Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men

by P Fitzsimons

  Kingsford Smith and Anderson’s essential idea was a good one, and indeed potentially lucrative. But, bugger them dead, it was hard work. To transport tons and tons of wool across a terrain strongly opposed to and willing to fight against any movement that wasn’t the languid wave of a hand to remove flies, or perhaps the dying twitches of an exhausted animal, was something that would sap any man, and in this case it sapped two men. At any given moment either or both of them could be anywhere from Geraldton to Carnarvon to the Black Stump to out the back of Woop Woop.

  How did Thelma cope with Smithy’s now even longer absences? Only…just. Still, she might have coped, just, if when he finally returned home Smithy had stayed with her exclusively, but he didn’t. Once returned from the backblocks, her husband invariably had a thirst that could have drained the Indian Ocean and was wont to spend his evenings at the local pub, downing beer after beer between singing raucous songs and engaging in his favourite party trick, which was to do both of the aforementioned while standing on his head. Thelma had been amused the first time she had seen him do it, irritated a little on the second occasion and completely disgusted the fiftieth time.

  And then, complete with a horrible hangover, he would be gone again.

  No woman could put up with that kind of treatment for long, least of all a very beautiful and strong-willed one who had other options.

  Smithy, meanwhile, remained focused on getting the job done when he was in the scrub and was amazing in his resourcefulness, whatever the circumstances—by simple dint of the fact that he had little choice in those parts. For what else could he do but be resourceful when travelling through such country?

  On one occasion, right out in the middle of nowhere, over 60 miles from anywhere, the former war pilot’s truck had ground to a horrible, shuddering halt. Upon investigation Kingsford Smith discovered that the oil cock had been knocked off the crankcase, probably by hitting a jutting rock, and all the oil had drained away, causing one of the big-end bearings on the crankshaft to be chewed to pieces for want of lubrication.

  The heat beat down, and he faced three days’ march in any direction to get help. But not to worry.

  Reasoning his way through the many technical problems, Smithy concluded that he could fashion a solution. In his load he had an enormous box of soap, bound for one of the outlying stations. By grinding it down and mixing it with a very small amount of water, he felt he had a rough approximation of oil. Now for the molten and gouged bearing. Cutting down a bit of hardwood gum with an axe, and using his pocket-knife thereafter, he was able to whittle a wooden bearing shell to do the job. After he sealed off the damaged drain valve he poured in the thick mixture of soapy liquid. Then he started the engine for the first time in two days and gingerly moved forward. It worked! It really worked!

  Who was his uncle? Bob was his uncle, that’s who! In such a fashion did Charles Kingsford Smith and his wounded truck limp forward for the next 60 miles until he was able to get to a town where more sophisticated help was available.38

  On another occasion, when Smithy found his big truck blocked by the raging Murchison River while he was trying to get to Perth on time for a certain social engagement, he refused to be beaten. It took a while, but after scouting around for enough of the abandoned empty oil drums that abounded in that area, he lashed them together into a rough kind of raft, and floated the bastard across!39 As the months went by and the Gascoyne Transport Company became better known—and the station managers could see for themselves what an improvement it was to get their wool straight to Carnarvon and on the first steamer out—the two partners became even busier. If Smithy got word of a record wool consignment that needed to be moved, he immediately insisted on doing it, and always tried to do it in record time.40

  Smithy liked records.

  As to Keith Anderson, he did the best he could, but he did not remotely enjoy the reputation of Kingsford Smith for self-sufficiency and derring-do. Apart from his strong friendship with Smithy, he was essentially a loner and did not mix easily, but he could be counted on to do long hauls, so long as nothing went wrong.

  And who was minding the office during these adventures and the many prolonged absences they entailed? The more successful the business became—as more trucks were purchased and more drivers put on—the greater the demands of office work, and the less inclined was either Kingsford Smith or Keith Anderson to do it. Again, Chilla called on his sister Elsie, and her ever-reliable husband, Bert Pike, to come and run the business side of things, which they were free to do, given that the pastoral lease had come to nothing. Neither she nor Bert was in any doubt that Chilla needed them, once they had a look at how things were running.

