him. He was exhausted, depressed and deeply, deeply pessimistic, though still trying to shield her from the worst of it.

  One morning she managed to see some of the photographs he had brought home with him. One showed him in uniform, laughing with other pilots. Baroness von Richthofen, a gentle woman, pointed to a beaming young flyer, and asked where he was now.

  ‘Fallen in combat,’ Manfred replied morosely.

  ‘And this man?’ she asked, pointing to another one.

  ‘Also dead,’ her son replied, before suddenly appearing to lose patience and putting the photo away. ‘Do not ask any more. They are all dead.’

  Then, seeing the alarm in his mother’s eyes, he softened and tried to reassure her. ‘You do not need to worry. In the air I have nothing to fear. In the air. We are ready for them, even when there are many of them. The worst that could happen to me would be to have to land on the other side…‘28

  And yet, despite this assurance, it was not long after this that she overheard him on the phone, batting off someone who had wanted him to attend a dental appointment that afternoon. ‘A dental appointment?’ he had replied with a mixture of extreme fatigue and outright irritation. ‘Really, there is no point…‘29

  It was a heady thing for Charles Kingsford Smith to find himself so celebrated in his home town. People made a huge fuss of him. After all, here was a man who had left Sydney only a couple of years earlier as a humble acting corporal in the Signal Corps, now returned as a decorated fighter pilot, wounded in an air battle, and just about the only man in the whole country in the highly prestigious uniform of the Royal Flying Corps! (Most of the other Australians who were a part of the RFC were still in England, or dead.) Kingsford Smith found that pretty much wherever he went he was hailed as a hero.

  This way, Charlie! Over here! This way! Make room for him, please, you fellows. Come and have a drink with us, Charlie! You remember me from school? Barman, drinks all round, please. Now, Charlie, about the war, and this flying game…

  Not that it was easy to get him to wear his uniform, replete with all its insignia and heavy gold braiding. Initially, he declined to wear it at all, but was eventually prevailed upon to do so by an achingly beautiful girl he had asked to afternoon tea. She said she would accompany him and wear her best dress so long as he wore his uniform and…things went from there. The reaction from everyone was so positive, so enthusiastic, that he began to wear it more often.

  Still, it was true that not
everyone was appreciative. One day he was dressed in his uniform and getting onto the Mosman ferry with his brother Leofric, when he happened to overhear two rough-nut youths making fun of his finery, jeering about his ‘pretty, pretty uniform…’30

  Oh, really? A veteran of Gallipoli, and the Somme, and the war in the air, wounded in battle and decorated by King George V himself, and he had to put up with that kind of insolence from young punks who wouldn’t know one end of a rifle from another? He thought not.

  Without saying a word, or interrupting the flow of conversation with his brother, the Australian pilot, though earth-bound, simply stepped forward, banged the heads of the two ‘gilded youths’ together with a resounding thud and dropped them at his feet.31 And that was the end of that. Though Charles Kingsford Smith was not a big man, there was a physical force within him—particularly on those rare occasions that he was moved to rage—which was simply overpowering.

  And yet, whatever the joys of being home in Australia, seeing all his friends and family again, he was in no doubt where he wanted to be: back in the war. It was still raging in Europe and his squadron was still heading out on daily sorties against whatever the Germans could throw at them—although that was apparently a lot less, lately, as the weight of the British Empire and her newly powerful American ally was brought to bear, pouring resources into the war effort as never before, and the Axis powers began to wilt.

  So it was that despite an offer from the Australian military authorities for him to remain safely in Australia to make speeches about the war and sell war bonds to those members of the public impressed with the urgent need for capital to keep it going, he decided it was nearing time to head back to his squadron, strap himself in, and get back into the air war again.