Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men (75 page)

Two days later, Kingsford Smith was back in his suite at New York’s Hotel Roosevelt, when he looked up to see a familiar figure framed in the doorway, come to pay a visit. It was Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh himself. Smithy jumped to his feet and eagerly grasped his hand: ‘Why, hello, old fellow!’
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Though the two had never met, there was an instant warmth between them as they exchanged congratulations—on Smithy’s coming marriage and the birth of Lindbergh’s first child, Charles Jnr—before moving on to the obvious subject of how each man had managed to cross the Atlantic, going in opposite directions. Upon leaving, Lindbergh was gracious enough to repeat to journalists in the foyer that in his view, ‘Kingsford Smith’s feat of crossing the Pacific remains the greatest of all trans-oceanic flights.’
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For Smithy, John Stannage, Evert van Dijk and Paddy Saul, a glorious three weeks in New York as Anthony Fokker’s guests followed, and Stannage, for one, was stunned at the Dutchman’s generosity, which included taking them out on New York Harbor with a bevy of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.

By early July, though, it was time to move on once more and the
Southern Cross
crew took a relatively leisurely flight across the American continent. Over Illinois, they paid a flying cheerio call on the
City of Chicago
plane which had just passed its 500th hour of continuous flight, courtesy of refuelling in the air.
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Was it really only two and a half years ago that Smithy had tried to break the German record of fifty-five hours? The world of aviation was changing so rapidly it was dizzying. Two nights in Chicago featured a visit to one of Al Capone’s nightclubs, with its free-flowing grog and raw entertainment.

On, then, to Salt Lake City in fifteen hours, flying over Des Moines, Omaha, Cheyenne and the Rocky Mountains, before they approached Oakland airport, where Smithy—actually now
Wing Commander
Kingsford Smith, courtesy of a decision taken by the Australian government to honour his Atlantic achievement—had taken off from some two years earlier.

It was an emotional moment. Smithy later wrote: ‘As I sighted once again the hangars of Oakland Municipal Airport, I felt a thrill of satisfaction that I had been able to bring the dear old bus safely around the world. She had now returned to the port whence she had set out across the Pacific. On that occasion her bows had been turned West. Now she came from the East. She had completed the circuit of the Globe around its greatest circumference. She had crossed and re-crossed the Equator, and to me, who had been her pilot in all her long journeys, there came a sense of quiet pride in our achievements. This was our Journey’s End.’
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And now it was time for the successful team to break up, as Evert van Dijk took a ship back to Holland to resume his flying duties with KLM.

After the hoopla in San Francisco had died down, Smithy, Stannage and Saul made one last, small hop with the
Southern Cross
down to Santa Maria, to thank his key benefactor, Captain Allan Hancock. Again, the fatted calf was killed, again the champagne flowed, and again the hospitality extended to the aviators was overwhelming.

Under the circumstances, Smithy felt honour-bound to offer Hancock his plane back but, as the Australian later recorded of the American, ‘with his wonderful tact, he realised that I could ill afford such a sacrifice and insisted that the plane should remain mine’.
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In fact, Kingsford Smith could have been released of all financial worries had he accepted an offer to stay on in California and make a series of flights for the state, at a salary equivalent to £10,000 a year. But, given that one condition of the deal was that he became an American citizen, and the fact that he actually loved his life in Australia, he declined.
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So too to other lucrative offers he received to stay in America. Thank you, but no. He wanted to live a life in Australia, with Mary.
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What could possibly top piloting the first flight west across the Atlantic? Nothing, of course. But at least Smithy decided that on his way home he may as well go back to London—by ship this time—pick up a new Avro Avian that the company had bought,
Southern Cross Junior
, and set a new
solo
record for getting it back to Australia. Compared to flying over massive oceans, flying across continents was not nearly so challenging, and Smithy felt that he may as well have a go at picking up the record on the way home, while trying the new experience of flying without a co-pilot, radio operator and navigator. Smithy and Stannage sailed to Bremerhaven in the liner
Europa
, while Paddy Saul sailed independently to Ireland after enjoying his rewards on the west coast of the United States.

After arriving in Germany with that in mind—strange to be landing in the country of his former enemies—Smithy nevertheless made time to go on a brief sojourn in Holland as Anthony Fokker’s guest, where ‘scenes of indescribable enthusiasm’ awaited.
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In the course of his visit the Australian pilot, together with Evert van Dijk and John Stannage, were given a ticker-tape parade, before the munificent Fokker accompanied them on a triumphal trip to Berlin, where they were greeted by an estimated 160,000 Germans.
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Finally, though, Smithy felt that he was ready to give it a shake.

Or was he? For some time he had not been quite right physically and after a quick medical examination, he was put straight into a Dutch hospital for surgery to have his appendix and then his tonsils removed (the latter without anaesthetic).

‘Dis vill hurt a liddle,’ the old be-whiskered Dutch doctor had told him beforehand, and he was not wrong.
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And yet while those operations put him back in reasonably good shape physically, it was not just his throat that was troubling Smithy. He was somehow…flat. And nervy at the same time…

Once back in London what little energy he could muster was spent engaged in such a debilitating anxiety that he was struck down for days at a time. He stayed in bed, with the blinds closed, drifting in and out of sleep, remembering dead Germans, fallen friends both in the Great War and since, and feeling such a boiling angst that he was incapable of functioning. Nerve specialists he consulted advised him to give up flying, but in response, Kingsford Smith was dismissive.

‘Hell to my nerves,’ he said. ‘If I were dead I should still fly an aeroplane.’
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Another worry was that he felt he had no time to go by ship. He was desperate to get home to marry Mary, in a wedding ceremony that had already been pushed back from September to December, and he had also been advised that his beloved father had been taken ill. It was time to get back to home and hearth. He was an aviator. He would
fly
home, and that was that.

