Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men

by P Fitzsimons

  But US$50,000! Well over double the prize for the England to Australia race.

  There, there would lie his redemption. From the moment of reading about it, Charles could think of little else, talk of little else, dream of little else. Flying across the Pacific Ocean would be a feat like no other, simply because there was no other ocean as vast. And what could he do with US$50,000!

  Still, it was not just about the money, as broke as he was.

  ‘If only,’ Smithy wrote to his mother, ‘I could manage to do that job, I would be able to justify myself in the eyes of the Australian people with a vengeance.’3

  Now, obviously the youngest of the Kingsford Smith clan didn’t have the money himself to mount such a flight, but Harold was able at least to lend a hand in introducing Chilla to people from the Californian business community who might have it and be prepared to back him. For weeks on end, thus, Charles Kingsford Smith did the rounds, trying to interest, variously, aviation manufacturers, fuel companies and assorted others in the imperative to back him…

  The plan he submitted to potential backers at this early stage was fairly simple, and he presented it initially in written form, the whole project predicated on him having a Junkers-Larsen JL-6 all-metal seaplane.

  Route:

  San Francisco to Honolulu—2048 miles (refuel at sea)

  Honolulu to Fanning Island—1215 miles

  Fanning Island to Enderbury Island—950 miles

  Enderbury Island to Pago Pago—850 miles

  Pago Pago to Levuka—1101 miles

  Levuka to Noumea—894 miles

  Noumea to Brisbane—913 miles

  Total distance—7971 miles4

  If he could get the financial backing he needed, the sponsor would receive half the net profits—being outgoings less estimated receipts.

  Outgoings:

  Cost of machine 16,500 dollars

  Preliminary expenses 1000 dollars

  Cables, fuel, etc 500 dollars

  For return of navigator 500 dollars

  Life insurance (approx) 4000 dollars

  Total—22,500 dollars5

  Estimated Receipts:

  Moving picture rights 25,000 dollars

  Sale of machine 25,000 dollars

  Magazine stories 10,000 dollars

  Prize monies 30,000 dollars

  Lecturing in US & Australia 25,000 dollars

  Total 115,000 dollars

  Estimated profit—92,500 dollars6

  Now, there are many ways to be told NO, and in those weeks he discovered most of them. In the parlance of the time—if interest in his plan had been dynamite he wouldn’t have received enough to blow his hat off.

  At least part of the problem, he felt, was, once more, that he was not an American. Another large part was that he might as well have been talking about flying to the moon. To fly the Pacific Ocean? Are you goddamn crazy, boy? Do you have a suicide wish? If so, there has to be a cheaper way of doing it.

  For most people, flying across the Pacific Ocean was beyond the realms of imagination, let alone known possibility. Why, to that day, no-one had even flown to Hawaii!

  Never mind. Kingsford Smith continued to believe the journey was feasible and kept trying to convince people of exactly that, until there was simply no-one else left to interest whom he hadn’t met and been knocked back by. For the moment he decided to shelve the plan, if not the dream.

  One benefit of all the running around was that he was able to secure work back in aviation, though it wasn’t quite the work he had been hoping for. Only three years previously he had been decorated by His Majesty the King of England for flying against the Germans, and now he was flying against…against…well, now he was flying against ducks.

  It was a time when rice farmers near Sacramento in northern California were trying out a new method of keeping wild ducks off their crops and Smithy accepted a position whereby every morning just after dawn he would roar over the rice fields in a tiny Curtiss Jenny aircraft, often at an altitude—if you could call it that—of just a couple of feet, and straight into the flock.7 More often than not he would come back two or three hours later with bits of mangled duck hanging from the struts of his plane, all blood, gristle and feathers. A bit of a wash-down for both himself and his plane, perhaps a sleep, and then he’d be ready to go again in the late afternoon.

  At least it was a job; though, as Kingsford Smith noted drily many years later, ‘It was a sort of anti-climax to shooting down the Boche over the Western Front.’8

  Not so many dead ducks later, he decided to leave this job as a glorified scarecrow and try his luck at the airman’s staple when the times were grim—barnstorming. Within a day of being hired by an aerial impresario by the name of Moffett, he was on his way. In something that was close to the peacetime equivalent of the Red Baron’s ‘Flying Circus’, Moffett and Kingsford Smith would move from town to town and, after performing a series of stunts above the main street guaranteed to get everyone’s attention, set up their tents in a flat spot just outside the town, usually on a farmer’s field—often near a barn, hence the origin of the activity’s name. Then they would take off again and leaflets would soon afterwards come fluttering down on the town…

  Air Thrills

  Moffett-Starkey Aero Circus

  Featuring

  Chas Kingsford Smith

  RAF Ace

  Fingleton’s Farm.

  From Thursday 10 a.m.

  And Thursday at ten o’clock, it would begin. The townsfolk would come pouring in, usually paying a base rate of $2 for a simple joyride, $4 to fly all over the town, and then additional fees of a few dollars apiece if they wanted Smithy or Moffett to do particular stunts, like loops, barrel rolls or dives. The pilots would fly all day, filling their pockets with the cash, until night-time would make flying no longer possible and they would retire to work on their planes and get them in shape for the following day. Once the flow of paying customers stopped, usually after four or five days, they would move on to the next town where, hopefully, word would have already spread that they were on their way.

