Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith (9 February 18978 November 1935), nicknamed Smithy, was an Australian aviation pioneer. He piloted the first transpacific flight and the first flight between Australia and New Zealand.
Kingsford Smith was born in Brisbane. He grew up in Sydney, leaving school at the age of 16 and becoming an engineering apprentice. He joined the Australian Army in 1915 and was a motorcycle despatch rider on the Gallipoli campaign. He later transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and was awarded the Military Cross in 1917 after being shot down. After the war's end, Kingsford Smith worked as a barnstormer in England and the United States before returning to Australia in 1921. He subsequently joined West Australian Airways as one of the country's first commercial pilots.
In 1928, Kingsford Smith completed the first transpacific flight, a three-leg journey from California to Brisbane via Hawaii and Fiji. He and his co-pilot Charles Ulm became celebrities, together with crew members James Warner and Harry Lyon. In the same year he and Ulm completed the first non-stop flight across Australia from Melbourne to Perth and the first non-stop flight from Australia to New Zealand. They subsequently established Australian National Airways, but the airline and Kingsford Smith's other business ventures failed to achieve commercial success. He continued to participate in air races and to attempt other aviation feats.
In 1935, Kingsford Smith and his co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge disappeared over the Andaman Sea while attempting to break the Australia–England speed record. He was fêted as a national hero during the Great Depression and received numerous honours during his lifetime. After his death Sydney's primary airport was named in his memory and he was featured on the Australian twenty-dollar note for several decades.
Early and personal life
Charles Edward Kingsford Smith was born on 9 February 1897 at Riverview Terrace, Hamilton in Brisbane, Colony of Queensland, the son of William Charles Smith and his wife Catherine Mary (née Kingsford, daughter of Richard Ash Kingsford, a Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly and mayor in both Brisbane and Cairns municipal councils). His birth was officially registered and announced in the newspapers under the surname Smith, which his family used at that time. The earliest use of the surname Kingsford Smith appears to be by his older brother Richard Harold Kingsford Smith, who used the name at least informally from 1901, although he married in New South Wales under the surname Smith in 1903.
In 1903, his parents moved to Canada where they adopted the surname Kingsford Smith. They returned to Sydney in 1907.
Kingsford Smith first attended school in Vancouver, Canada. From 1909 to 1911, he was enrolled at St Andrew's Cathedral School, Sydney, where he was a chorister in the school's cathedral choir, and then at Sydney Technical High School, before becoming an engineering apprentice with the Colonial Sugar Refining Company at 16.
Childhood swimming accident On 2 January 1907, Smith was swept out to sea by a strong undertow at Bondi Beach and nearly drowned. He was pulled ashore by lifeguards and revived by a nurse who happened to be around.Blainey (2018), Chapter 2.
Marriage Kingsford Smith married Thelma Eileen Hope Corboy in 1923. They divorced in 1929. He married Mary Powell in December 1930.
New Guard Shortly after his second marriage he joined the New Guard, a radical monarchist, anti-communist, and fascist-inspired organisation.
World War I and early flying experience
In 1915, he enlisted for duty in the 1st AIF (Australian Army) and served at Gallipoli. Initially, he performed duty as a motorcycle dispatch rider, before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps, earning his pilot's wings in 1917.
In August 1917, while serving with No. 23 Squadron, Kingsford Smith was shot down and received injuries which required amputation of two toes. He was awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry in battle. As his recovery was predicted to be lengthy, Kingsford Smith was permitted to take leave in Australia where he visited his parents. Returning to England, Kingsford Smith was assigned to instructor duties and promoted to Captain.
On 1 April 1918, along with other members of the Royal Flying Corps, Kingsford Smith was transferred to the newly established Royal Air Force. On being demobilised in England, in early 1919, he joined Tasmanian Cyril Maddocks, to form Kingsford Smith, Maddocks Aeros Ltd, flying a joy-riding service mainly in the North of England, during the summer of 1919, initially using surplus DH.6 trainers, then surplus B.E.2s.Aspin, Chris Dizzy Heights The Story of Lancashire's First Flying Men Helmshore Local History Society 1988 pp125-9 Later Kingsford Smith worked as a barnstormer in the United States before returning to Australia in 1921.
Applying for a commercial pilot's licence on 2 June 1921, he gave his name as "Charles Edward Kingsford-Smith".
The Cowra Free Press told how Kingsford Smith flew under the Lachlan road bridge at Cowra, New South Wales, with local "crack motorist" Ken Richards. It went on to recount how Kingsford Smith was preparing to also fly under the nearby railway bridge, but was warned by Richards of telegraph wires just in time to prevent a catastrophe. Richards, they added, was a mate of Kingsford Smith, and had flown with him several times in France. In this version of events, the feat was accomplished "just after the Armistice" (11 November 1918), but may have been in July 1921, when Kingsford Smith was hosting "joy flights" there, in an aircraft owned by the Diggers' Cooperative Aviation Company. Later accounts have embellished the story.
He became one of Australia's first airline pilots when he was chosen by Norman Brearley to fly for the newly formed West Australian Airways, and piloted their Bristol Type 28 Coupe Tourers plane (G-AUDF) that made bi-weekly mail drops to the astronomers during the 1922 Solar Eclipse expedition at Wallal, Western Australia. Around this time he began to plan his record-breaking flight across the Pacific.
