by P Fitzsimons
At other times Smithy might have been tempted to think that it was a problem with the instruments and not the plane. But in an instant there was no doubt that they really were in terrible trouble, as he heard the deathly, familiar whoosh-whoosh sound of the wings whirling round and round through the airstream. Two decades earlier he had been in a similar situation after being hit by a Hun in France, but then he had been able to pull out of the wild spinning by pushing forward on the stick, in the method pioneered by Harry Hawker. Now, bracing himself against the seat, he pushed the Altair’s stick with everything he had in him, as he jammed both feet onto the right-side rudder-pedal, but still the Lady Southern Cross kept plummeting seawards, entirely out of control. He cut the engine, causing the plane’s klaxon horn—wired to sound the alarm if the engine’s revs fell below a certain level when the undercarriage was not extended—to start wailing its warning of impending peril: aah ooo gah, aah ooo gah.
Nothing worked.
Was this, indeed, the end?
Even in the extremity of the situation, however, one thing gave Smithy solace. It was that behind him, Bill Taylor sat quietly, knowing that they were in real trouble and equally that the only person who could get them out of it was Smithy and, therefore, panic on his part would not be helpful. To Smithy’s mind, Bill’s silence was his way of saying, ‘Look mate, you’re in charge, and I know you can get us out of this bloody mess’.29
And finally, when Bill did speak, it was in a voice of calm, even as they continued hurtling downwards.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked through the speaking tube.
‘I don’t know. She won’t give any more power, that’s all.’
Smithy tried with everything he had in him, ramming hard on the opposite rudder—as in the side of the rudder opposite to the way they were spinning, which in this case was left—and shoving the stick forward. Still nothing.
Hurtling…hurtling…hurtling…and spinning all the way. Smithy continued to try everything he could think of.
‘I’m sorry, Bill,’ he finally said quietly, ‘but I can’t get her out.’30
In the back, Bill Taylor was amazed at Smithy’s calm and his courtesy, even in the extremes of their situation. He was apologising for their coming death, and the fact that he couldn’t find the solution to whatever the problem was.
As to Bill Taylor’s own equanimity in the face of death, he was in fact so controlled he had time to reflect on it. He felt no horror at his impending departure from life on earth, nor sadness that he would be separated from his loved ones. ‘It simply seemed,’ he thought, that he and Smithy ‘had flown out from the earth and a dawning of real consciousness was near, a consciousness which seemed to bring light on all things, which held some happy revelation to the mystery of life and which seemed the most natural sequence of events.’31
Still, he was at least concerned enough to ask Smithy: ‘Do you mind if I have a go at her?’32
‘Yes, go ahead,’ Smithy replied calmly, as he felt Bill’s inputs on the stick and rudder pedals.
And Bill Taylor really tried. He pushed the stick fully forward and jammed his foot on the opposite rudder to the direction of the spin, but with absolutely no effect. Smithy took over the controls and still the altimeter showed that their altitude continued to fall, now below 6000 feet…
And then, an instant later, just when it seemed as if everything was lost and they would crash into the sea, he heard Smithy say calmly, ‘I’ve got it’.33 And so he had.
The plane stopped spinning and entered a controllable dive, from which Smithy was able to slowly pull out of to level off and, even though they were still flying through honey, the immediate crisis had been averted. They now probably had as long as twenty minutes to live instead of just a couple, which seemed like sheer bliss at the time. Somehow, by heaving everything every which way, Smithy had managed to pull her out of the spin, but he still had not found the cause of the problem.34
As it turned out, however, in just a few minutes everything slowly returned to normal and Smithy explained what had happened. Just as, a couple of years before, Charles Ulm had inadvertently bumped an engine magneto switch that had nearly sent them into the Tasman Sea, on this occasion he had, instead of flicking the landing light switch, mistakenly flipped the switch to the landing flaps!
Once he realised the mistake, he raised the flaps, which eliminated their drag and everything had slowly returned to normal. They flew on through the now smooth night air and at daybreak the following morning began scanning the horizon for a sign of Hawaii.