  It was a wild, peripatetic life, full of thrills and spills, and the main thing was that Smithy was flying again. True, most of the money went to Moffett, but on his base rate of $150 a month plus 10 per cent of the overall takings, Smithy earned enough to carouse at night, which remained one of his great pleasures. No matter that California, like the rest of the United States, was living under the laws of Prohibition, forbidding the consumption of alcohol, there was a loose system of ‘speakeasies’ in every town they went to, establishments where you could get illicit alcohol. While a lot of that drink tasted like rat’s piss because it frequently came from very dubious stills, it was alcohol all right and Kingsford Smith had at least his fair share, and probably then some. When, at a later point, Chilla and his sister Elsie visited a winery in northern California and wondered out loud how they could possibly sell so much wine—40,000 gallons of it—when each bottle carried a sticker saying it was ‘Only to be Sold for Medicinal and Sacramental Purposes’, the answer was quick. They were told that because it was all made in Sacramento County that it was qualified to be sold for ‘Sacramental Purposes!’9

  Seven months after they had left Hounslow, near London, in a quest to win the £10,000 prize for being the first to Australia, on 2 August 1920, Lieutenant Raymond Parer and his mechanic, Lieutenant John C. McIntosh, finally made it to Fannie Bay, Darwin, in their de Havilland DH.9 biplane, G-EAQM, with just a minute’s fuel left in its tanks. It had been a brutal trip, with so much ill-luck—crashing and mechanical malfunctioning, all of which they had battled through to make good and keep going—that Parer had become known far and wide, as ‘Reparer’.10 He was not amused. Not even mildly.

  All up, eighteen men had set off in seven aircraft. After many adventures, six of them, in two planes, made it to Australia. Eight men, in three aircraft, crashed en route, and though not seriously injured, were unable to continue their flights. F
our men, in two aircraft, were killed.

  So it was settled then, sort of, over a few drinks.

  The propitious crossing of paths the year before of Paul McGinness and Fergus McMaster had led to a meeting in the lounge of Brisbane’s Gresham Hotel, during the town’s Exhibition Week, in August 1920. With the warm smell of beer all around, McGinness and Hudson Fysh were able to put to the wealthy station owner their plans to form an aviation company that would operate in outback Queensland. What they needed, they explained, was some serious financial investment. The two of them had a bit of money put together, but nowhere near enough to buy a couple of planes and launch an airline. They were wondering whether, perhaps, McMaster and some of his friends might like to invest in such a company…?

  As a matter of fact, McMaster would. He had not forgotten the sterling service provided to him eight months earlier by McGinness in Cloncurry, when he had rolled up his sleeves and found a way to get his car going again, and McMaster thought those same qualities of getting the job done come-what-may, would stand a new airline in good stead. He shook hands with both men and promised that he would look into it and talk to some of his friends.

  And there was one now! Across the smoky lounge, he spotted a wealthy woolgrower from Longreach, A.N. Templeton, whom he knew well. Could he have a chat? It’s about those two blokes you might have seen me with just a few minutes ago, a couple of chaps by the name of Paul McGinness and Hudson Fysh. They were pilots, had done great work for the Australian Flying Corps in Palestine, and now they wanted to start up an aviation company in the outback. Would Mr Templeton maybe think about putting some money up? As a matter of fact, Mr Templeton would, and on the spot agreed to match any money that McMaster decided to put in.

  Greatly encouraged, McMaster wandered over the road to where John Thompson, another mate of his from the war, was running a bookshop. Thompson, too, soon said that he was happy to buy into the company to the tune of £100. Out the door, McMaster went to another well-heeled friend working nearby, Alan Campbell, who also stumped up, and then he ran into yet another wealthy bloke in Queen Street, T.J. O’Rourke, whom he knew to be the biggest shopkeeper in Winton.

  Now, ol’ T.J. was known to be a very careful man with a pound, but McMaster had no sooner explained the proposal than the shopkeeper insisted he accompany him back to his hotel, where he presented him with a cheque for £250, and told him he would be happy to double it up later if the grazier needed it. In just one afternoon, Fergus McMaster had come up with the bulk of the backing he needed, and he soon advised Hudson Fysh and Paul McGinness to that effect.11

  Not long afterwards, McMaster arranged another meeting with the pilots and the new investors in the Gresham Hotel. Something that impressed the financial heavyweights was that McGinness was going to put up his life’s savings of £1000 to the venture, while Hudson Fysh also committed everything he had, which was £500.12 A few handshakes later and it was done. They would indeed form a company, buy a couple of planes down in Sydney and release prospectuses to attract more investors. Generally, those who could afford it were amenable, though Fysh couldn’t help but notice that one of the investors wrote ‘Donation’ on his cheque stub as he paid for the shares.13

  Only a short time after releasing their prospectus they had enough investors, and enough capital—at £6850—to lock the whole thing down legally. After some to-ing and fro-ing, including a period where they came up with the name of Western Queensland Auto Aero Service Ltd, they decided to call their new company Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd.