  For in ordinary business routine he was clearly hopeless. His office methods were haphazard in the extreme, and he was hopelessly unpunctual and harassed and bewildered by the usual financial adjustments and worries connected with running one’s own business. ‘A funny thing about Charlie,’ Elsie later wrote, ‘was that he just could not bear to ask for an account to be paid. He would go out to collect, and usually come back empty handed. When he did collect, he would almost apologise!’41

  On those rare occasions when Kingsford Smith and Anderson were together and not out ‘on the track’, as they called it, business was almost the last thing they discussed. The first thing they talked about was flying the Pacific. They continued to examine all aspects of its many possibilities. In terms of finance there was no doubt that it would be extremely expensive, but between them they were not without contacts, or credibility for that matter.

  After all, in the entire world there probably weren’t two pilots more experienced in long-distance flying, given how long they had been in the air, and their work with Western Australian Airways. And while building the Gascoyne Transport Company, Smithy had kept his hand in flying by doing the odd job for Major Brearley—with whom he had substantially repaired his relationship—sometimes ferrying planes back and forth to Perth. So when the two men talked about flying the Pacific there were people who listened, and some of them were wealthy. Finally, they had a breakthrough.

  Through the course of his travels in the north-west, Smithy became very friendly with a wealthy young man from Mundabullangana station, by the name of Keith Mackay, who promised to back them for as much as £2300,42 so long as he could come with them.

  Done!

  Keith was a good bloke, very capable, and for the several thousand pounds he was offering, they would be delighted to have him. They could even, at last, maybe be able to afford to buy one of Lebbeus Hordern’s seaplanes…

  Just when the whole thing was warming up, however, Keith hired a plane from Western Australian Airways to drop him back at his station. Tragically, however, in the course of the trip, which took place on Wednesday, 16 July 1924, the pilot—Smithy’s old mate, Len Taplin—lost control of the plane and crashed into the sea, just off the coast. Taplin and the mechanic swam to shore but Keith Mackay didn’t make it.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s my last hope gone west,’ Smithy wrote forlornly to his parents.43 Still, that thing inside him, that burning desire to fly across the Pacific, come what may, no matter the obstacles, was not long in re-establishing itself.

  Keith Anderson felt the same. Early in 1925 Keith wrote to his rich uncle in Toorak, setting out their plans, and their possible financial needs. True, that uncle, after looking at it all said no, but he hadn’t said so instantly! And they had also got a positive response from one of the oil companies they had contacted, offering them free fuel if they could actually get a plane into the air. Smithy continued to be keen on buying one of Lebbeus Hordern’s seaplanes, berthed in Sydney. And yet, alas…Smithy wrote to his parents:

  I haven’t had any reply from Hordern or his secretary, but am hoping for favourable news. Damn it all, one must have a last flutter at the flying game before one quits if one must. You ought to have seen the things that were said about me when I left flying: ‘An irreplaceable master of the air, whose w
onderful ability was only equalled by his courtesy and consideration to his confident passengers, etc.’ My Gawd, I’m some lad it seems.44

  Which seemed, genuinely, to be the widespread view of Kingsford Smith and his flying abilities. But no more firm backers appeared, despite all the talk, which didn’t mean that he and Anderson were remotely tempted to give up.

  ‘As a last resort,’ Smithy wrote, ‘we will work this show at maximum capacity for two years when we will be able to afford to buy a machine ourselves and tell them all to go to hell.’45

  There comes a time in every adventurer’s life when he must either embrace a long nurtured dream and try to make it happen or give it up…and know that he will simply die wondering. The times since his air crash in Crete had been particularly busy for George Wilkins, and they had included being second in command of the British Imperial Antarctic Expedition, returning to the same parts the following season with the Sir Ernest Shackleton Quest Antarctic Expedition, travelling widely through Russia and also the deeply depressing trek through northern Australia to collect the specimens for the British Museum. But through it all, he, too, had been nurturing a dream—to explore from the air the vast tracts of the Arctic Circle that had never been seen by human eyes. He also felt that once that exploration had been accomplished by fanning out on many trips northwards, he could then make one big hop from the north of Alaska, right over the top of the world and land in Norway!

