Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men

by P Fitzsimons

  As darkness fell, Kingsford Smith and Ulm managed, in the cramped cockpit, to get changed into their fur-lined flying suits as it started to get a bit nippy in the open-sided cockpit, before taking the Southern Cross up to above 4000 feet, which got them above the low-lying cloud and up into the starlit heavens.

  At least for a while it did…for after only a short time at that height the stars began to disappear and the temperature to drop radically. The plane began to be buffeted from side to side and up and down as gust after gust of dirty wind hit them. Dead ahead, flashes of lightning whiplashed across the sky and illuminated what, to Kingsford Smith, looked perilously close to being the thunderclouds of doom. Those big clouds looked, in the vernacular of the times, ‘blacker than a crow’s arsehole’, and gave off a menace the likes of which Kingsford Smith had rarely seen before…and he had seen a few storms in his day. In no time at all, the plane was into the storm, being smashed by the screaming angry wind as sheets of rain pounded their rickety craft.

  For Kingsford Smith the only way out was up, and the plane began to climb again the best it could. He was hoping, as ever, to break through to above the storm where the stars would once again twinkle merrily. This time, however, it was not to be, and all that was achieved was to make them all numb with cold. Certainly, the storm they were going through had a top, but it was a top that the Southern Cross was incapable of climbing above, meaning that the only way was to go through. ‘It was far worse than flying through the ordinary darkness of the night,’ he later recalled. ‘We were tearing through a black chaos of rain and cloud at 85 knots, and our very speed increased the latent fury of the storm until it became an active and violent enemy which seemed to rush on us in an endeavour utterly to devour us. This was a tropical deluge such as we had never experienced in our lives.’69

  Despite the viciousness of the storm, however, and the pressing, crushing blackness, the saving grace was that the mighty Whirlwind engines never missed a beat, and the craft stayed intact! ‘Those three engines tore through calm and storm, through rushing walls of tropic storm, through tumbled clouds piled like mountain peaks, through a howling head-wind and through a hushed night sown with stars.’70

  Those engines alone, however, would not have been enough to keep the plane aloft…In the cockpit, concentrating with an intensity that was almost otherworldly, Kingsford Smith was fighting and riding the storm the way he used to see jackaroos in the Northern Territory and Western Australia fight and ride wild bucking horses in an effort to tame them. While in the back of the Southern Cross both Lyon and Warner had abandoned all attempts to navigate and work the radio and simply tried to ride it out for the duration, and Ulm was so cold he could make only occasional entries in his logbook, every fibre of Smithy’s being was concentrated on his instruments.

  For Smithy was doing what was called in the trade ‘blind flying’. In the middle of the turbulent blackness, the only thing he could see by peering out was the endless lashing rain cascading towards them, and the reflected light from their cockpit being flashed back to them from the whirring propellers. There was no horizon visible to give him any capacity to make the slight correcting movements to maintain stability, just as one does when riding a bike. Without that visible horizon, it was impossible to get any reckoning from their senses alone as to whether they were horizontal, descending, ascending, tilting, pitching or rolling—the only thing Kingsford Smith could do was to rely on reading his instruments. Without those instruments it would have been the rough equivalent of riding a bike blindfolded along a narrow plank.71

  ‘Until a man can fly in a black void for hours,’ Kingsford Smith would later write, ‘seeing those instruments and nothing else, he is not a safe pilot to fly a plane over long stretches of water. A pilot flying blind must have immense faith in his instruments. He must train himself to realise that if the barometer of his senses disagrees with his instruments, then they are right and his senses are wrong…’72 And elsewhere: ‘Blind flying comes to this—that of the five senses, only one is of any use and that is the ability to see the instruments on the board.’73

  Broadly speaking, his bank-and-turn indicator told a pilot if he was turning, the rate-of-climb meter indicated whether he was climbing or falling, the earth-inductor compass told him his course and the air speed indicator told him exactly that. In the cabin behind the pilots, with no such array of instruments, no seat belts or secure seats, Lyon and Warner were never certain at any moment if they were flying or falling, and all they could do was give silent thanks for Kingsford Smith’s ability to keep them aloft, for even this long.74 Neither man had any doubt that if anyone could get them through, then Smithy could.