  It was McMaster who, noting how the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps had become the universally revered term ‘ANZAC’, decided that they might do the same for their company and call themselves ‘Q.A.N.T.A.S.’ on all documentation…which was certainly a lot better than what it would have been, had they stuck to their previous name, making it W.Q.A.A.S.

  As to what planes to fly, they soon began negotiation with Nigel Love, down in Sydney, who had the A.V. Roe (Avro) agency in Australia, and was already manufacturing the Avro 504K plane, with specially modified engines for Australian conditions.14

  The next job that hove to on Smithy’s aviation horizon in California was flying stunt planes in an amazing place called Hollywood, where they were making moving pictures with stunning women frequently known as ‘movie stars’. Heaven on a stick. Smithy’s job was to perform acts of derring-do in his plane as the cameras rolled, filming scenes for the many movies then featuring aeroplanes. It wasn’t long before Smithy noticed that the stuntmen were getting paid a lot better than he was. Perhaps it would be a good idea to try a few stunts himself, while someone else flew the plane?

  Yes and no…

  ‘So what we want you to do,’ a director explained to him on one occasion in August 1920, ‘is hang upside down from the wing, with your leg curled round one of the struts. Do you think you can do that?’

  In for a penny, in for a pound, in it for the dollars…Smithy thought he probably could do that and had a go, first, while the Avro plane they were planning to use was parked on the tarmac. True, when the plane was actually airborne it took a great deal of courage to do the same thing, but courage was always something that he had in strong supply, so that wasn’t the problem.

  The problem, after dangling with his arms outstretched, furiously buffeted by the wind, was getting himself back up again! On the ground that had been easy, but now, flopped over the front of the wing, he had 90 miles per hour of wind belting at him and restraining him from righting himself. So it was that for fifteen shocking minutes he stayed there, contemplating what would happen to his head if he was still like that when the plane landed. Finally, blessedly, with the last ounce of strength he had in him, and acting out of desperation pure, he was able to get back up, hugging the strut for dear life and sucking in huge gasps of air.

  The following day, still shaken, Kingsford Smith was on site when a fellow he had become friendly with, the greatest Hollywood stunt flyer of them all, Lieutenant Ormer Locklear, was filming the climactic scene for The Skywayman, being shot for William Fox Studios.15 It required Locklear to dive from a great height with flames billowing from his plane, and then dramatically bring the plane under control just before he hit the ground. At 10 pm, Locklear dropped a flare to indicate to the cameramen and directors that he was ready, and then, after his aide and long-time flying companion Lieutenant Milton ‘Skeets’ Elliott activated the device to get some impressive flames going in a spot where they would do no actual damage to the plane, they began what was meant to look like a death dive towards the ground.

  Perfect…perfect…lovely…lovely…the director and cameraman were both ecstatic as the plane came down, looking for all the world as if it really was on fire and about to hit the ground when…

  When just at the point where they expected Locklear to pull out of the dive, it was apparent that something was wrong. Very wrong…Pull out, Ormer, pull out! And the American pilot tried, he really tried. At the end, he was so close to the camera crew that they could see him hauling back on the stick, trying to get the plane to flatten out. Before their horrified eyes the plane hit the ground not 100 yards away from them, with a sickening whump, a split instant before the whole thing exploded with flames shooting into the night sky.

  During the war, Kingsford Smith had seen, and been responsible for, similar deaths. But somehow this was different. Sick to his stomach, he saw up close the results of such flaming crashes, the charred remains at the bottom of the deep hole caused by the impact, and gagged on the stench of burnt human flesh. This wasn’t the ‘bagging’ of a German and another notch on your bragging belt, this was the real deaths of men he knew, and it was appalling. And yet it was no different because the deaths of all the pilots in the war had been equally appalling—it was just that he hadn’t known them personally, or seen their deaths up close. Again, revulsion at what had happened in the war came to him, as the visions of the men he had killed in the air and on the gr
ound returned.

  In the there and then, however, the tragic deaths of Ormer Locklear and Milton Elliott confirmed for Kingsford Smith that he no longer wanted to fly for Hollywood.

  And so it was back to the barnstorming with Moffett. This time, however, it wasn’t his plane that crashed, but the whole flying circus itself. One morning Kingsford Smith woke up to find that Moffett had hopped it during the night, taking his plane with him and, more importantly, all the money that the Australian was owed. For his second stint, the 24-year-old Kingsford Smith had not yet received a dime.

  As ever, he retreated to his brother’s house and dulled the pain by carousing in the speakeasies and drinking far too much. Sister Elsie, particularly, worried about him. She wrote home to her mother:

  I really think his experiences are beginning to somewhat daze even his doughty heart. As he remarked after the last discouraging letter from his lawyer, re Moffet—‘Oh d---. I’ll be glad when all this knocking about is over, and the flight accomplished so I can settle down in Australia to a good steady job.’ (‘And get you a wife,’ I added, and he grinned.) You see, Mum, after nearly a year here, Chilla is no better off than when he arrived, excepting for the increased experience, so the sooner he can go back and get a settled job the better, and quit rushing around the country with sundry weird gangs…16