Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men

by P Fitzsimons

  Some idea of the extent of their penury was that while they were still talking big about flying the entire Pacific Ocean, at this point their biggest problem wasn’t that they didn’t have the money to buy the petrol to fly to LA. They couldn’t even afford the train fare.

  Somehow, however, they managed to scrounge enough petrol to fly down and arrived with 18 cents between them, half a bottle of bourbon remaining to make them feel better about things and, as if it mattered, a letter of introduction Ulm was carrying that had a vague chance of facilitating access to a supposedly rich banker.43

  And yet, just as it is known the world over among adventurers from all ages that the ‘darkest hour is right before the dawn’, so was it proven on this occasion. Not long after the Union Oil Company gave them and their proposal short shrift—and their bourbon and 18 cents were also gone—it so happened that one day in mid-March they were standing rather disconsolately at Rogers airport talking to the president of the Californian Bank of Los Angeles, Andrew Chaffey. And he was listening to them! Taking them seriously!

  Chaffey proved to be an exceedingly friendly American who had once lived in Australia as a lad, courtesy of the fact that his father had worked as an irrigation engineer in Mildura for many years, and he knew just the bloke he would like to introduce them to, one Captain G. Allan Hancock.44

  Just what the good captain’s calling was was not immediately apparent, though he seemed like a nice man, and they didn’t mind telling him of their plans for the Southern Cross and the terrible troubles they had had in getting it off the ground. The frustrating thing, they told him, was that they knew they had the right plane, and had learnt enough of the lessons from both the Dole Air Race and their own experience over previous months to know that they really could fly the Pacific. It was just that they lacked the last bit of money to make it all happen, and were in fact so deeply in debt that they were on the point of losing everything.

  Captain Hancock, on this day, listened, and went for a cruise with them in the Southern Cross in the skies above Los Angeles,45 but said very little. A few days of cadging later, however, came some amazing news from their friendly bank manager, Andrew Chaffey.

  He was extending an invitation on behalf of Captain Hancock, who was wondering whether the two Australians would, perhaps, like to accompany him on a cruise in a few days’ time, on his steam yacht Oaxaca—in reality a small ship—down the Pacific coast to the Mexican port of Mazatlán.

  Would they ever! If nothing else, such a trip would provide free accommodation for the Australians and, even more importantly, free meals. And speaking of their poverty, both men became suddenly aware that they couldn’t possibly go on such a cruise in their current wardrobe, which was so threadbare and patched that on a bad day they could be mistaken for hobos. With some more cadged dollars—because buying new clothes was out of the question—they managed to hire some clothes at a very good rate. (Turns out it was a good rate for a good reason. Neither set of clothes fitted either airman. One set of pants had to be reefed up for Kingsford Smith and the other down for Ulm.)

  It was a fairly humbling thing to board such a luxuriously appointed yacht of a millionaire while wearing another man’s trousers, but neither aviator focused too heavily on it. It was just a pleasure to be there, and for ten days at least to pack up their troubles in their old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile boys, that’s the style.

  An interesting man, Captain Hancock. From very humble beginnings, this child of dirt-poor farmers on the edge of Los Angeles might have remained exactly that if it had not been discovered that the said dirt was in fact afloat on a veritable ocean of oil. First his widowed mother leased 1000 acres of the farm to an oil company, and when that proved fruitful, Hancock decided to put wells on the land that remained. Out of seventy-one wells sunk around the family homestead—right near where the Beverly Wilshire Hotel would later be built at the end of Rodeo Drive—all seventy-one came up gushers!

  And yet, far from just sitting back and counting his millions, Hancock continued to invest over the years in everything from banks to railroads to shipping to cinemas; to engage his passions, including helping to fund and occasionally play for the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, taking boats and ships on long voyages—hence his ‘Captain’ honorific by virtue of his master mariner’s licence—and to give a lot of his money away to worthy causes.