  In such circumstances it was nearly impossible to keep up his radio reports, but Warner tried. At the height of the storm, however, Warner found that the transmitter wouldn’t work. In looking for the trouble, he put his hand on the long antenna reel that trailed out the window, only to get a strong electric shock! Turning the transmitter off, he reeled in the antenna, and found that it had become tangled with the other.75 This was going to take some time to sort out…

  Silence. Dead air.

  Panic around the world. Suddenly, the Southern Cross had gone off the air. Had she crashed? Disappeared into the Pacific Ocean? Warner had told them they were in the grip of a powerful storm, and now…nothing! Minute, after minute, after minute. NOTHING.

  In Arabella Street, Smithy’s family, who had been listening to 2BL as if their lives depended on it, tried to fight a rising panic. What could be the explanation? Surely Chilla was all right, wasn’t he? They put more coal on the fire, made fresh tea, and stared alternately at the silent radio and the ticking clock: 9 pm…9.07…9.08…a quarter past nine…a quarter to ten…and then at last, just before ten o’clock, they heard it. The radio sparked into life and they could again hear the tap-tap-tappety-tap of the Morse key, with the decoded message shortly thereafter. The Southern Cross was all right!

  On the plane, Warner had untangled the antennae and was again in business. If, somehow, one of the new-fangled Movietone newsreel cameras that were just about to start filming the world in flickering black-and-white images could have been positioned 10 yards out and 5 yards up from the nose of the Southern Cross, it would have revealed the fragile craft pitching and yawing, smashed to its left and right, as every fresh hammer of howling wind hit it. And there, through the windscreen being lashed by the torrents of rain, would be just visible the grim and furrowed face of Kingsford Smith, lit up by two small electric bulbs shining on his instruments.

  His eyes are bloodshot, his body is shaking with cold as he sits in his sodden flying suit, his muscles aching with cramp and his feet numb, but somehow—just barely, but somehow—his frozen but expert hands are on the controls and he keeps the Southern Cross airborne and heading home, home to Australia.

  Rising midnight at last, the flyers seemed to have come through the most extreme of the conditions as the wind abated by perhaps half a dozen banshees, but there remained a dreadful night to get through. Essaying to feel his way through the lesser storm now, Kingsford Smith tried to find the path of least resistance, taking the Southern Cross as high as 9000 feet and as low as 500 feet. Sometimes rough vision would return where they could momentarily see stars or distant clouds, but mostly they were flying blind or in near blackness.

  The dawn, the dawn, the dawn…where was it? At last, at around 6.45 am local time, the sky lightened perceptibly and shortly thereafter there was no doubt. They had made it through the night. Almost as if acknowledging defeat, the Pacific now tried to live up to its name and granted much calmer weather, enabling Ulm, Warner and Lyon to come to life. For just as there is a lull before the storm, so too is there a blessed lull after it. Now, in the back, Warner was fiddling with the knobs on his radio, attempting to pick up a bearing for Brisbane, while Lyon was once again busy on his charts, attempting to work out exactly where they were.

  An indication of their appreciation for the
pilot who had got them through the stormy night had come an hour earlier when Smithy took receipt of a note from Lyon saying that when they landed, he and Warner wanted to nominate him to be the next president of the United States. Both men were in awe of Smithy’s skill, with Warner later noting, ‘I’d go up with him in a tomato-crate with cracker-box wings, if he said it would fly.’76

  By half-past eight, the storm was completely left behind and the sun was not only fully up but also shining down benevolently upon them to the point that for the first time in fourteen hours a tiny wisp of warmth penetrated their soaked suits and began to evaporate some of the wetness. Kingsford Smith and Ulm were feeling so confident by now they even instructed Jim Warner to send out the following message:

  Now that we are sure of success, we wish to announce to the world that we could never have made the flight without the generosity and wonderful help given us by Captain G. Allan Hancock. For months we had fought against giving up all hope, but we were practically counted out when we met Captain Hancock, who in a most unselfish manner saw us through.77

  Then to the moment…

  Just before ten o’clock on 9 June 1928 they saw the tiniest of dark lines on the far western horizon, a line that didn’t change shape but became only more defined with every passing minute. Within four minutes there could be no denying it. It was the finish line—Australia! Before their very eyes, ‘the Australian continent slipped like a purple shadow over the steel-blue rim of the sea’.78

  Did Captain Cook feel so good after his own long voyage to see the Australian coast? Christopher Columbus to see the Americas? Cortez to see Mexico? Anyone, to see anything!?

  After seven gruelling nights and eight gruelling days, with eighty-three hours and fifteen minutes of ocean flying, they had crossed the Pacific, with landfall just up ahead! Now, which part of the Australian coast they were going to cross, they weren’t yet quite sure—they couldn’t help but notice that Moreton Island wasn’t where it should be, protecting the mouth of the Brisbane River, if that was indeed what they were heading to—but on the other hand it didn’t really matter. After flying around 7500 miles over water—around twice the distance flown by Lindbergh—any type of land looked good to them, and wild elation continued to surge through them as features of the oncoming coast became ever more apparent.

  In fact, as they soon worked out, they were crossing the coast near the town of Ballina, just 110 miles south of Brisbane, making it a simple matter to wheel to starboard and head on up the coast to the Eagle Farm racecourse. As they made their approaches to Brisbane over Moreton Bay, all the steamships on the Brisbane River gave them a siren salute, to which Smithy joyously waggled his wings in reply.79 Australia! Home! A posse of planes flew out from Brisbane to joyously escort them to their landing ground, where an estimated 15,000 strong crowd (including Bert Hinkler’s mother) waited expectantly.

  And there was Eagle Farm. As they looked down, the entire field, it seemed, was outlined by a pressing, surging crowd. Brisbane had turned out in force to welcome them. On the ground on this wonderfully sunny yet surprisingly cold winter’s day, the ABC radio broadcaster J.W. Robinson was describing in his clipped and cultured tones the wonderful historic scene to much of Australia—to just about anyone who had a radio, and most of their neighbours.

  ‘The Southern Cross is now coming very clearly into view. She is flying over the top of the small escorting planes. The sun is glistening on her wingspan. It is impossible to distinguish anyone in her from here. She looks very fine. They are getting closer and closer. The Southern Cross dwarfs the escorting planes, being almost three times as large. She is now almost over the top of the aerodrome—is getting quite close up. Listen to the whirr of the propellers. Everybody waving wildly. Is coming now. Coming down and down!’80

  Fifteen thousand people in the 5000 cars surrounding the field sounded their horns in a glorious cacophony by way of greeting.

  At last, the Southern Cross landed beside the spot where the crowd was thickest, then rolled to the end of the airfield where there was practically no-one, before turning around to come back. It was at that point of the turn that an eagle-eyed aviation journalist, Norman Ellison, from Sydney’s Daily Guardian, noticed what seemed to be two figures jump out of the back of the plane, and begin to sneak away from the tumultuous reception that was awaiting…

  As the Southern Cross started to taxi back, however, it seemed no-one else had noticed, and the entire throng surged forward to the point that police on hand began to fear for both the plane and the crowd, should the twain meet.

  ‘Get back! Get back!’ the policeman yelled, before uttering what would be an oft-repeated line: ‘This is no ordinary plane.’81

  It was no good. The joyous crowd surged forward and surrounded the plane. And there he was! Smithy himself climbing out of the open side of the cockpit, waving, beaming and now speaking his first words: ‘Hello, Aussies!’ he said. ‘My kingdom for a smoke!’82

  Hurrah! Again the people crushed in, trying to get to him first, to give him a ciggie, a light, a handshake, a hug, a card, a flower or…at least touch him. There were so many people that the only way out was up, and in no time at all a laughing Smithy, with smoke in hand, was carried around the field on the shoulders of the crowd, with the grinning Ulm, equally aloft, not far behind.

