Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men (87 page)

Not so for Bill Taylor. For him it was still a curious, nay,
amazing
, thing to be driven through the streets of Brisbane in the early hours of this Saturday morning, as an entire city slept cosily, totally unaware that just outside their door were two airmen on their way to risk their lives for…for…for what?

Taylor was never quite sure of the answer to that question. He was glad to be with Kingsford Smith on this venture as he liked and admired the man a great deal, but he was not certain what it was that drove either of them to do it. Instead, at times like this, he felt an overpowering sense of isolation and loneliness. In that instant he didn’t want to be going to Archerfield, didn’t want to be risking his life, didn’t want any of it—he would much rather have been at home, tucked up safely in bed. And yet, of course, the feeling passed as the excitement took hold.

When they reached the aerodrome a crowd of several hundred people had gathered, notwithstanding the fact that the sun had not yet risen. They were there to witness the beginning of what they hoped would be one more historic Smithy flight—across the Pacific from west to east! A cheer rose as the flyers alighted from their car, and it was a cheer that doubled an hour or so later, when after more preparations, Smithy started the engine of the
Lady Southern Cross
, which immediately gave out a throaty growl of appreciation. Just before they started to move off towards the end of the runway at around 4 am, a gorgeous young woman rushed out from the crowd and handed a white rose up to Taylor in the rear cockpit.

‘Wear it for luck,’ she said.

He put it in the lapel of his coat, and thanked her warmly.
⁸
Absurdly, he felt that as long as it remained there, the engine would keep running.
⁹

In the front cockpit everything seemed in order to Smithy. There were no problems with the new cowling, the tanks had been filled to the brim, and the engine ran sweetly at the lower cruise revolutions per minute calculated to deliver the best fuel economy. As to personal luggage, he checked he had packed everything. A comb in his left pocket. A toothbrush in his right pocket. The photo of Nellie Stewart tucked beneath his seat? Yup. He was done.

Oh, actually, one more thing. He also had his wallet, in which, apart from money and a photo of Mary and Charles Jnr, he had kept the white feather so recently received, perhaps as a reminder of what he was about with this trip. This would show them all!

And then they were off, the Lockheed smoothly winging its way over Moreton Bay and towards the heart of the Pacific Ocean, with Suva as the first stop. It was a measure of how far the 1928 trans-Pacific trip had been ahead of its time that, in the six years since Smithy and Ulm had accomplished it with Lyon and Warner, no-one had duplicated the feat, even though the science of aviation had leapt forward in the interim. In 1928, the
Southern Cross
had averaged 100 miles per hour across the water, whereas on this trip, in the sleek and powerful Altair, that speed was up by over 50 per cent, to an average of 155 miles per hour.

Kingsford Smith and Taylor shared the piloting duties, with Taylor sometimes setting his sights on cirrus clouds, hundreds of miles ahead in the distance, which he found helped to ease the strain and monotony of concentrating on the compass alone. Initially Taylor set a course for New Caledonia, just over 900 miles away, which he intended to use as a checkpoint, and their reward was that late that afternoon, off to their port side, they spotted the joyous white line of breakers which told them they had made it. And what a grand pleasure it was to sweep from out of the skies and buzz above the languid water inside the stunningly colourful coral reefs, see open-mouthed villagers waving at them, and then swoop like an avenging angel down the coast towards the capital Nouméa—once spotted, it would give them an exact pinpoint from which they could set off for the next haul to Suva.

Had they remained with their previous 300-gallon limit on petrol tanks, they would have run out about halfway between New Caledonia and Fiji, but fortunately—with the relevant authorities seeming to turn at least half a blind eye—Smithy had been able to have Lawrence Wackett install three extra petrol tanks before departure, taking the capacity right up to 514 gallons.