  He was a man of means, matched only by his generosity and charm…and yet both Australians also sensed a certain sadness to him in off-moments, and that story, too, soon emerged as they got to know him on the yacht. A couple of years before, Hancock and his beloved only son, Bertram, then twenty-two years old, had checked into Santa Barbara’s luxurious Arlington Hotel just before…an earthquake hit. The hotel had collapsed like a house of cards, and even as Captain Hancock was falling two floors, he was able to catch a ‘vivid, never-to-be forgotten glimpse of my son’s bed plunging downward in the roaring mass and twisted steel’. The steel rod that impaled Captain Hancock gave him a speech impediment that would be with him for the rest of his life, but Bertram’s life had ended instantaneously that night.

  Whether Captain Hancock saw in the young Australians all the youthful vigour and dream-pursuit that Bertram had had, he didn’t say, but he was certainly paternal in his care for them, and nothing was too good for his guests on the yacht. They rose late for breakfast, sunbathed, chatted, drank, had lunch, played cards, went on jaunts on the motorboat, fished, chatted some more, dressed for dinner, dined like kings, and talked late into the night about anything and everything, including aviation.

  And then came the moment.

  One night over dinner—a little more claret, please steward—as the cruise was nearing its end, Captain Hancock raised the subject himself. Their plane. Their planned trip…

  ‘You’re satisfied the Southern Cross is the right type of machine for the job?’ he asked bluntly.

  ‘Quite,’ Smithy replied.

  ‘Why do you want to do this flight?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never asked myself why. I’ve always known that the Pacific must be flown and I am going to fly it. For glory? For money? For that least of all…I can’t see where there would be any money in the job. I guess the real answer is that I can see a future in aerial transport across the oceans.’

  Charles Ulm butted in.

  ‘Smithy, you’ve got the pioneer spirit in you. So have I. We both know that when the trail is broken, others will follow. We want the honour of doing the job first. We want that honour for our countrymen.’

  ‘Yes, Charles, you’re right. There are so many reasons why. All of them good reasons. But the flight itself will be child’s play to the difficulties of getting started…‘46

  ‘How much will it cost for you to get into the air?’ the captain asked.

  Smith looked at Ulm. Ulm looked at Smith.

  They knew the exact figure of how much they needed, just as well as they knew how to spell their own names, for it was a figure they had been wrestling with day and night for months, trying vainly to beat it into submission and make it more manageable to no avail. The question was, should they tell Captain Hancock the full amount and likely scare him off doing anything to help, or should they tell him a lower figure in the hope that he would give them enough to at least keep them going until such times as they could get the rest of the money from elsewhere?

  It was Charles Ulm who spoke first. Taking a gulp of the white wine and reasoning that they might as well go for the lot because if the captain came across and indeed gave them the money then all their problems—bar actually crossing the Pacific—would be over.

  ‘We need about $16,000,’ he said quietly.47

  There was silence for a moment, leavened only by the sound of the Oaxaca’s engines and the lapping of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. And then Captain Hancock spoke. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ll put you into the air. I’ll buy the machine from you, boys. I’ll see my solicitors and decide the best way to do it.’
48

  For an instant Ulm wanted to leap to his feet and begin dancing around the room, while screaming for joy at the top of his lungs, but just managed to hold it in. As did Kingsford Smith. Just. Instead, they warmly thanked their new benefactor for his munificence and soon retired for the evening.

  Kingsford Smith and Ulm went to bed in an attempt to get a good night’s sleep, but for both of them it was an all but impossible task. Suddenly, just at a time when it seemed that all was lost, everything had come good with a rush and it…really seemed…as if…they could fly the Pacific!

  When they were leaving the boat a couple of days later, on the morning of 2 April 1928, Captain Hancock firmly shook them both by the hand and said, ‘Boys, you are on your way.’

  Ecstatic at their change of fortune, both Australians were back at Mills Field within hours of landing to immediately get to work on the…the…

  Where was it? In the spot where they left the Southern Cross while they had gone on their cruise there was now just an empty space. What the hell was going on!?!?

  Oh. Oh, dear. While they had been on the cruise, their creditors had foreclosed on them and the Southern Cross had been taken away by the bailiffs to be sold to the highest bidder. In the end, however, not to worry. This was America. There was generally no problem so great that a big enough cheque couldn’t fix it, at least in the short term, and Captain Hancock was indeed as good as his word. Within a couple of days the Australians had the mighty Southern Cross restored to them and busily set to work to get her in shape for the journey.