Just after eight o’clock,Taylor heard Smithy say nonchalantly through his earphones, ‘Land ahead’, for all the world as if he had expected nothing less. Taylor, whose navigational skills had got them to this pinprick in the Pacific, was not so blasé about it, and felt an enormous surge of pride—the more so when Smithy briefly veered to starboard to show his co-pilot in the second cockpit a view of that wonderful mass of coral, sand and swaying palm trees. Success!
Much as had happened on the previous occasion when Smithy had been there, a formation of US Army Air Corps planes soon came out to greet and guide them first over Pearl Harbor and then onto the green, green grass of Wheeler Field. Upon landing they were engulfed by 5000 wildly cheering people as welcoming speeches were made. If there was a difference this time, it was that Smithy had to sign a series of US Customs forms, as they were the first foreign-registered plane to land there—just as Blériot had been obliged to do in 1909 when he had landed at Dover.
Afterwards Kingsford Smith and Taylor were put in a gigantic motorcar and taken by blaring police escort back to the grand Royal Hawaiian Hotel where Smithy had stayed six years earlier, and he was even given the same room, which he promptly dubbed for the press ‘my lucky room’.35 And indeed, extraordinarily lucky he had been. And not just because he had escaped calamity after the wing flaps had been inadvertently extended mid-flight.
The following day, when Smithy took the officer in charge of maintenance, Major Wright, for a test flight, they hadn’t been aloft for more than a few minutes when the engine cut out…for want of petrol!36 In extremis, Smithy was able to glide the Lady Southern Cross back to Wheeler Field and disaster was averted, and then the mechanical investigations began. A leak was discovered in the gravity tank in the fuselage, but then the engineers of the US Army Air Corps subsequently found a crack in the oil tank. And then, in getting access to the oil tank they found the most horrifying thing of all: a protruding rivet head had been chafing on the main aluminium fuel tank so badly that the metal was paper thin and had almost broken through. Had the tank been penetrated on the way to Honolulu, or after leaving it, the entire fuselage would have been sloshing with petrol, and the best case would have been the motor simply cutting out.
Although the repair necessitated separating the Altair’s fuselage from the one-piece wing, the engineers fixed all the problems and, to Smithy’s infinite relief, told him that the work was free. (Either the USAAC were particularly kind, or they sensed that the payment of blood from Smithy’s stone wouldn’t do them any good anyway.)
After departing four days later, the fifteen-hour trip from Honolulu was without major incident. Passing over what, in 1928 had once been the empty opening to San Francisco Bay but was now the massive Golden Gate Bridge, they arrived at Oakland across the bay on 4 November 1934, at 7.40 am, fourteen days after departure from Brisbane, to a great welcome with swarms of press and people, judged by the Washington Post to be 20,000 strong.
And there he is now! After the plane taxied to a halt in front of a specially erected spectator stand, the canopy of the cockpit was rolled back and a grinning Smithy, his face grease-smudged, poked his head out.
‘My kingdom for a cigarette, a bath and something to eat,’ he laughed, as from the gathered crowd many hands reached up, proffering whole packets. ‘I am sorry to be so early, but you will have to blame my navigator Captain Taylor.’37
Amid laughter, cheers and wild cel
ebrations, the airmen descended from the plane and the throng rushed forward. In the maelstrom, Smithy heard his name being called urgently and looked across to see a much older-looking Harry Lyon and Jim Warner waving at him, but they were soon lost in the crush.38
For his part, Bill Taylor noticed that he still had in his lapel the flower which the beautiful woman in Brisbane had given him. For no good reason, he picked a small boy out of the crowd and gave it to him—special delivery, sonny Jim, all the way from Australia!