Still, as it was just starting to get dark, they were beginning to worry. If they didn’t spot Fiji soon, they would have only one alternative. They would have to climb above the clouds, get a definite sextant ‘fix’ on the stars to navigate from, then go back under the clouds and hope they could spot the lights of Suva. It was far from ideal, but it was their only choice. About twenty minutes before dusk, however, Fiji wondrously hove into view and in no time at all, they were swooping in low over Suva’s Albert Park, where Smithy had landed the
Southern Cross
six years earlier. This time in the much smaller plane—with the luxury of brakes—he was able to stop her within 150 yards, to once again be engulfed by an enthusiastic crowd. That thing of legend, the
Wanga Vuk
, the bird-ship, had returned!

In the middle of the welcoming ceremony, Smithy looked out on the sea of black faces gazing up at him and spotted a familiar white one—that of young Tommy Pethybridge, who had come on ahead to Fiji by ship to act as an advance party to arrange their fuel and so forth.

‘There you are, Tommy,’ Smithy called out to him. ‘Come up here, you belong up here with us.’
¹⁰

A delighted Tommy scrambled onto the podium, as Smithy introduced him to the many onlookers as ‘an invaluable member of our team’. And that he was. And a good man, besides.

That evening, Smithy and Taylor were able to wash, eat and retire to their rooms in the full knowledge that Tommy would work around the clock on the
Lady Southern Cross
, cleaning and checking everything, and ensuring that the plane was in the best possible shape to take off the following day. Before sleep, however, Bill Taylor decided to take in a little night air, from the balcony of his room.

A small distance away, he could see where they had parked the
Lady Southern Cross.
Tommy had covered it in tarpaulins and the lights dancing behind those tarps, throwing jigging shadows, told him that Tommy was still on the job, going through his endless check list of things to be done. It was gorgeous to be there, if slightly amazing to have so quickly hopped from one entirely different world to another, and Bill could go to sleep with the satisfaction that everything pointed to a good start on the morrow.

Alas, when they awoke at dawn it was to the knowledge that they were in the middle of a severe tropical storm—as the windows clattered, the hallways whistled and a river ran off the roof—and while it was one thing to find themselves in the thick of a storm while in the air, and obliged to battle through, it was quite another to take off in one, and there was no doubt they would not be able to leave on that day.

And there they were! Just after 3.35 pm on the afternoon of Tuesday, 23 October 1934, the Comet
Grosvenor House
, flown by Flight Lieutenant Charles Scott and Captain Tom Campbell Black, approached Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne after a higgledy-piggledy, helter-skelter journey that had them crossing three continents, sixteen countries and countless deserts, mountains and jungles. In Scott’s later words, ‘It was a terrible trip, and that is praising it.’
¹¹

Throwing caution to the four winds, Scott and Black gingerly opened up the Comet’s lame port engine as they dipped and swept for the finishing line ‘at a height not exceeding 200 feet’.
¹²
At full noise, the blood-red racer flashed around the two circuits required by the rules, to the adulation of over 50,000 people cheering themselves hoarse and waving—the men throwing their hats and women their handbags into the air—all in the Melbourne drizzle. The pilots, clamped in their Plexiglas cockpit and barely awake, were only dimly aware, if at all, of their reception, and headed off to land at Laverton RAAF base, 14 miles west.
¹³
The most amazing thing of all was their time: seventy-one hours, one minute and three seconds—just under three days—completely blowing away the record of six days, seventeen hours and fifty-six minutes, which had been set by Charles Ulm only the year before. (And they had arrived in Darwin in an even more stunning time, as witness the headlines across the country: ‘TO AUSTRALIA IN 2 DAYS, 4 HOURS, 38 MINUTES’; ‘AIRMEN SET UP AMAZING RECORD!’)
¹⁴
Their times beggared belief. England to Australia, in little more than a weekend…

This, then, was the surest proof of the rate at which aviation was advancing. Just five years earlier, Australia and much of the world had been agog when Bert Hinkler had winged his way from London to Darwin in sixteen days, and now an even greater distance, from Mildenhall to Melbourne, had been done in one-fifth of the time—in a machine with an enclosed cockpit, powered by twin 225-horsepower Gipsy Six R engines.