  And where as Keith Anderson in all this?

  Ulm and Kingsford Smith immediately cabled him in Australia to the effect that they were getting ready to go, but relations quickly became problematic thereafter. For one thing, in no communication with him did they make it clear that they had effectively won the lottery and now had the money they needed. And for another, Anderson cabled that he would only return if they sent him a first-class fare.

  One way or another it soon became apparent that they had reached an impasse, and that although Anderson and Kingsford Smith had shared the dream to cross the Pacific for a fair chunk of the previous decade, Anderson was not going to come back to be a part of it as Smithy—with Ulm—edged closer to making that dream a reality.

  Ulm himself, though, for one, was not sorry. He and Anderson had never got on, and with the positions of pilot and co-pilot already taken by him and Smithy, it wasn’t obvious just what position Anderson would fill. He was neither a professional navigator nor radio man, so where would he go? The fact that he didn’t return made things much easier.

  As to who would be the navigator and radio man, that was quickly solved.

  In the course of getting their compasses tested by the best in the business in the US Navy, they asked around for a good navigator and were given a remarkably precise bearing towards a bloke by the name of Captain Harry Lyon, who was in the naval reserve and had served extensively in both the navy and merchant service as a navigator, and had also had a spell captaining his own small ship.

  A big drinker and former rum-runner—with the curious predilection of enjoying both brawling and wearing bow ties whatever the circumstances—the rather worn 43-year-old was a first-class navigator.49 In large part he had learnt at the knee of his father, a rear admiral with the US Navy. Smithy and Ulm met Lyon where they were staying at the Bellevue Hotel, liked him, and were happy when he agreed to join them. For his part, Lyon was impressed with, as he later wrote, ‘their extreme earnestness and confidence, not only in the feasibility but of the absolute success of the flight. Then, too, the uncanny thoroughness with which they had been preparing for the flight.’50

  A few days later, a former navy radio man and now pants salesman from Kansas by the name of Jim Warner was in the shop where he worked in San Francisco, when an old navy mate by the name of ‘Packy’ rang him up.

  ‘Who,’ said Packy, ‘do you suppose I ran into the other day?’

  ‘I’ll bite.’

  ‘Harry Lyon.’

  ‘Not the old Harry Lyon who was on the old St Louis?’

  ‘That’s him,’ said Packy, ‘and he’s tangled up with two Australians who are going to fly to Australia. He’s going to go as navigator.’

  ‘He’s crazy.’

  Why, only the year before, in one of his last jobs with the US Navy, Warner had been on one of the ships fruitlessly searching for survivors of the Dole Air Race. Fly to Australia? That really was crazy. And yet…selling trousers was kinda dull. And what was that Packy was saying now?

  ‘No, they mean business,’ Packy said. ‘They need a wireless operator and I thought you might want to go.’

  ‘Say, Packy. I’m a pants salesman. Furthermore, I’ve never lost anything in Australia. On top of that, I’ve never been any nearer an airplane than necessary—but tell me, where can I find Harry Lyon?’

  ‘Yah,’ yodelled Packy. ‘I knew you’d want to go.’

  ‘Nothing doing. I just want to keep Lyon from risking his neck…’51

  Within days, Kingsford Smith and Ulm had themselves a first-class radio man, too. Though he had never flown in an aeroplane, the main thing was that there was nothing about radios that Warner didn’t know. And while he came across as rather less a knockabout bloke than a rather lugubrious one who had been knocked about through hard living, the Australians were happy to have him on board.

  It was now Jim Warner who fine-tuned all the radio equipment similar to the gear that had been installed in the Dallas Spirit, piloted by Bill Erwin and Alvin Eichwaldt52 and which had flown looking for survivors of the Dole Air Race. They had three radios, one of which had been placed in the wing for emergency use if they ditched and were able to saw off the wing for a life raft. One of the two main radios was valved for short-wavelength frequencies for use over vast distances to advise their position and to receive messages in Morse code. The other was in medium wavelength to be used to communicate with ships as they flew over them.

