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Aviation History
1953
1953 - 0633.PDF
FLIGHT, 22 May 1953 PACIFIC ANNIVERSARY Kings ford-Smith's Great Flight of Twenty-five Years Ago By JOHN SIDNEY The "Southern Cross"—Kingsford-Smith's Fokker F.VII 3m. IF you measure the distance from Sydney to San Francisco in terms of a knob on your radio, or a comfortable three-day Cupper flight, you may find it hard to understand why nearly one in every three of Sydney's then population of a million was out at Mascot Airfield to see Smithy set down the "Southern Cross." The crowd of 300,000 gathered there was paying tribute to a pioneer : these were the men who had flown trie Pacific for the first time in history. They had done the job the hard way. Only seven weeks before they took off, Smith and Ulm had been flat broke in Los Angeles —not even a few pence in their pockets for cigarettes or food, and hard put to it to dodge their creditors. They had arrived in San Francisco on August 5th, 1927, backed by the New South Wales Government to the extent of £5,000, and by a Sydney newspaper. Smithy fervently believed in eliminating all unnecessary risks, so he set about making sure that he had the best aircraft and the best crew and that he himself was in the best possible flying condition. For the big flight, he wanted a Fokker with three Wright Whirl wind engines. Byrd and Floyd Bennett had flown over the North Pole in 1926 in a Fokker; Maitland and Hegenberger had flown from San Francisco to Honolulu in 1927 in one equipped with three such engines : Lindbergh had flown the Atlantic on the power of a Whirlwind engine. Sir Hubert Wilkins offered them a Fokker for £3,000—without engines, without instruments. If they had paid the price—it was almost all they had—there would have been no money for the engines or instruments. Sidney Myer, Melbourne department-store owner, came to the rescue with £1,500 and, as they were still short, Wilkins agreed to accept half the purchase price as a down payment. Smith and Ulm were then able to proceed with the purchase of equipment for the journey. Three J5C 220 h.p. Wright Whirlwind engines were ordered and two top-ranking American mechanics, Salzman and Hedinger, were engaged to supervize the installation of the engines in the F.VII monoplane which the world came to know later as the Southern Cross. They sought out the best radio transmitting and receiving gear on the market, with special emphasis on lightness. "The secret of success," Smithy said in his book, My Flying Lj/e,"depends on the perfection of one's plans." And so he went ahead—even in the face of opposition from die Australian Press, and from Americans who denounced the flight as "foolhardy." But a far greater obstacle was the recurring shortage of funds. Soon, Wilkins needed the remainder of the £3,000 for his Antarctic expedition. To earn money, the desperate Australians decided to attack the world's sustained flight record of 52 hours 22 minutes, which had been set up in 1927 by two Germans, Edzard and Risticz. They flew to Santa Monica and filled the Southern Cross with 1,522 gallons of petrol. She then weighed seven tons instead of the usual five. They managed to lumber into the air, and the marathon was on. Kingsford-Smith and his American co-pilot, Lt. G. R. Pond, flew in a 50-mile circuit over San Francisco Bay. They kept it up for 50 hours 4 minutes, and then they had to land. They had failed by 2 hours 18 minutes. It looked as though the only thing left to do was to sell the Southern Cross. One January morning in 1928, they flew her to Los Angeles (they could not have paid the rail fare). Negotiations for sale to the Union Oil Company of California fell through, and it seemed that Smithy was really beaten this time. 627 TWENTY-FIVE years ago—on May 31st, 1928, Charles Kingsford-Smith set out in the famous "Southern Cross"—a Fokker F.VII 3m (three-engined version of the eight-seat F.VII), over the Golden Gate, San Francisco, on the first hop of his epoch-making flight across the Pacific. He was accompanied by Charles Ulm, who was to be co-pilot on so many other flights, and two Americans, James Warner and Harry Lyon. In this article—by an Australian contributor—the great feat is vividly recalled. Weeks later, in March, they were out at Rogers airport. There, Andrew Chaffey, the President of the Californian Bank of Los Angeles, introduced them to Captain G. Allan Hancock, a wealthy Californian. Hancock offered to back them, and started by buying the Southern Cross. He advanced funds for the great flight, and from then on things went smoothly. The aircraft was taken to the Douglas factory of Santa Monica, where Mr. C. C. ("Doc") Maidment, the service engineer of the Wright Aeronautical Cor poration, took charge of the service operations. He had been Lindbergh's engineer. The Southern Cross was fitted with six tanks with a total capacity of 1,298 U.S. gallons. The main tank in the fuselage contained 807 gallons, a tank under the pilot's seat contained 107, and the other four tanks, located in the wing, carried the balance. At full throttle, the Southern Cross would do 120 m.p.h.: for safety's sake, Smidiy based his calculations on a 90 m.p.h. basis. Petrol con sumption was 32 gallons an hour—which meant that diey carried enough fuel for 40I hours. The F.VII, therefore, had a range of 3,645 miles, a conservative figure which gave a margin of 500 miles over the longest hop they faced. If they were forced down in the sea, they hoped to be able to cut away the 71ft 8in all-wood wing and use it as a raft. Emergency rations and a water distillation plant were stored in the wing for the same eventuality. Added to the radio equipment was an emergency transmitter with an aerial to be taken aloft by a kite. Wireless beams were to be sent out from Crissey Field, Cali fornia, towards Honolulu, and from Honolulu towards San Francisco. Smithy planned to fly along the Crissey beam from San Francisco, and then to pick up the one from Honolulu to conclude the hop. The Americans, Capt. Harry Lyon and James Warner, shipmates who had seen service in both the U.S.A. Navy and the merchant navy, were navigator and radio operator. Lyon planned to navigate by dead reckoning and taking sights of the sun and the stars, with Warner keeping check of the beam. So Smithy completed his programme for a record flight. This was his "big feat" which, he says, he dreamt of in 1927—"the feat which should bring us what we wanted, fame, money, status." To which he adds, "We wanted also to do something which would not only advance aviation and confound the sceptics, but something that would bring fame to our country."* Six weeks after the meeting with Hancock, all was ready. On May 30th, the weather was pronounced good. They took the air at six minutes to nine the next morning, May 31st. Kingsford-Smith and Ulm sat in wicker seats in the cockpit, with Lyon and Warner in the fuselage behind. The roar of the three engines made speech impossible : notes were passed between the cockpit and the fuse lage, and between the pilots themselves. And there could be no smoking. At noon they had covered 340 miles, and the pilots took it in turn to doze in their chairs. By six o'clock they were 700 miles out. They roared on over the Pacific towards Honolulu till midnight. Then they struck rain and heavy cloud at 4,000ft. They climbed * "My Flying Life" (Melrose, London, 1037).
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