(And a sign of how public expectations had changed, in the wake of Scott and Black’s time, was the flurry of criticism that now came down on Qantas Empire Airways for their absurdly long schedule to get from London to Brisbane. Twelve days?
Twelve
days? When Scott and Black could do it in three? And a Dutch airliner in just under four, including an emergency landing in a storm that cost it ten hours? ‘This achievement,’ the
Bulletin
magazine sniped, ‘has made the Commonwealth’s twelve day schedule look ridiculous, and even the bureaucracy admits that something will have to be done about it.’
¹⁵
)

In fact, however, it had been a close-run thing. When the two Britons had arrived in Darwin, it had been with the left engine shut down after its oil pressure had dropped alarmingly over the Timor Sea. No matter the potentially lame engine, they were being pressed hard by the Dutch airliner
Uiver
, and all Scott wanted was two beers for himself, some fuel for his plane, the oil filters cleaned and they were on their way again! By comparison,
Uiver
, when it landed several hours later, was in fine fettle, and the crew and passengers all seemingly well rested.

By the time
Grosvenor House
made it to Charleville, its lead over
Uiver
had been further cut, and it was down to the one good engine once more. Again, however, Scott and Campbell Black took off, against all common sense and regard for self-preservation, and the reward for the Britons had been their breathtaking victory.

After landing at Laverton, the two were then flown back to Flemington in a DH.80A Puss Moth, where they were presented to the cheering crowd as they were driven around the course in a motorcar.

In his welcoming speech Melbourne’s Lord Mayor Sir Harold Gengoult Smith said rather pointedly, ‘You have thrilled the world, and earned the admiration and gratitude of the British Empire. You have won the greatest race in history…It is with intense pride that we remember you flew in a British race and in a British machine.’
¹⁶

Which was, surely, one in the eye for Kingsford Smith, who had wanted to do it in an extremely unpatriotic American plane.

As to the completely exhausted Charles Scott, however, he was beyond caring what nationality of plane he had flown in. As he climbed wearily out of the Comet at Laverton, he was heard to say to Campbell Black, ‘I never want to see that red bastard again.’
¹⁷

The next question at Flemington though, was, where was
Uiver
? Some of the crowd at the racecourse waited expectantly on into the night, hoping the plane might soon appear. But 9 pm…10 pm…11 pm…and midnight passed…still
nothing.
A pall of black gloom hung over the airfield. No-one wanted to say it, but everyone feared the worst.

Where could she be? It was a dark and stormy night…

With the cracking of lightning as the only thing to pierce the gloom above Albury, on the New South Wales-Victoria border, residents were woken in their beds just after midnight by the sound of a plane rumbling low overhead with a pained, throaty growl. Back and forth, round and around. It sounded like a plane in trouble. Could it be?

A phone call to Melbourne established that the KLM
Uiver
had not yet arrived, and also that for some reason, probably by virtue of a lightning strike, its radio appeared to have been knocked out. Without the radio to help with the navigation, and in the middle of a storm, they must have become lost. So that must be them!

Things moved quickly from there. At 2CO there was movement at the station, as local ABC radio announcer, Arthur Newnham, left his home and rushed like a mad thing to the broadcasting studio, where he broke into regular programming on relay from 3AR Melbourne and made an appeal for everyone who could to head to the racecourse, so that, between all of their car headlights they would be able to illuminate a makeshift runway for the stricken craft.
¹⁸
Meanwhile, notwithstanding the terrible weather and flooding rain, Albury electrical engineer Lyle Ferris dashed down to Albury’s electrical supply in South Albury, where he got a telegraphist, a bloke he knew as Turner, to pull a master switch to turn the town’s lights on and off in a fashion to spell out in Morse code: A…L…B…U…R…Y.

Genius.

Suddenly the quiet streets of Albury became very busy. Phones rang, doors were knocked on, and hundreds of cars were soon on their way to the racecourse. Much of the drama was broadcast not just around Australia on relay from 2CO, where Arthur Newnham and colleagues were giving a blow-by-blow description of events, but also—by the wonders of modern radio technology—all the way to Holland, where it was late afternoon and regular updates from Australia meant that the Dutch people could closely follow the fortunes of some of their own on the other side of the planet.