  True, there were many worthy experts who said it couldn’t be done and, of these, the great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was foremost, telling Wilkins firmly: ‘What you are trying to do, is beyond the possibility of human endeavour.’46

  And yet by mid-1925 Wilkins was convinced his critics were wrong, and set out to prove it. With the support of a deal with the North American Newspaper Alliance, in return for exclusive news and pictures, and help from the Detroit Aviation Society and the Detroit News, he was able to come up with the funding he needed. Courtesy of his old friend and great supporter Anthony Fokker—now a well-established American businessman, adored for his bon vivant ways—he was able to buy two Fokker planes. Such was Fokker’s personal regard for Wilkins in turn, that the Dutchman personally ensured that they were constructed to the highest standards and precision. The wings and fuselages of the planes were constructed in Holland before being shipped to New York in December 1925, where the engines, the engine mounts, fabric covering and controls were added at the Fokker factory at Hasbrouck Heights, in New Jersey.47 Once complete, they were disassembled and shipped in crates to Fairbanks in Alaska.

  Thelma had had a gutful. None of Smithy’s grand plans meant anything to her, and she had really had enough of the whole thing. He was almost never at home and she had reached the point where she was just as glad when he wasn’t. When he did return, and he wasn’t at the pub, all they did was argue and it was becoming clear to both of them that what they had shared together was less a long-lasting love and more a passing passion—a passion that had now passed out of sight. It seemed to Thelma, the only thing her husband was passionate about now was his damned Pacific flight—it was all he talked about, thought about, dreamt about. As hard a worker as he was on his business, it seemed to her that even that was only because he wanted to make enough money so he could make the Pacific flight, the Pacific flight, the Pacific flight…always the Pacific flight!

  Well, she wanted no part of it, or him, and one day when he returned home from another long haul, he found that, like an Arab, she had folded her tent and silently stolen away. No-one who knew them both well was particularly surprised.

  Though upset at the time, a letter Smithy wrote to his mother a short while after Thelma left showed that it wasn’t long before things had returned to normal. A quick mention of the separation and then back to the Pacific flight and ongoing money worries:

  26th July, 1925

  Dearest Mum,

  Thanks muchly for your understanding of my troubles.

  They are pretty heavy on me and I will take some getting over. But all will be ok some day.

  I hope that there really is a good chance for this Pacific flight as I want to come over next month but cannot risk being away unless it is justified. I need the change tremendously.

  Unfortunately my income tax has just hit me with a bang (£30) Lord knows how they can possibly reckon I owe that much, but anyway, I’m used to being in debt. I will be amazed if I am ever out of it…

  Your loving son,

  Chilla48

  Not long afterwards—leaving Bert Pike and Elsie in charge of running the trucking company—Kingsford Smith and Anderson returned to the east coast on a brief trip to see family and friends, and to do the rounds of possible sponsors, including government bodies, to raise the money they needed to make the flight.

  Seeing their nearest and dearest was wonderful. Trying to find sponsors, however, was nigh on impossible.

  Their first port of call was the seat of the Federal government, Parliament House in Melbourne, where they were generally flat out getting to the third secretary from the left, let alone any of the relevant ministers. A letter to Prime Minister Stanley Bruce produced only a terse response acknowledging receipt. The Defence Minister was not that interested. The Vacuum Oil Company advised that it wished them well, really well, but was in no position to bankroll the trip, because…blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…but it really did wish them well. The only genuine interest came from the editor of the Sun, Herbert Campbell-Jones, but the mere £500 that he promised wasn’t remotely enough to turn their dream into a reality.