The American press, generally, was delighted with their safe arrival, with the New York Times opining in a leading article: ‘Sir Charles Kingsford Smith has so many firsts to his credit that no poet could ever repeat the mistake of Keats in allowing “Stout Cortez”, to stare first upon the Pacific. The name Kingsford Smith will always be first for the Pacific whenever flying records are later made in crossing it…‘39
From Washington, Senator William Gibbs McAdoo, the President of the United States National Aeronautic Association, released a statement saying, ‘Sir Charles Kingsford Smith deserves the title of the greatest of all annihilators of space since time began.’40
They also received telegrams of congratulations from, among others, Hitler, Mussolini and Lord Bledisloe, the Governor-General of New Zealand—though, oddly enough, nothing from King George V. Perhaps it was that with the glory of the Centenary Air Race just completed, Smithy’s feat was not regarded by either the British or Australian public with quite the fervour that it otherwise would have been. Still, for the moment at least, Smithy was riding high enough again in the public eye that he was able to use his sudden resurgence of celebrity for a good cause.
‘The flight will pave the way for transpacific air traffic between the United States and Australia,’ he declared to the American press time and again. ‘This flight convinces me that a transpacific air service will be a realisation in the not distant future.’41
And, of course, he knew just the person to establish it. Him…
It was a familiar song, well sung. And yet for all Smithy’s enthusiasm, he remained exhausted, shocked and even depressed over his and Taylor’s near death on the Suva to Honolulu leg, and the way things had turned out in general. How long could these near misses go on before disaster really did strike? Was he a madman to continue taking these risks? What about Mary? Didn’t she deserve to have a life free of continual worry over whether her husband was going to return home to her and their child? Didn’t Charles Arthur deserve to grow up with a father? The doubts gnawed at him from the inside, making him anxious and nervy.
Harold had been shocked at the state of Chilla after his youngest brother landed, and had done what he could to care for him, though no solution beckoned. For some unaccountable reason his brother had left for Los Angeles in the early afternoon on the same day of his arrival, telling his brother he had ‘urgent business’ to attend to. But what that business was, there was no sign. As Smithy’s newly appointed business manager John Stannage soon found out, it was obvious that none of the usual money-making ventures after a pioneering flight—delivering lectures, endorsing products, writing articles—were to be a goer this time, because he could barely get Smithy to leave his Los Angeles hotel room.42 And though John Stannage tried to keep it out of the press, in the end it was not possible with the United Press Association releasing a story over the wires on 17 November 1934 entitled ‘KINGSFORD SMITH HARASSED. DETERMINED TO REST’.
‘Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, harassed by autograph hunters and multitudes of admirers since he landed a fortnight ago, today locked himself in his hotel suite and sent out word by his manager, Mr J.S.W. Stannage, that his nerves were ragged and he was determined to get some rest. “Sir Charles must have rest and quiet,” said Mr Stannage. “If need be I’ll take him away to some remote spot in the hills. He has been pestered no end and he’s tired of it all”…’43
What, precisely, was wrong, beyond the minor irritation of autograph hunters?
Again, the answer was unclear. But the symptoms were readily apparent: exhaustion, depression, anxiety over anything and everything, an inability to function as he had.44 They could only hope that with rest, he would pull out of it and come good.
Something that didn’t help was the pressing need to find a buyer for the plane, and the difficulties encountered in doing so. One complication was when, the day after his arrival, the plane was seized by a deputy marshal in Los Angeles on behalf of an irate American businessman by the name of Tom Catton who had had an attachment order served until such times as he was paid US$2750 he claimed he was owed for services and goods he had rendered for Smithy and Ulm’s 1928 trans-Pacific venture.45 Smithy told the press that the claim was ‘absurd, preposterous and ridiculous’,46 but ended up paying at least enough of the money that the matter was settled out of court and the plane released. And yet, it was proving very difficult to find a buyer for a plane which was perfect to use if you wanted to attempt a record to cross the Pacific or the Atlantic, but was not necessarily good for much else without major modification.
