Charles Kingsford Smith – A Biography Essay, Research Paper

Our Most Renowned Aviator

Sir Charles Edward Kingsford-Smith, known to the world as Smithy remains one of

the most celebrated pilots of international aviation’s golden age.

For seven years, from 1928 to his death in 1935, he was the most revered public

hero in Australia. His epic and dangerous oceanic flights, through destructive

weather in fragile aeroplanes, were followed on radio around the world like the

moon missions of 40 years later.

At the end of his great pioneer journeys crowds of 200,000 would flock to Sydney’s

Mascot aerodrome to cheer and chant and hoist him shoulder high. He was treated

like royalty – and infinitely more publicised than the country’s leaders, or any

Hollywood star.

A small man with a craggy face, rapid wit and speech, whose party trick was to

drink beer standing on his head, his trademark was a famously broad grin around

the jutting cigarettes he chain-smoked.

His life was lived frenetically and often outrageously. From the horrors of the First World War, in which some

of his toes were shot off in aerial combat, he emerged with a contempt for authority and a determination to

live life hedonistically and recklessly.

He created for himself a world

compulsively ruled by flying, alcohol and

women. Yet he was universally loved and

worshipped. He remained totally

unaffected by fame – quite disarmingly

humble and accessible, constantly

drawing into his orbit men and women

dazzled by his warmth, his enthusiasms

and his unique charisma.

But behind the permanent grin he wore

and the stream of his repartee, behind his

image of flying genius and

indestructibility, there lay a more frail

human being – increasingly affected by

the stresses of his often terrifying flights

and the awesome pressures of great fame.

Smithy was born at Hamilton, Brisbane

Australia on February 9th 1897. In the

1914-18 war he served in the Royal

Flying Corps, was injured and awarded

the Military Cross. In 1918 he became an

instructor in the Royal Air Force and then

moved to commercial flying in 1919.

The Fokker Trimotor

The Fokker Trimotor, more correctly

known as the Fokker F.VII-3m, was the

plane which opened up the first really

long-distance routes to air traffic. The

most famous of the Fokker Trimotors was

the Southern Cross, owned and piloted by

the Australian Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith

(known as Smithy to his friends and

admirers.) Southern Cross was built from the wreckage of two damaged Fokkers.

Kingsford-Smith, a former squadron leader in World War I, and Charles T.P. Ulm decided to try the first

crossing of the Pacific. In 1927 they bought, from the Australian polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins, the Fokker

wreckage without engines or instruments. With the help of the Boeing company, the plane was rebuilt and

modified with new engines for increased range. She was filled with the newest radio and navigation

equipment. Named Southern Cross, and later affectionately nicknamed the old bus, the plane was to become

the most popular individual aircraft of its era.

After getting financial support from a wealthy Californian, Kingsford-Smith and Ulm made test flights to

determine the maximum fuel load which would allow the Southern Cross just barely to take off and fly. A flight

around Australia in just over 10 days was used as a test for the Pacific crossing and the Southern Cross

was shipped to North America early in 1928.

Crossing of the Pacific

Aviation’s last great ocean barrier, the Pacific, was conquered in 1928 by Australians Charles

Kingsford-Smith and Charles Ulm in the Fokker F. VII/3m Southern Cross.

The Australians employed two Americans, Harry Lyon and James Warner, as navigator and radio operator.

Aware that it would take bull’s-eye accuracy to hit their refueling stops, the Hawaiian and Fijian islands,

they equipped their tri-motor Fokker with the latest blind flying instruments and radio equipment.

During flight tests they gradually increased the Fokker’s take-off weight to 15,800 pounds – over twice its

empty weight – enabling them to carry the 1,300 gallons of fuel required on the critical 3,200-mile Hawaii to

Fiji leg.

The flight from Oakland to Hawaii went without a hitch, but the 33-hour haul to Fiji was a nightmare of

storms, torrential rain, headwinds, and turbulence.

It frequently took the combined strength of both pilots to control the plane and at one stage it appeared they

would run out of fuel before reaching Fiji. They eventually landed on Fiji’s largest clearing – a 1,300-foot

athletic field.

With no brakes, Kingsford-Smith performed a controlled ground-loop to prevent going into the trees. After

taking off from a nearby beach on the final leg to Brisbane, Australia, the airmen again encountered terrible

conditions.

“One after another, rainstorms charged us. There was

no lull. We flew in a black void as raking winds jolted

the plane,” Kingsford-Smith recalled.

Smithy Acknowledged by Government

In 1932, Kingsford-Smith was knighted for his

services to aviation. He made his last flight in

‘Southern Cross’ in July 1935. The plane was

acquired by the Australian National Museum in

Canberra in 1941. It was restored to flying condition

in 1945, made its last flight in 1946. In 1958 it went

on permanent display in its own hall at Eagle Farm

Airport, Brisbane.

Other notable flights undertaken by ‘Smithy’ included breaking the existing record of Squadron Leader

Hinkler by flying from England to Australia in ten and a half days in October 1930, flying the first

all-Australian air mail flight to England and back in 1931 and beating his own record by flying from England

to Australia in seven days, 4 hours and 50 minutes in 1933.

A plague has erected in the Passenger Terminal at Archerfield airport commemorating the first flight across

the Pacific Ocean from Australia to the United States when Sir Charles Kingsford Smith took off from

Archerfield Aerodrome on 21 October 1934.

The Final Flight

The fate of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith remains one of aviation’s great unsolved mysteries. At dusk on 7

November 1935 he and his co-pilot mechanic, Tommy Pethybridge, took off from Allahabad in India to fly

non-stop through the night to Singapore. They were seen to pass over Calcutta, Akyab and Rangoon -

which they overflew at 1.30 am.

Sometime around 2.50 that morning, 8 November, another Australian pilot, Jimmy Melrose who was heading

south from Rangoon in a much slower plane, a Percival Gull, was excited to see the Altair overtake him over

the Andaman Sea. On arrival in Singapore later that day Melrose was surprised to learn that the Lady

Southern Cross had not arrived.

Despite a huge search of the entire Rangoon-Singapore route by squadrons of RAF aircraft no trace of the

Altair was found for 18 months. In May 1937 its starboard undercarriage leg was picked up by Burmese

fishermen on the rocky shore of Aye Island off the south coast of Burma about 140 miles south-east of

Rangoon.

The theory grew that Smithy had flown into the 460-foot top of the jungle-covered island and the aircraft

had plunged into the sea, the wheel breaking off and floating ashore. But an Australian expedition to the

island in 1983 searched the seabed without success.

However, if Melrose had genuinely seen the Altair overtake him, and they were the only two aircraft in

Burma airspace that night, then Smithy would have crashed at least 100 miles south of Aye – and the wheel

drifted north. The conclusions that five years research into the mystery led Ian Mackersey finally to arrive at

are fully detailed in his book.