Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men

by P Fitzsimons

  To attract that backing, they needed credibility and, just as had happened six months earlier, it was decided they needed to do something to get their names into the headlines, make everyone sit up and take notice as to just what a fine plane they had and what good aviators they were. Why not set about breaking the world record for the longest time aloft, which then stood at fifty-five hours, twenty-two minutes, thirty-one seconds and was held by two Germans, Cornelius Edzard and Johann Risticz, who achieved it on 5 August 1927.26 That should impress a few folk. At least, just the idea of it impressed the Associated Oil Company, which promised, at Ulm’s behest, to pay off their American debts if they did indeed break that record.

  If successful, the flight would have three outcomes. Firstly, and most importantly, the aviation manager of the Associated Oil Company promised to clear all their debts.27 Secondly, it would allow them to test all their theories about long-distance flying during an actual flight and modify their plans accordingly from what they’d learned. And finally, Kingsford Smith could put himself to the personal test, to find how he would perform under such conditions.28

  10 January 1928. It had come to a coin toss.

  Three Kiwi men had started out with the dream of being the first to fly from Australia to New Zealand across the Tasman Sea, and yet, after all was said and done the only plane they could afford to buy to make the attempt—a single-engined Ryan B.1 Brougham monoplane by the name of Aotearoa, G-AUNZ—could only hold two of them.

  So what else could they do? Captain Ivan Knight was devastated to lose the toss. So it would be Lieutenant John Moncrieff and Captain George Hood who would do the honours.

  In high excitement, Hood and Moncrieff took off from Richmond air base at 2.44 am on Tuesday, 10 January 1928. Before them lay a journey of 1450 miles to Wellington. With an estimated flying time of between fourteen and seventeen hours, this should see them landing to a heroes’ welcome late the following afternoon, New Zealand time.

  And New Zealand was ready for them, all right. For the previous few days the New Zealand papers had been in a fever of anticipation about the attempt, and an enormous crowd of spectators and journalists built up at Trentham racetrack when the likely time of arrival approached. As they waited for the plane, the centre of attention was the attractive wives of the two men, Dorothy Moncrieff and Laura Hood. They were alternately laughing with each other and gazing to the west, whence their husbands were due to appear, and the atmosphere was gay and celebratory. This really would be an achievement, and it was to the good that the record of a trans-Tasman flight would be set by New Zealanders and not Australians.

  At six o’clock at Trentham racecourse the mood was fever pitch as all eyes strained to the west, everyone wanting to be the first to spot them. At 7 pm there was still no sign, but nor was there undue alarm. Who knew what kind of headwinds they had met over the middle of the Tasman Sea? Why, they could be anything up to a couple of hours later than planned, or maybe even three.

  And yet when nine o’clock came and went and there was still no sign, there was no more giggling from the wives, just an earnest, unbroken gaze to the skies, willing their husbands to appear. The large crowd didn’t like to keep glancing at their watches, as it sort of seemed disloyal, but they couldn’t help themselves.

  9.20…9.30…9.45…still nothing. And so the evening dragged on like a sad leper.

  By 10.30 pm, a pall of gloom hung over the racecourse. No-one wanted to say it, but everyone feared the worst.

  Finally, at 1 am, Dorothy Moncrieff looked at her watch and said slowly, ‘Their petrol has now given out.’29 She went home.

  San Francisco, 17 January 1928. After four aborted attempts on the world endurance record, they were ready once again.30

  The runway at Mills Field extended for just less than 5000 feet and, now that the Southern Cross was fully loaded with fuel equalling the weight of sixty-eight men, the reckoning was that the aviators would need every drop of it. True, there was a downside in that a levee had been built around the western end of the field to keep high tides out—meaning that at the end of the runway there was effectively a wall facing them—but they would just have to live with that. At least they hoped they could live with that, because it simply didn’t bear thinking about what would happen if, so heavily laden down with fuel, they were to hit that wall. (Though the likelihood was that all that would be left to put in their coffins would be their molten tooth fillings.)