  All was in readiness.

  George Wilkins had now selected a co-pilot for his planned trip across the roof of the world—a phlegmatic Alaskan resident by the name of Ben Eielson—and with him intended to make many trips 500 miles to Point Barrow on Alaska’s far north coast and ferry enough petrol there to establish the base from which they would launch on Norway.

  That was the plan, anyway. But from the beginning, things did not go as he envisaged.

  It was minus 52 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees below zero) in Fairbanks when they began to unpack the crates on the morning of 8 March 1926, though that in itself wasn’t too much of a problem. There were many goldminers around Fairbanks who warmly remembered how many times Ben Eielson had flown through storms to get medical help to injured miners, and they flocked to assist the aviators. In no time at all they were hauling the two still wingless planes through cheering crowds to the hangar of Ben Eielson’s Fairbanks Aeroplane Corporation, where the reassembly process began.

  No, the first of the real problems came a few days later, when Palmer Hutchinson, the young correspondent for the newspaper alliance that was helping to finance them, insisted that a ‘christening’ of the newly assembled planes would make for great copy and photographs. Generally, Wilkins didn’t go in for that kind of malarkey but Hutchinson was such a nice bloke and his organisation was such a loyal sponsor that he felt obliged to co-operate. On the morning of 11 March 1926, the two planes were pushed out of their hangars as variously the mayor of Fairbanks, some local dignitaries and a few men of the cloth did the honours. The climax came when the wife of the mayor and another lady stepped forward and, by cracking a bottle of petrol over a propeller of each plane, christened firstly the single-engined Fokker, the Alaskan, and then the three-engine machine, the Detroiter, as everyone clapped vigorously in the sub-freezing air.

  Palmer Hutchinson was appreciative and was about to go back and write his story, when Wilkins had a quiet word with him. Hang around, he told the enthusiastic and likeable young reporter. In a couple of hours, once everyone including the local press has gone, we’re going to take the planes up for a test flight and you can have another ‘scoop’.

  The Detroiter, when they at last wheeled it out to the runway proper, was an extraordinary sight. With the wings spanning 71 feet 2 inches, it was the prototype F.VIIb.3m, the biggest Fokker ever constructed, as Wilkins’s good friend Anthony Fokker himself had proud
ly informed him. And now it was time to see how she would fly. With all three Wright Whirlwind radial engines at full throttle, the massive plane lurched forward towards the starting point on the runway…before getting stuck in a snowdrift.

  No problem. There were many willing hands ready to push her out again, including the enthusiastic Palmer Hutchinson. And yet while all the others knew that when pushing a plane with propellers whirring the only proper way was to push from behind, no-one had ever told Palmer. He had been pushing from behind when he decided he could get a better grip by pulling on the wheel stuck in the ice. This placed him between the wheel and the whirring, invisible, propeller of the starboard engine, just inches behind him. George Wilkins was in the cockpit with his co-pilot, and knew nothing of what was going on below.

  Straining, heaving, to get the plane moving, the other workers spotted Palmer’s danger just as the plane broke free and once again lurched forward. To get out of the way of the oncoming wheel, the 28-year-old journalist had to quickly step back…

  George Wilkins and his deputy, US Army Major Tom Lanphier suddenly felt a sickening clunk. Worse, the instant they turned off the engines, they could hear screams and howls from outside, getting progressively louder as the engine noise lessened. They emerged from the plane to see Palmer Hutchinson decapitated.49 A newsreel man who had captured the whole thing on his camera was, then and there, pulling open the back of his apparatus and exposing the film to the light, certain that he never wanted to see it again, and nor should anyone. Beyond the obvious tragedy to Palmer Hutchinson and his family, it was a brutal beginning for the whole venture.

  Wilkins began to feel that there was a hex on that machine from the beginning. And maybe, in fact, a hex on the whole expedition…