1927 Circumnavigation of Australia
In June 1927, Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm circumnavigated the Australian continent in ten days and five hours, beating the previous record by 12 days, in a Bristol Tourer plane.
In parallel with Kingsford Smith's record-setting flight, pilot Keith Anderson and mechanic Bob Hitchcock undertook a separate round-Australia journey in a Bristol Tourer, departing Brisbane on 25 June 1927, and taking 14 days.
1928 Trans-Pacific flight
In 1928, Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm arrived in the United States and began to search for an aircraft. Famed Australian polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins sold them a Fokker F.VII/3m monoplane, which they named the Southern Cross.
At 8:54 a.m. on 31 May 1928, Kingsford Smith and his 4-man crew left Oakland, California, to attempt the first trans-Pacific flight to Australia. The flight was in three stages. The first, from Oakland to Wheeler Army Airfield, Hawaii, was , taking an uneventful 27 hours 25 minutes (87.54 mph). They took off from Barking Sands on Mana, Kauai, since the runway at Wheeler was not long enough. They headed for Suva, Fiji, away, taking 34 hours 30 minutes (91.45 mph). This was the most demanding portion of the journey, as they flew through a massive lightning storm near the equator. The third leg was the shortest, in 20 hours (84.15 mph), and crossed the Australian coastline near Ballina before turning north to fly to Brisbane, where they landed at 10.50 a.m. on 9 June. The total flight distance was approximately . Kingsford Smith was met by a huge crowd of 26,000 at Eagle Farm Airport, and was welcomed as a hero.Aviators – Charles Kingsford-Smith – (includes photo of the plaque commemorating the flight across the Pacific and the landing at Brisbane on 9 June 1928)Photo of Southern Cross, and welcoming crowd, at Eagle Farm on 9 June 1928 (National Archives of Australia) Australian aviator Charles Ulm was the relief pilot. The other crewmen were Americans radio operator James Warner and navigator and engineer Harry Lyon.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia has a film biography of Kingsford Smith, called An Airman Remembers,National Film and Sound Archive of Australia: 'An Airman Remembers' on australianscreen online and recordings of Kingsford Smith and Ulm talking about the journey.National Film and Sound Archive of Australia: 'Our Heroes of the Air'
A stamp sheet and stamps, featuring the Australian aviators Kingsford Smith and Ulm, were released by Australia Post in 1978, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the flight.
A young New Zealander named Jean Batten attended a dinner in Australia featuring Kingsford Smith after the trans-Pacific flight and told him "I'm going to learn to fly." She later convinced him to take her for a flight in the Southern Cross and went on to become a record-setting aviator, following his example instead of his advice ("Don't attempt to break men's records – and don't fly at night", he told her in 1928 and remembered wryly later).
1928 Trans-Tasman flight After making the first non-stop flight across Australia from Point Cook near Melbourne to Perth in Western Australia in August 1928, Kingsford Smith and Ulm registered themselves as Australian National Airways (see below). They then decided to attempt the Tasman Sea crossing to New Zealand not only because it had not yet been done, but also in the hope the Australian Government would grant Australian National Airways a subsidised contract to carry scheduled mail regularly.Davis, P., 1977, Charles Kingsford Smith: Smithy, the World's Greatest Aviator, Summit Books, The Tasman had remained unflown after the failure of the first attempt in January 1928, when New Zealanders John Moncrieff and George Hood had vanished without a trace.
Kingsford Smith's flight was planned for take off from Richmond, near Sydney, on Sunday 2 September 1928, with a scheduled landing around 9:00 a.m. on 3 September at Wigram Aerodrome, near Christchurch, the principal city in the South Island of New Zealand. This plan drew a storm of protest from New Zealand churchmen about the "sanctity of the Sabbath being set at naught."
The mayor of Christchurch supported the churchmen and cabled a protest to Kingsford Smith. As it happened, unfavourable weather developed over the Tasman and the flight was deferred, so it is not known whether or how Kingsford Smith would have heeded the cable.
Accompanied by Ulm, navigator Harold Arthur Litchfield, and radio operator Thomas H. McWilliams, a New Zealander made available by the New Zealand Government, Kingsford Smith left Richmond in the evening of 10 September, planning to fly overnight to a daylight landing after a flight of about 14 hours. The planned route was only just over half the distance between Hawaii and Fiji. After a stormy flight, at times through icing conditions, the Southern Cross made landfall in much improved weather near Cook Strait, the passage between New Zealand's two main islands. At an estimated out from New Zealand, the crew dropped a wreath in memory of the two New Zealanders who had disappeared during their attempt to cross the Tasman Sea earlier that year.
There was a tremendous welcome in Christchurch, where the Southern Cross landed at 0922 after a flight of 14 hours and 25 minutes. About 30,000 people made their way to Wigram, including many students from state schools, who were given the day off, and public servants, who were granted leave until 11 a.m. The event was also broadcast live on radio.
While the New Zealand Air Force overhauled the Southern Cross free of charge, Kingsford Smith and Ulm were taken on a triumphant tour of New Zealand, flying in Bristol Fighters.