  In the normal course of things, at the moment that the pilot opened the throttles at one end of the runway, the plane would buck forward rather in the manner of a frisky horse that had just felt the touch of a spur…but not on this occasion. The Southern Cross was so heavily laden that at first there was only barely perceptible movement along the runway, and then for the next 100 feet or so, the plane sort of waddled forward at walking pace. Finally, though, her speed built up enough that she really was rushing down the runway, and at the 2000 feet mark had achieved 90 miles per hour. But still no lift. Three thousand feet…4000 feet…

  And then to the moment.

  In Kingsford Smith’s own words: ‘We charged on. Some instinct peculiar to airmen told us that the old bus would make it. The gallant plan was now “all out”. When we were still about 300 yards off the wheels left the ground for a few inches. Then they settled again.’

  The last hundred yards!

  ‘We deliberately pushed forward the controls. The effect was to drive the machine downwards. At that speed the contact with the ground developed into a bump. We had bounced the now flying machine over the levee.’31

  Even then, however, danger was stalking close, with death riding shotgun as the Southern Cross flew on, only bare feet above the water, which would suck them down in an instant if they just touched it. It was a desperate mile later before they had burnt enough fuel to rise even a small height above the ocean.

  From this point, the key, as Smithy saw it, was to ‘maintain a nice balance between the maximum speed for safety and the minimum speed for consumption. This meant holding the plane at stalling point all the time—a highly risky proceeding with an overloaded machine. Nevertheless we had to save fuel in every possible way.’32

  How to stay aloft in such circumstances?

  By concentrating, fiercely. For hour after hour after freezing, mind-numbing hour, as the sun fell and rose and fell again, they kept flying circles above San Francisco. In the cramped cockpit Kingsford Smith and Pond were pretty much hating every moment of it, but were equally determined to claim the record if it could possibly be done.

  Back at their hotel, Keith Anderson was writing a long letter to his fiancée, Bon Hilliard, venting his extreme frustration. He and Smithy had pretty much conceived the dream of flying the Pacific together, had planned it over years, worked their way through all the problems together and it had been his uncle who had provided the crucial cash to keep them afloat on the specific condition that his nephew be one of the pilots, and yet…

  And yet here Anderson was, six months in America, three months with the Southern Cross, and he had still never been allowed to pilot it! Well, he had just about had enough of the whole damn thing and certainly didn’t mind telling Bon all about it. He missed her desperately and it was only worth being away from her if the Pacific flight was actually going to take place with him as the co-pilot, which at this time seemed like a real long-shot, as far, faaaar above him, the Southern Cross kept going round in circles…

  Circle after circle. Smithy and Pond kept flying and flying. On and on and on, closely monitoring their petrol consumption and getting progressively more depressed as it became obvious that they were unlikely to break the record.

  At 7.30 am on the second morning, Kingsford Smith sent a message over the wireless to the ground:

  Southern Cross will be compelled to land at 9.30, running out of fuel. She cannot lift enough fuel for more than 50 hours. It is just liveable up here. That is all.33

  They landed at 10.13 am, 19 January, afte
r fifty hours and four minutes in the air.

  The absurdity, of course, was the difference in press coverage that staying aloft for a few more hours would have made. Their achievement had been considerable to stay aloft for so long, but there were no prizes for second. They had not beaten the German record, so no-one particularly cared…

  Least of all the New South Wales government. Even while Smithy and Pond had been in the air attempting to beat the record, the newly installed government of Premier Thomas Bavin had sent a strongly worded cable to the effect that the flyers’ time was up. The money had been guaranteed if they could make the flight within six months, and that six months was now gone. Therefore the offer was withdrawn. The government insisted that they sell the Southern Cross for whatever they could get for it, and return home on the next steamer.

