Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men (84 page)

This, in Kingsford Smith’s view, was a major injustice that Australian airmen such as he and Ulm, ‘who have been primarily responsible for the development of aviation in Australia, have been overlooked. I feel that the men who brought to Australia a realisation of the value of air transport and have successfully striven against tremendous odds to provide efficient services for Australia have suffered a serious injustice. Apparently my tender was not even considered.’
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One pilot who did take the news very well was none other than Paul McGinness, the co-founder of Qantas, who wired Fysh from his farm in Western Australia: Congratulations on your success in securing the contract. Best wishes future.
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And a wonderful future it looked to be, too, with Qantas having grown from a tiny outback operator in 1921 to a genuine international operator with an assured government income by 1933.

Which was all right for some. For Smithy, money was getting progressively tighter, and despite his only half-hearted tender he had been devastated by the government announcement, wandering around his house and telling Mary endlessly, ‘Nothing—absolutely nothing—is working for me.’
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Inevitably, he began to wonder how he could make his way out of his growing financial difficulties. Before, in bad times, he had been able to live on nothing but fresh air and love. Now, with a wife and baby Charles to support, he needed to have them secure.

At least there was one easy way to earn a lot of money on the near horizon. The previous year, a Scottish-born Melbourne chocolate manufacturer by the name of Sir Macpherson Robertson had announced a £10,000 prize for a Centenary Air Race between London and Melbourne in the coming October, to celebrate 100 years since John Batman had sailed 6 miles up the Yarra River, found the water good and deep, and famously proclaimed ‘this will be the place for a village’, a village later to be called Melbourne.

There was to be no limit to the size of the aircraft, the nationality of entrants, or how many crew it could have, though when it came to plane and crew, ‘I am hoping that both will be Empire products’.
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Robertson was very insistent, however, that safety was a top priority—there was to be no repeat of the disaster of the 1927 Dole Air Race or the deaths of the 1919 race from England to Australia. The key stipulation, thus, was that all entrants must present a certificate of airworthiness from their country of origin to show that the aeroplane they were flying met the minimum safety requirements of the International Commission on Air Navigation, which had been signed by member countries in Paris in 1919. The idea was that the aircraft were not to be dangerously overloaded flying petrol tanks, but to compete with a fuel capacity that was ‘normal’ for that design of plane.

This was obviously the greatest air race ever conceived, over a route with which he was more familiar than any other airman, and if Smithy could win it, it would crown his already splendid flying career.
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To Mary’s expressed worries that she no longer wanted him to take the risks of long-distance flying, most particularly when his health had not been good, he laughingly replied, as he always did, with the reassurance that ‘Poppa is going to die in his bed, with his socks on’.
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Too, as he had already announced firmly to the press, ‘my last long flight will be the Melbourne Centenary Air Race’,
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so Mary would just have to accept that he needed to do it one last time and then he would be able to settle down.

The truth of it was, he didn’t have a lot of choice. He needed that money, and with £10,000 he would be able to see his way clear of most of his financial trouble. The further good news was that not only was Robertson funding the race, he was also keen to help finance Smithy, to the tune of £5000, into buying a British plane that might win it. Smithy was, after all, a national hero and there was no doubt he was such a public favourite that a victory for him would cause the greatest splash of publicity.

The only difference the aviator and businessman had was over the choice of plane. After due consideration, Smithy had decided that the most capable machine for the job would be an American one—as their planes had lately been leading the field in long-range high-speed jobs—and he thought probably a Northrop Gamma would do the trick.
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It was a single-engine, solo cockpit, all-metal screamer with a long range. Robertson’s instant riposte was that he would much prefer that Smithy bought a British plane. Given that Robertson was the principal backer—although Smithy’s father-in-law also put in £1000, as did the
Melbourne Herald
, while Sidney Myer once again backed him with £500—Smithy agreed to look at it, but his investigations didn’t last long. The only British plane that would come close would be one of the radical de Havilland DH.88 Comets then under construction, but there was a serious problem. All three machines had been promised to other competitors, including to the two piloting partnerships Smithy already regarded as his principal competitors, Charles Scott and Tom Campbell Black, and Jimmy Mollison with his new wife, the former Amy Johnson. (Jimmy had met Amy four years earlier when she had arrived in Australia, flying solo. So impressed was he that he had proposed to her within eight hours of their meeting.)

Now, while Captain Geoffrey de Havilland, AFC, could supply another Comet for Smithy if he ordered and paid for it, he regretted to say that de Havillands had insufficient resources to also install a crucial Ratier ‘variable pitch propeller’. French-made, the company had only three of them and there would be no more available for some time. A recent innovation in sophisticated aircraft, the variable pitch propeller was the rough equivalent of gears in cars, whereby the pilot could alter the ‘pitch’ at which the propeller blades bit into the air—the ‘pitch’ being the angle at which the blade was positioned along its axis. Whereas for taking off and climbing, a fine pitch of the propeller was the most efficient way to get a grip on the air, a much coarser pitch was required for economical cruising.

The bottom line was that if Smithy flew without such a propeller, the likes of Scott and Campbell Black would have 400 miles extra range on long hops, meaning that he had no chance of winning. And if he couldn’t win, what was the point? So it
had
to be an American plane, where variable pitch propellers were readily available off the shelf. Oddly enough, Smithy was fully supported in this decision by former RAAF Wing Commander Lawrence Wackett, who had so bitterly criticised him and Ulm six years earlier when they had decided to fly a Fokker across the Pacific. Their relationship now repaired and firm, Wackett accompanied Smithy in May 1934 when he went to see Robertson to tell him that the logic of buying an American plane with a variable pitch propeller was unalterable. With some passion—this is
important
, Mr Robertson, as there is simply no other way the race can be won—they explained that even if Smithy didn’t get a Northrop Gamma, which was proving to be prohibitively expensive, then he likely could at least get a second-hand Lockheed Altair, which had much the same performance for a fraction of the price.

