Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men

by P Fitzsimons

  Of all my pride, my joy in you,

  True to the end you’ve served me well.

  I pity those who cannot see

  That heart and soul are housed within

  This thing of steel and wood—to me

  You live in every bolt and pin.

  And so my staunch and steadfast steed

  Your deep and mighty voice must cease

  Faithful to death, if God will heed

  My prayer, dear pal. You’ll rest in peace!58

  Then, with a tear in his eye, he took a single step back, looked at the cockpit and snapped off a formal salute.59

  And then to business…Smithy and Beau Sheil were scheduled to leave for New Zealand that very afternoon on the Aorangi, with Smithy being farewelled on the docks by the once again pregnant Mary, two-and-a-half-year-old Charles Jnr, and the woman who had been the rock of his existence since his birth, Catherine.

  With a persistence that the Southern Cross itself would have been proud of, the famed aviator’s intention was to address the New Zealand Cabinet once more before heading across the Pacific to reclaim the Lady Southern Cross, which was still sitting in the hangar in Burbank where he had left it.

  And from there? Well, he wasn’t quite sure. A few years ago there had been neither enough hours in the day, nor days in the week for him to get through all the things he wanted to do, as opportunities abounded, red carpets ribboned before him, and every door he passed opened automatically, even as it rained pound notes. But it was no longer like that.

  At the age of thirty-eight, everything was a struggle as he no longer had the energy or strength that once drove him at will; the red carpets had become endless reams of red tape that near strangled a man, and in terms of opportunities the most familiar sound was that of doors shutting in his face. To top it all off, he was just about broke. Despite the government’s repeated use of such flowery sentiments in various speeches that ‘Australia owes more than it can ever pay to Kingsford Smith’, when it came right down to it, the government seemed to do everything in its power to thwart him. None of the routes he and Ulm had pioneered had ever been granted to them to run, not one penny of government subsidy had ever come their way and, while it was obvious that the world of aviation was at the dawn of a new age in terms of commercial travel, his place in that new age was not readily apparent.

  Twenty years earlier, when the youthful Smithy had been about to board a ship leaving Sydney Harbour on his way to the Great War, he had been a young man who laughed easily and was possessed by an overwhelming sense of adventure. Now, though, it was a sombre, quiet and exhausted man who held Mary close—with an extra gentle pat for their new baby that was on its way and due just before Christmas, five months hence—hugged Charles Jnr and told him to look after his mother, and kissed his own mother goodbye before marching up the gangplank. The Aorangi was the ship he had first gone to Vancouver on as a child and the ship he had met Mary on, when near the height of his fame. Now, who knew to what fate it was taking him?

  Catherine, Mary and Charles Jnr watched silently until the ship disappeared from view. It was a cold, windy day. Getting chilly. Winter had set in. Time to head home—Mary and Charles Jnr to their suddenly empty Darling Point house; Catherine to Kuranda, where she was living totally alone since William had died. They hoped that Chilla would be all right.

  Sitting around a table in the New Zealand parliament in Wellington, on the afternoon of 24 July 1935, was Acting Prime Minister Sir Ethelbert Ransom and the members of the Cabinet. Smithy had been invited to address them on his proposals, and he did so for the next three hours as they questioned him.

  He spelled out the estimated cost of the service, the planes his company wanted to use, schedules, their proposed landing grounds—the lot. All that was needed was the New Zealand government’s commitment to back them.

  At the end of the meeting, the Cabinet had made no commitments, but nor had they said no. Their primary concern, it seemed, was that British aeroplanes be used, not American ones, which was a little problematic as Smithy was of the firm view that the only planes capable of flying the Tasman on a regular basis were the American planes—the Douglas DC-2s, Sikorsky S-42s and Martin M-130 China Clipper flying boats. The amazing thing, as Smithy pointed out to Beau Sheil from atop the steps of the parliament building on their way out, was just how many American cars were in the parliamentary car park, given the lecture he had just received on the importance of buying British.