Tragically, something was about to occur that would perfectly highlight the dangers of Smithy’s calling, even in an age when aviation had taken a quantum leap forward from its rustic beginnings…
On the afternoon of Monday, 3 December 1934, Charles Ulm, farewelled by his dear friend and fellow famous aviator, Amelia Earhart, as well as a crowd of about 300 spectators, took off in his British-built Airspeed Envoy Stella Australis from Oakland airport in California.47 He was attempting to repeat his feat with Smithy of six years before and fly across the Pacific Ocean, hoping to demonstrate that, with modern aircraft, his new company Great Pacific Airways—which admittedly existed more on paper than anywhere else—had reduced the hazard of over-water flying to nothing and would be capable of mounting a regular cross-Pacific service.48 Well, he thought it was modern anyway. Behind him at Oakland airport, the aircraft mechanics had been distinctly underwhelmed—on the reckoning the plane was all wood and fabric, such as they had not worked on for years, instead of all metal, which was the way truly modern aircraft were constructed. They quietly worried for the safety of Ulm and his crew, going on such a journey in such a crate.49 Another man feeling anxious was radio technician Jack Kaufman, who had begged Ulm to take a hand generator with him, so that if they came down they could still get a signal over their radio.
‘I don’t intend getting my feet wet,’ Ulm had laughed lightly in reply, and it was for the same reason there was no life raft or life preservers on board.50 She’ll be right, mate.
At the controls of the plane, Ulm had a wealthy young Australian flying instructor, George Littlejohn, and a man by the name of J. Leon Skilling as both navigator and wireless officer. Initially the Stella Australis benefited from singularly good weather, and Skilling sent out a series of cheery messages to the many listeners following the voyage on their radio.
6:30 p.m. Engine fine, weather perfect, starting lunch. Don’t expect to get wet feet, flew low as [steamer] Lurline displayed searchlights.51
8:30 p.m. Everything is OK.52
11:45 p.m. All’s well, still making one hundred and thirty mph. We are out about eleven hundred miles. Weather clear, radio in constant touch with ships and shore.53
At 2.41 am, however—some eleven hours after leaving—the tone of the messages changed, when Skilling sent out a message advising that they were in the middle of a storm and had gone to 12,000 feet to try to get above it, with no luck. From that point the messages became ever more downbeat, and then desperate as they continued to fire off requests for detailed weather reports to be transmitted to them and, more particularly, for radio beacons to be turned on, because they simply couldn’t hear any.
3:30 a.m. We have very little gasoline left.
4:00 a.m. Ulm: I don’t know whether I am north or south of the islands.54
It was soon clear that Stella Australis and her crew were in mortal peril.
5 a.m. Lost. We are running short of gas, una
ble to pick up radio. May be forced to send SOS in a few minutes, unless sight land.55
5:03 a.m. SOS.
5:08 a.m. Going down into the sea. Plane will float for two days.
5:13 a.m. SOS SOS SOS.
5:24 a.m. We are turning into the wind. Come pick us up. We are turning into the wind…Come and pick us up. The plane will float for two days.
5:30 a.m. On water now. SOS.56
From then, the radio of Stella Australis transmitted six minutes solid of the SOS signal, and then there was nothing.57 All but immediately, the US Navy base at Honolulu—which, on the basis of the previous alarming messages, already had two ships on watch for the flyers—swung into action. The United States Army Air Corps was seconded to put all available planes into the air—some seventeen of them—searching in a 350-mile radius of Honolulu. For its part, the US Navy put everything from patrol boats to destroyers to submarines to sea—twenty-three in all—and all merchant and passenger ships in the area were also requested to join in.
In Hollywood, Kingsford Smith and John Stannage were having lunch at Fox Studios with the actor and famous syndicated newspaper columnist Will Rogers. They had been delighted when, nearing the end of the lunch, the tiny Shirley Temple had rushed up to Will Rogers, saying, ‘Take me for another ride on that little pony, Uncle Will.’58 Introduced, they found this girl, the world’s most famous child, to be charming and completely unspoiled, rather like she appeared in the movies. And then one of the Fox executives came and told them the devastating news. Ulm and his crew had gone missing, after sending out distress signals.