  It looked like they were finished. Their own money was so long gone that they were feeling genuine hunger pains, and so broke that they couldn’t even afford to smoke a cigarette they hadn’t cadged. Their one bit of relief was when the Tahiti was in port and they could sneak aboard to get some free meals from their old friend Hal Litchfield. And then it was back to real life again.34

  Affording accommodation at the Roosevelt Hotel was now out of the question, and they moved to a series of progressively cheaper and nastier hotels, interspersed with nights spent sleeping on couches at the hangar.

  Those guys? Just some crazy Australians who have this idea that they can fly the Pacific. Been trying for months. Look, if you can spare a dime, buddy, give them a sandwich. They’ll appreciate it, and they’re not bad guys.

  If there was an upside, it was that they were all losing so much weight they would be able to load up even more petrol, should they ever be able to get off the ground and head south-west.

  For his part, Bert Hinkler’s conception of long-distance flight—in his case, all the way from England to Australia—was close to that of Charles Lindbergh’s. Instead of a multi-engined plane with a large crew, Hinkler believed that the best way to go was in a single-engined plane bearing just one crew member. Him. He had been flying a long time now, with a resumé that included a Distinguished Service Medal, an Air Force Cross for his efforts as a gunner/observer with the Royal Navy Air Service, flying a Sopwith Camel fighter with the RFC in Italy during the Great War, and five years spent after the war as a test pilot for Avro. He was a man who had justifiable faith in his own abilities, and given that his long-time plan had been to break Ross and Keith Smith’s aviation record from England to Australia, he was now trying to make it happen.

  So it was that at dawn on Tuesday, 7 February 1928, Hinkler made ready to take off from Croydon aerodrome in his tiny silver Avro Avian 581 prototype biplane G-EBOV. Just 24 feet 3 inches from stem to stern, with a 28-foot wingspan and an 85-horsepower ADC Cirrus Hermes engine, this particular Avro was regarded by most in the aviation world as little more than a toy plane—so small that Hinkler could well have been a ‘Lone Sparrow’ to Lindbergh’s ‘Lone Eagle’, in his relatively enormous Ryan monoplane.

  Now, as the mechanic swung the propeller and the engine burst into life—and the rush of air from the hurtling blades flattened the wet grass all around—the aviator stepped back from the plane so he and his beloved, the softly-spoken and beautiful Nancy, whom he had met during the war when she was a hospital sister, could have a few last words together. There were no crowds, because Bert had told only his nearest and dearest that he was going. That morning when he had woken at 4.30 am, to look out on the damp misty morning, so unpromising for flying, he had had a sudden crisis of confidence, but that was all gone now, and he felt much stronger.

  ‘I hope you’ll have good weather and safety, Bert,’ Nancy said as she held both his hands in hers. ‘I’ll be thinking of you.’

  ‘Thank you, Nance,’ the quiet pilot replied. ‘Don’t worry.’35

  At which point he kissed her and then climbed into the cockpit. Always, this was the worst part—leaving Nancy. Chocks away, a wave, and the tiny plane tore down the airstrip, through the last wisps of mist, and was soon a disappearing speck in the eastern skies.

  Navigation?

  On his lap he had the London Times Atlas, and if, a couple of dusks and dawns and several stops later, that little town below him on the North African coast was Tobruk, as he thought, then it must have a small airstrip where he could land and replenish his fuel supply, before snatching a quick sleep and resuming his journey the next day. Somewhere up ahead, he knew, he would see Cairo and pyramids out to his starboard side and about 95 miles after that, according to his atlas, he would spot the Suez Canal. No matter that the scorched desert kept sending up harsh thermal currents to buffet his tiny plane, his trusty compass told him in which direction he needed to steer to cross the canal at the right point and he flew on with as much pluck as confidence, to Jericho, the sands of Syria, the Euphrates River and so on…

  Flying in this manner, hopping his way across the world nearly twice as fast as Keith and Ross Smith had done it—they had taken twenty-seven days and twenty hours—Bert Hinkler landed in Darwin on 22 February 1928, less than sixteen days after departure.