  Still, it was something to go on with at a time when not a whole lot else beckoned, and after another meeting with the New Zealand leader of the Opposition, Michael Savage, which was very positive, Kingsford Smith headed for California. He had a good feeling after his meetings, and was hopeful that things were moving his way at last.

  Behind him, things were certainly beginning to move, anyway…For the aviation industry had been watching Kingsford Smith carefully. ‘It is obvious,’ Hudson Fysh, Managing Director of Qantas, wrote crisply to George Woods Humphreys, his Imperial Airways counterpart, ‘that Taylor and Kingsford Smith are unbusinesslike and incapable when it comes to organising and operating a service like that between Sydney and New Zealand. But they have a certain following in Parliament and among the public which it is not wise to ignore…‘60

  Woods Humphreys didn’t ignore it, and wrote to Fysh by return mail: ‘On the subject of Kingsford Smith’s activities, I have arranged with the Air Ministry and the Dominion’s office for them to telegraph the New Zealand Government, asking them not to commit themselves to anything before consulting with the Government here. In the meantime, we are preparing a scheme…to put to the United Kingdom government.’61

  Soon afterwards, Australia’s Controller of Civil Aviation, Edgar Johnston, received a letter from his deputy: ‘The New Zealand Government is not taking kindly to Kingsford Smith’s proposal.’62

  Enormously powerful forces were being brought to bear on the Kingsford Smith problem, even as he sailed for San Francisco. For its part, the London Daily Express took a dim view rather representative of the Establishment, saying that ‘Sir Charles Kingsford Smith is today planning a pirate air route with American aircraft over the 1,200 miles between Australia and New Zealand. It will compete with the general Empire airmail speed-up and extension scheduled to begin in 1937.’

  The Express even quoted Sir Ethelbert Ransom panning the idea on behalf of his government: ‘It would scarcely be keeping faith with Britain and would certainly be an embarrassment were New Zealand at this stage to become prematurely committed to a separate proposal. The Tasman service must be considered part of a comprehensive Empire scheme.’63

  The Australian government took the same view, with the Defence Minister Archdale Parkhill announcing that Kingsford Smith’s scheme ‘was both very expensive and unnecessary’.64

  Shortly after docking in San Francisco, Smithy was apprised of both decisions. Two more doors—big ones—had just been firmly slammed in his face.

  Well, bugger the lot of them. He and Sheil would just have to raise the money elsewhere, and launch their airline independently of any government assistance. To get that money, they would go to the financial capital of the world, London. And, once again setting eyes on the Lady Southern Cross, where she had been waiting for him in the Burbank hangar, Smithy felt he had unfinished business with her, too—and not just having to pay more precious money to free the plane from the usual attachment imposed by a San Pedro court because of unpaid debts.65 Perhaps one more, just one more record-breaking flight, to show everyone that he was as good as he had ever been, and could still grab the world’s attention, even if the Australian and New Zealand governments had turned their backs on him.

  All of this was clearly on his mind when, shortly after arriving in America, he was interviewed by the famous American aviation journalist Edwin C. Parsons, for Liberty magazine. ‘Despite strict adherence to my creed, “Never take an unnecessary chance”,’ the Australian told Parsons, ‘there has arrived a t
ime on nearly every hop when I’ve been thoroughly frightened. I’ve been in so many tough spots when it’s been touch and go whether I lived or died that I’m convinced that I shan’t wash out for good till my number is up.’66

  Was it perhaps time to give it away before that number did come up? Not in Smithy’s view. ‘The flying life of pilots, as of planes, is short compared with other forms of transport. At thirty-eight I recognise that I am a veteran. Well, there is life in the old dog yet!—and I still sigh for uncharted spaces and new worlds to conquer—even though trans-oceanic flights are selling at two cents to the bushel and there is the ever-present problem of financing to worry me. To be sure, I have a nice little air business in Sydney, but my heart is in adventure and the last frontier is the air.’67

  After flying the Lady Southern Cross to New York, Smithy used the absolute last gasp of his financial resources to arrange passage for both himself and his plane on separate ships to England, where he would meet up with Beau Sheil to see if they could rustle up the money they needed.