  The power for those radios would come from two wind-driven generators, installed on either side of the cockpit exterior, and the 200-foot long-range and 400-foot short-range antennae for each would trail from beneath the plane, from opposite sides of the fuselage.

  As to Harry Lyon, he saw to the installation of his navigational table in the rear—complete with a massive map pinned down on each corner, and covered with all his paraphernalia of navigation, including sextants, rulers, pens, dividers and a metal compass. All of these were attached by lengths of string to one central point so they wouldn’t go flying off in rough weather.

  Certainly the navigational table made it cramped in the back, most particularly for Warner and his radios, but there was no other way. And in fact, the two Americans would be working more closely on this trip than ever before. As an added boon to navigation, it had been arranged that a radio beam would be sent out from Wheeler Field in Hawaii to the US Army’s Crissy Field in San Francisco.

  If all went well, this would mean that when the Southern Cross was on course, Warner would hear a constant reassuring bzzzz in his headphones. If they drifted to the north of the correct course, the signal from the beacon would be a series of dots, and to the south a series of dashes. If he heard nothing at all, it would be because the radio had stopped working, they were too far from the beam for it to reach them or they were so hopelessly off course that nothing could save them anyway!

  As a further aid to navigation, the Southern Cross was blessed with an earth inductor compass, which had only been invented three years earlier to counter the fact that the unavoidable movement and vibration of planes in the air, together with stray electrical currents associated with ferrous metals and radio equipment in close quarters made traditional magnetic compasses less than reliable. The earth inductor compass was designed to align more accurately with the earth’s magnetic field, and configured so that Lyon could set the desired course from his position in the back of the plane, and all Smithy and Ulm had to d
o in the front was to keep the indicator pointing straight upwards to zero. When Lyon changed course to port or starboard, the needle would move away from zero in the appropriate direction and the pilots would have to change direction until it again pointed straight up.

  Although Lyon had used sextants many times, he had never used the aviator’s ‘bubble sextant’. (About this same time the first Australian version of this instrument was being improved for use in aircraft by Patrick Gordon ‘Bill’ Taylor, a veteran of the Royal Flying Corps, who had continued flying after the war and become interested in solving the problems of aerial navigation. With the help of a Sydney instrument-maker and an aircraft engineer, Taylor took a standard marine sextant and altered the spirit level to create a stable, flat artificial horizon in place of the real one, which was frequently obscured by clouds when you were in the air.53) Lyon resolved to get as much practice as possible with the unimproved marine bubble sextant before they took off and initially he was able to sort of simulate a bucking aircraft by having a friend drive fast over a bumpy road while he took readings. Then, when he was competent at that Smithy took him up in a biplane to do it for real.54

  One way or another, with so many different methods of navigation, it was hoped that Lyon would always be able to determine where they were, and thus what course they needed to set to find the tiny dots in the ocean that were their destination.

  To build their fitness for the trip, Kingsford Smith and Ulm embarked on a program where they would frequently go driving for fifteen hours, head back to the airfield to fly for four hours, go running for two hours, then more flying and driving until they had gone for forty hours straight.55 Bit by bit, they managed it a little more easily as their endurance levels lifted.56

  As they furiously worked to get themselves and the Southern Cross in shape, there was no doubt who the leader was—Kingsford Smith. Now that the project had moved from the realms of business organisation, where Ulm excelled, and into the actual details of the flight, it was the senior pilot who took over and drove his team hard. Certainly there had been many times in his life when he had been scatterbrained and unreliable, when he had been loose in an environment that demanded tightness, when he had been irresponsible in a culture that demanded discipline, but this time it was different. This time, Kingsford Smith was acutely aware both that he was on the edge of fulfilling his long-time dream and that the likely alternative to not fulfilling it was death. There was to be no second chances on this, and experience had taught him that just one mistake, just one nut left untightened, one detail left unattended, could spell their d…o…o…m. So let’s check, check again, and recheck. Are all the fuel lines cleaned out and their connections tightened? All spare parts for the radio locked away? Carburettors cleaned to within an inch of their lives? Harry, are you positive that you have everything needed for navigation, together with backup systems?