  Australia went wild, in the now familiar fashion, and the country followed his progress as he continued to fly on to Sydney airport, marvelling that the whole thing had only cost him £55 in the amount he paid for petrol from one side of the planet to another, otherwise stated as a halfpenny a mile!36

  At their home in England, a nervous Nancy was told the news by a journalist just after nine o’clock on a cold Wednesday morning.

  ‘I knew he could do it,’ she said. ‘But I must admit I’ve been lying awake almost every night, flying each hop with him. Now that he’s there, I’ll be able to sleep easily again.’37

  In London, The Times exulted at his breathtaking feat, and even pondered the possibilities of there one day being an airmail service between Great Britain and Australia.38

  As to Bert, when he approached Bundaberg on a hot afternoon four days after his first Australian landfall in Darwin, it was to find the entire town—and in fact the people of every township within a dozen cooees—gathered around the North Bundaberg recreation reserve, awaiting his arrival. On the ground, his mother had at last been prevailed upon to speak, and was thanking everyone ‘for the wonderful reception you are giving my son, and for the thousands of messages received…’ when she suddenly broke off with, ‘I see my son coming! Goodbye!’39

  And hello, Bert!

  In the bigger cities, the welcome was even greater. At Mascot, an enormous crowd, estimated at 80,000, began singing, ‘Hinkler, Hinkler little star, Sixteen days and here you are,’ a line taken from a Punch cartoon. So many people wanted to shake his hand everywhere he went that for a time he was reduced to the subterfuge of wearing a bandage around his right hand, but it was no use, as people simply grabbed his left.40

  I shook his hand, I shook his hand!

  He made headlines across the country, poems were penned in his honour, and ‘Hustling Hinkler’ as he instantly was nicknamed—sixteen days!—inspired seven popular songs. At dancehalls, couples began doing the Hinkler Quickstep, while fashionable women began to wear the ‘Hinkler Hat’, in two-tone felt, with their ears securely covered just as Bert had appeared in so many of those front-page photos. It was London’s Sunday Express, however, that best captured exactly why he was being so hailed: ‘These Antipodean giants help us to look even a Lindbergh in the eye…They enable us to see our prodigies as others see them. Hinkler is a true antidote to our poison of self-humiliation. He provides history a hundred years hence with an excuse for saying that there were giants in those days. A race which breeds a Hinkler is not altogether degenerate…‘41

  Hinkler, it was agreed, was the ‘unquestioned monarch of the air’.42

  On the day that Bert Hinkler landed in Australia, Keith Anderson left San Francisco and headed to the same destination. Anderson had had it, for good. Just three days before—while holding a cable from home, fr
om Bon—he had told Smithy he wanted to have a quiet word. He had thought about it, he said, and he was going to go. There was only so long a man could wait by the shore for his ship to come in, or for his plane to go out, and Anderson felt strongly that that time had passed. It was obvious to him, as it must be obvious to Smithy, that their Pacific flight was simply not going to get off the ground and it was time for them all to get on with their lives.

  In the end there was nothing that either Kingsford Smith or Ulm could say to dissuade him, though both men tried strongly. Ulm, particularly, was furious at Anderson’s decision and felt terribly let down—perhaps because his withdrawal was going to make the finances of their venture all the more precarious as Anderson’s mother and uncle would inevitably be insisting on getting their money back. Which was money they didn’t have…

  At home in Australia, the celebrations went on. All up, in these late days of February 1928, Australia had its aviation hero, and it certainly wasn’t Charles Kingsford Smith or—what’s the other guy’s name again?—Charles Ulm. In San Francisco the two aviators read of Hinkler’s triumph and, while happy for him, had rarely felt so desolate.

  At their lowest ebb, they decided to go to Los Angeles to see if they could sell the Southern Cross to the Union Oil Company of California and then…maybe…fly it to Australia as employees of the company? It seemed like a good idea, making the best of an exceedingly bad lot.