Robertson finally agreed and Smithy began to make his arrangements. As it was effectively against the law to bring in an American plane because the United States was not a signatory to the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the only way Smithy would be able to secure one would be to go to America, purchase one, and ship it back home to have it certified in Australia.

Done!

Before leaving, however, the Controller of Civil Aviation himself, Captain Edgar Johnston, personally told Smithy to be sure to get a Certificate of Airworthiness from the American Department of Commerce, affirming that the machine conformed substantially to the ‘normal’ category of the commission’s regulations.
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Although America was one of the few developed countries not to be a signatory to that convention, its Federal Department of Commerce—which governed aviation in the United States—had an equivalent, the Approved-Type Certificate, which Australia recognised. The point, Johnston told Smithy, was that without that certificate his plane would neither be able to fly in Australia, nor able to participate in the Centenary Race, under Rule 16(v) of its conditions of entry:
Each aircraft must bear a certificate from its country of registration that it conforms substantially to the minimum airworthiness requirements of the ICAN normal category.

Smithy was wryly amused at the warning, recognising that Johnno must have been aware of his reputation in the matter of paperwork. True, he wasn’t renowned for crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s, but he assured Johnno that he would see to it. Blah, blah, blah.

Things were starting to break his way, and he was also pleased to secure as his navigator and co-pilot for the coming race Bill Taylor, with whom he had been working on and off over the last five years, first with ANA and then on his New Zealand trips. It was Smithy’s view that the quietly spoken Bill was one of the best in the business, totally professional, entirely unflappable and precisely the kind of man he wanted for backup. As to Taylor, he felt that he and Smithy were a great team, no matter, or perhaps even because of, the difference in their temperaments—Smithy being an extrovert and Bill a very careful, considered, introverted man of quiet habits.
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After sailing to America with Mary in mid-May—for the first time leaving the eighteen-month-old Charles Jnr behind with the family nanny—Smithy looked around and quickly decided that the best plane for him was indeed a particular Lockheed racer he saw in a hangar in Burbank, which had been previously designed and built as a Lockheed Sirius for an attempt on the New York to Paris record that had never happened. A pioneering airman’s
dream
, it was a single-engined, tandem-seater—one behind the other, with dual controls—and variable pitch propeller, powered by a massive 542-horsepower supercharged Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine that was almost as powerful as the three engines of the
Southern Cross
put together. It could fly at over 200 miles per hour and go as high as 15,000 feet, which would be enough to get him above most storms (even if one couldn’t stay up there long for lack of oxygen). Now,
now
the Comets in the Centenary Air Race would have some competition!

Smithy loved the Altair from the first moment he saw it and quickly made arrangements to buy it from its previous owner for the equivalent of £6000. This was more than he could raise on the spot, but the retail magnate Sidney Myer had once again offered to help, with another £500, and his father-in-law, Arthur Powell, also contributed. Smithy immediately made plans to make modifications to the plane, starting with putting in extra petrol tanks. Normally, the Altair had capacity for 150 gallons—which was nowhere near enough for him to make the big 2500-mile hops across the world he would need to win the Centenary Race. Smithy wanted to have four more tanks put in, to get it up to 418 gallons, which would give him a cruising range of 2800 miles.

For their part, Lockheed, while thrilled that one of their planes might win such a prestigious race with such a famous pilot, were also more than a little anxious. They pointed out to the Australian that the changes he wished to make were extremely unlikely to get the tick of approval he needed from the US Department of Commerce, an Approved-Type Certificate, which was certification that the plane was airworthy.

Not to worry, said Smithy. He had a lot of influence in Australia, would have the public behind him, and the man who was sponsoring the race, Sir Macpherson Robertson, was also backing him and his plane.

‘If I can’t get this plane into the race,’ Kingsford Smith said to Robert Gross, the president of Lockheed, ‘then nobody can.’
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So strong was Kingsford Smith in his confidence, so insistent that there would be no problem that couldn’t be overcome once he got the plane back in Australia, the executives at Lockheed reluctantly agreed to expand the fuel capacity, and even agreed to do it at next to no cost. They also fitted a single canopy over the dual cockpits, installed a new engine and a new wing with retractable undercarriage and the extra petrol tanks. No problem.

All done, Lockheed’s specially licensed test pilot flew it to the facility at the Department of Commerce’s aerodrome for certification. Alas, all he came back with was an Experimental License of Airworthiness, which would expire in a matter of weeks, on 30 June 1934. Lockheed was not surprised. The company never believed that its Altair, set up as it was with over-sized fuel tanks, would get the full airworthiness certificate.

Smithy—in a glorious daze as to what a fine machine it was, and what an excellent chance he had of winning the race and the £10,000
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that was going to fix everything—didn’t worry particularly. This, notwithstanding the fact that, from Australia, the Controller of Civil Aviation had again, via John Stannage, repeated his earlier message: ‘Make sure you tell your boss, to get that Certificate of Airworthiness.’
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For Smithy, paperwork had always been the thing that Charles Ulm and various minions had taken care of while he had concentrated on the glorious flying part of the operation. And yet even beyond Lockheed’s warnings, it wasn’t as if he wasn’t aware that there might be a problem upon his return. A journalist with
The Age
interviewed Smithy while the pilot was in America, and quoted him saying that ‘the controversy…over the Melbourne Centenary race is far from settled…’
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And yet, the journalist noted, Smithy ‘intended to seek approval of his entry when he returned home and, although he expected considerable opposition, he was confident as to the outcome, because he believed public opinion would support him.’
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