  Alas, when he got to London after a four-day voyage, the problem Smithy came up against was an all too familiar one. That is, while his record as a pilot was without peer, his resumé as a businessman was a lot less illustrious and he was yet to demonstrate his capacity to make an aviation company grow in the long term.

  Knock-back followed knock-back and, in many ways, the situation was reminiscent of the one that Smithy had previously known in San Francisco before his first Pacific flight. It was one thing for people to wish you well, slap you on the back and invite you for a drink, and quite another for them to commit to writing a big cheque, most particularly when you had a record of squandering the big cheques others had written. And while it was true that the world of business and the world of aviation were merging in the mid-1930s Depression era, with bankruptcies rife and unemployment continuing to rise the men that the businessmen were putting their money behind were not the hardy pioneer adventurous types but responsible buttoned-down men who put long hours in at the office—a description which Smithy just didn’t fit.

  Compounding Kingsford Smith’s problems was that not only was he not getting the hundreds of thousands of pounds he needed but, well, he didn’t actually have the money he needed to live on, to pay his travel expenses, hotel accommodation and so forth. If the Australian government had fully paid for the Southern Cross as they had promised to do, he would have been okay, but—because government lawyers had yet to get to the bottom of the documentation to prove that Smithy was the plane’s actual legal owner—they had withheld half the payment and an increasingly angry, frustrated and depressed Kingsford Smith was reduced to cabling John Stannage in Australia and asking him to take it up with the government on his behalf.68 He needed that money, and he needed it immediately.

  Despite his claims to journalist Edwin Parsons that he had a ‘nice little air business’ in Australia, the truth was that that business no longer existed, he had no capital of note as backup, and he was clearly unable to raise the money he needed in London to launch the trans-Tasman venture he just knew would work if given the chance! The walls were closing in, and there seemed precious few ways out.

  In difficult times in the past, Smithy had traditionally fallen back on one of two options: taking up barnstorming until things got better, or breaking a record. Although in 1935 breaking records was not the wondrous thing it had been in the past—people didn’t seem to care quite as much anymore—it was at least something. The more he thought about it, lying awake late at night, tossing and turning, the more it seemed like he had just one last option, now that the Lady Southern Cross had arrived and been offloaded.

  ‘I’ll fly her back to Australia,’ he told Beau, ‘and break Scott and Black’s record of seventy-one hours. The publicity will do us a lot of good.’69

  Beau argued strongly against it. In his passionately held view, ‘breaking records and trying to start an international airline are two totally unrelated things…!’70 There was no doubt that Smithy was a wonderful pioneer flyer, as he had proved time and time and time again. What he had to prove now was that he was a canny aviation businessman who could be trusted to wisely spend whatever capital they could raise. If anything, breaking another record would work against them. Smithy, don’t you see?!??

  But Smithy wouldn’t hear of it. He was going to break the record; going to show he could have won the Centenary Race if he had been given the chance, and that was that.

  Beau was not nearly so sure.

  For one thing, it was obvious to him that Smithy wasn’t well. To fly a plane from England to Australia in under fifty-one hours as he intended to do, was a gruelling task and could only be undertaken safely by someone who was physically fit and mentally strong. And Smithy in no way answered that description. Emotionally and physically exhausted, often bedridden, he was not remotely close to the level of fitness required, but nor would he hear of cancelling the flight.

  Even beyond Smithy’s determination to make the attempt, however, there were many problems, starting with the same one he had had with Australian officials over his plane’s fuel capacity. Smithy’s plan had been to use the American certification to get British certification, which would then allow him to get Australian certification when he got home. But, as before, the American certification would only allow a capacity of 145 gallons, which was the normal capacity for the Altair. And so the British—in the form of a twenty-year-old air official from the Air Ministry, still in his nappies when Smithy had flown his first plane—informed Kingsford Smith, quite reasonably, that he would only get certification for that amount and, furthermore, hereto with pursuant, see Paragraph 3, Clause A, he would have to remove all the extra tanks from the Lady Southern Cross that it had arrived in Britain with, or he wouldn’t be able to fly it at all.