  Meanwhile, back at the other end of the field, Ellison had caught up with the two mysterious figures, both of whom were wearing ties and suits, while Kingsford Smith and Ulm had been in overalls. After Ellison had identified himself as a journalist, the chunkier of the two momentarily fumbled with his handkerchief, took out a denture before popping it in his mouth and then said in a broad American accent: ‘I’m Harry Lyon, and this is Jim Warner.’83

  ‘Why did you leave the plane? And where are you going?’

  Both men seemed a little sheepish at being caught out, but responded diplomatically enough that they were sure that the reception was an Australian welcome for Australian flyers, and not the likes of them, so he and Warner had felt it was the best thing to hightail it out of there.

  Ellison, when he spoke, felt he was speaking on behalf of the Australian populace, and the upshot of what he said was strong. Not on your Nelly. You have flown with the Australians to get here, they clearly couldn’t have got here without you, and you will be warmly welcomed at the reception. But you must come to it.

  And so they did. And were welcomed accordingly, with Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm…as garlands of roses were put around their necks, and both the governor and premier of Queensland made exuberant welcoming speeches. At one point Lyon was heard to joke with Warner, ‘Wa-al Jim, we travelled seven thousand miles to get a drink…’ and people fell about with wonder and amusement. What an hilarious accent the Yanks had!84

  From there, the four aviators were placed in an open car—with six burly policemen standing on the running boards as added protection—and as 40,000 Queenslanders lined both sides of the road and cheered them to the echo, were driven to Brisbane Town Hall, where yet another reception awaited.85 At that function, a telegram was read out from the Prime Minister, announcing a pledge of £5000 to Kingsford Smith and Ulm which resulted, accorded to the Argus, in a ‘near riot’ of acclaim.86 (‘This is a wonderful grant,’ Smithy would later quip, ‘as it is well known we flew on an overdraft!’87)

  In the absence of the mayor, Vice-Mayor Watson set the tone: ‘We meet to do honour to four very gallant men. Captain Kingsford Smith and his daring companions have bridged the mighty Pacific, in their unprecedented hop, step and jump. It is given to few men to write their names on the scroll of fame, but Kingsford Smith has by covering 7,000 miles of ocean, written his name with imperishable glory in the pages of the world’s history.’88

  In the course of all the speech-making, Smithy managed to slip in, ‘I am not an orator, but if Sydney is listening on the air, I would like to give a message to the old folk. It is this, “I’ll be with you very soon”.’89 Resounding che
ers greeted these words.

  That evening, when the now world-famous aviators were finally ensconced in their hotel, Colonel Horace Brinsmead, the long-time Controller of Civil Aviation was ushered into their presence. ‘Congratulations,’ he said warmly, ‘on having achieved the end of your flight.’

  ‘No, not the end of the flight,’ Smithy corrected him with a smile. ‘It’s only the end of the first stage of an aerial circumnavigation of the world.’90

  Then and there, having achieved his ambition of flying the Pacific, Smithy had set his own sights on the ultimate, which was to be the first person to circumnavigate the globe in the one plane, while crossing the equator in the process, and achieve what Sir Ross Smith had died trying to do. Wonderfully, there was now no doubt that the Southern Cross would be available for him to make the attempt.

  For, that very evening, they had received a cable from Captain Hancock. After congratulating them on their stunning achievement he told them this:

  I am delivering to the California Bank at Los Angeles for transmission to the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, Bill of Sale transferring to Kingsford Smith and Ulm the Southern Cross together with release and discharge of all your indebtedness to me. I beg you to accept this gift as a token of our mutual friendship, and as my tribute to you and the Southern Cross…91