At last, and despite all of the doctors’ tut-tutting, Smithy was set to make the attempt by early October 1930. Press interest had particularly grown at this time, as in this perfect flying season there were no fewer than
four
flyers who were intending to make separate attempts to beat the England to Australia record, which turned their departures into a kind of an informal race. By the time Smithy was ready to go, Captain George ‘Skip’ Matthews was long gone, but had broken down at Rangoon, while a couple of flyers by the names of Pickthorne and Chabot were already across the Persian Gulf, and seemingly going well. Kingsford Smith was not particularly concerned about them, as he was after Bert Hinkler’s solo record. No, the fellow who truly interested both Smithy and the press was Australian Flight Lieutenant Cedric Hill, who had got away four days earlier, and was apparently going well.

When Smithy was asked by a journalist how he felt he would go, the aviator was quick with his reply.

‘I’ll do all right,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll soon be blowing hot air down Hill’s neck. The others don’t worry me. Hill’s the bloke I have to beat.’
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At dawn on 9 October 1930, Smithy took off from Heston aerodrome, to the west of London, in his unique
Southern Cross Junior
, G-ABCF, a modified, one-off, long-range Avro 616 Avian IVA sports-model biplane with a 120-horsepower de Havilland Gipsy II engine capable of generating a cruising speed of 90 miles per hour, at 1900 revolutions per minute. With a capacity of 113 gallons of petrol—including a good-sized tank inside the passenger’s cockpit—she could go as far as 1700 miles, which was not bad for such a small plane. Painted blue with silver wings, she had the silver stars of the Southern Cross constellation painted on both sides of the fuselage.

Long-distance flying, of course, has good days and bad days. Rarely, however, had Smithy had a better day than that first one out of London. Everything went perfectly from first to last, and late that afternoon he had his highest moment. ‘There are few more beautiful scenes for the airman than the blue waters of the Mediterranean. To fly serenely down the Italian coast in the late afternoon is one of those pleasures not experienced by many; but to catch one’s first glimpse of Rome, at sunset, from a height of 3,000 feet, is a unique experience. For the moment I forgot the urgent nature of the mission upon which I was engaged…the ever-present underlying thought that I was engaged in a race, for once in a while vanished. I could only marvel at the grandeur and the glory that met my gaze as a thousand facets threw back the rays of the westering sun, and the full majesty of the City of Rome burst upon my sight. There are indeed moments, even in the life of a twentieth century airman, when he forgets his plane, his engine and himself.’
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With Rome thus conquered in a day—and a shorter day than usual it was, too, as he was flying east towards the sun—he was off to a wonderful start. And so it continued for most of the rest of the journey.

Crossing Italy’s perilous Apennine Ranges the following day at a height of 8000 feet, he continued keeping up a good speed through to glorious Athens—where he still made time to zip away from the airstrip to visit the Acropolis by moonlight
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—and then to Aleppo in Syria, a place that had had human habitation for 13,000 years! From there, leaving at dawn on 12 October, he kept in sight the grand Euphrates River all the way until he could spy the towering mosques of Baghdad and then turned down the valley of the Tigris, the heartland of the former Babylonian and Assyrian empires…which now had a new king.
Him!

At least that was the way he felt, soaring over those ancient lands, as both physically and spiritually he continued to feel stronger the longer the journey went on, like a fish that was back in water. At the endlessly sprawling, teeming city of Karachi—which had twice as many people in its city confines as Australia had in a whole continent—he met up with Pickthorne and Chabot, who had crash-landed and were now out of the race. They advised, among other things, that the redoubtable Hill had passed through Karachi just two days before, and was flagging fast.

Onward Christian soldiers.

Leaving an hour before dawn the following day, Kingsford Smith was indeed now breathing down Hill’s neck, as he set off for the mosques and minarets of Allahabad. Arriving in the late afternoon, exhausted, he announced to the local press, ‘No more long-distance flights for me. There is nothing left for me to do, and besides, I am getting married when I arrive in Australia.’
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Winging his way south-east, he was soon over the teeming lands crisscrossed by canals and rice paddies that led to Rangoon. Over Burma, it stunned him to see peasants wading knee-deep behind ploughs drawn by buffalo, just as they had done for centuries, though he was probably not as stunned as they were to see him, essentially a soaring visitor from the future. When he landed on Rangoon racecourse, he was promptly told that Hill was now less than
one day
ahead of him, having left Rangoon the previous midnight.
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The next day’s long flying took him to Singapore without serious incident, and the day after that, his ninth day in the air, he was in Sourabaya in East Java. Every report he received of Hill was that the Australian was exhausted beyond measure, but, conversely, Smithy continued to feel stronger than ever, as he fair
ate up
the route: ‘I swept over the dense jungle of the east coast of Sumatra; down past the sunlit sea immortalised by Conrad; over rivers and waterfalls, past villages, islands, and so on, over the ocean again to the Java coast…‘
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Had to catch Hill.
Had
to catch Hill. Of course Smithy knew he was going to beat Hill’s time, as he had closed the gap on him by nearly four days already, but it had become a point of honour to beat him outright.

Finally, when Smithy landed at Atamboea, in Timor, just as the sun was setting on that gorgeous green island, it was to see a lone and rather forlorn figure waiting for him at the end of the airfield. Dr Livingstone, he presumed? It was Smithy’s quarry of the last week, a very sunburned Flight Lieutenant Cedric Hill, who just that morning had crashed into a fence while attempting to take off for Darwin, and smashed his plane beyond any hope of repair. A string bean of a man, given to easy laughter, Hill offered Smithy both a rueful smile and congratulatory handshake.