  F—ing officals!

  Scarcely believing that it was happening again, Smithy, at the end of his tether, was beside himself with rage. He was the one risking his life, not them, and he should bloody well know how much his plane could take! And it could take 514 gallons! How dare they impose a limit on him that was way less than a third of the amount he’d had in it when he had flown the bleeding Pacific Ocean! And back then, of course, as the first man in, the bloody bureaucrats hadn’t yet had a chance to set up shop to try and strangle him. Back then there had been no certificates, no stamps, no endless paperwork, no officious officials continually trying to stop a man from doing what a man could do when left to his own devices.

  Well, Smithy was on to their game, all right, he was. He just knew that all this was part of a British plan to prevent him, in an American plane, breaking Scott and Black’s record, which had so magnificently and patriotically been done in a British plane.

  In an attempt to break the impasse, the British Air Ministry gave the Australian the option to submit the Altair for stress analysis at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. Smithy declined—perhaps on the reckoning that she wouldn’t pass muster when overloaded.

  The usual flurry of telegrams, letters and meetings ensued as August turned into September turned into October and the weather began to cool, and finally the Air Ministry relented, at least a little. They agreed to allow him to keep the extra tanks on board, on the strict condition that he ‘blank off’ the extra tanks and take on no more than 145 gallons. Smithy agreed promptly, knowing full well that once he was out of British jurisdiction he could land at Marseilles and fill ‘er up Bluey—up to bursting.

  To go with him on this record attempt he decided to offer the position to young Tommy Pethybridge whom he had known, liked and worked with for many years, and who had, in fact, accompanied the Lady Southern Cross on her journey across the Atlantic. While Smithy would fly most of the way, Tommy’s job would be to handle everything at each stop—to fill in the bloody paperwork, oversee the refuelling, attend to any mechanical needs and so forth—enabling Smithy to get at least a little shut-eye.

  As to Tommy, he was, of cour
se, delighted to receive the offer. He near worshipped Sir Charles, and to have a chance to fly with him into history and have his own name in the record books was something he could only have dreamed of. True, he also had concerns about the deteriorating health of Sir Charles—who didn’t look good, and seemed very jumpy and perpetually exhausted—but on the other hand, young Tommy was hardly in a position to question the greatest flyer in history as to whether or not he was up to the task. Time and again Smithy had proved himself the veritable Houdini of the air, somehow always managing to escape from situations that would have killed lesser pilots.

  In fact, however, Smithy was finally beginning to have his own concerns about whether he was up to it or not, and after confiding in Beau, began to consult London’s medical establishment. In the end there didn’t seem to be a specific thing that ailed him, so much as an unhappy concurrence of exhaustion, anxiety and a general fug of depression.

  Over the crackling phone all the way from Sydney, Mary begged him—positively begged him not to fly—and instead come back by sea with the Lady Southern Cross strapped on to the deck, as it had first arrived in Australia. So crook did he feel that Smithy was at last mercifully convinced, and after consultations with Beau, decided to do exactly that. There was, however, a problem…

  Smithy had no more money than a squirrel. Getting himself and his plane home was an expensive exercise, not to mention keeping up mortgage payments on his new Darling Point home, and he still had not received a brass razoo further from the Australian government, which was continuing to quibble over the lack of proven ownership of the Southern Cross. An urgent cable was sent to John Stannage in Sydney, asking him to press the government for at least an advance on the money.

  Finally, the answer came back from John Stannage. Sir Charles could have a further advance of £500, so long as he signed a document whereby the government would have the right to take, and sell, all of his household furniture if it turned out that the Southern Cross wasn’t his to sell, and he therefore had no right to the money.71