Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith (9 February 1897 –8 November 1935), nicknamed Smithy,[1] 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.[2][3] 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.[4][5]
In 1903, his parents moved to Canada where they adopted the surname Kingsford Smith. They returned to Sydney in 1907.[6]
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.[6]
In August 1917, while serving with No. 23 Squadron, Kingsford Smith was shot down and received injuries[10] which required amputation of two toes.[11] He was awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry in battle.[6] 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
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.[21]
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.[22]
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.[23]
At 8:54 a.m. on 31 May 1928,[23] 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,[24] was 3870 km, 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, 5077 km 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.[25]
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.[38] 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.[39]
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."[40]
1929 "Coffee Royal" tragedy
Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, Harold A. Litchfield (navigator), and Thomas McWilliams (wireless operator) took off in the Southern Cross from Richmond airfield for Wyndham, Western Australia on 30 March 1929, the first leg of an intended flight to London. They lost their way in a rainstorm, ran low on fuel, and around midday, 31 March, radioed that they were putting down some 150 miles short of their objective, on an area later dubbed "Coffee Royal" by the aviators.[43]
By 3 April, four or five planes had been deployed in the search for the missing airmen, made difficult with very little information on their whereabouts.[44] These planes only had a cruising range of four hours and found no trace of the missing crew.
A former business partner of Kingsford Smith, Keith Anderson, joined the search for the Southern Cross. On 7 April, Anderson and partner Hitchcock took off from Richmond airstrip to conduct their search but never returned. Kingsford Smith and his crew were rescued five days later with all five men still alive, but Anderson and Hitchcock were still missing. Their plane was eventually found on 23 April, with both men long dead.[43]
Australian National Airways
In partnership with Ulm, Kingsford Smith established Australian National Airways in 1929. The passenger, mail and freight service commenced operations flying between Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, in January 1930, with five aircraft but closed after crashes in March and November the next year.[45]
Later flights, the MacRobertson Air Race, the 1934 Pacific Flight
After collecting his 'old bus', Southern Cross, from the Fokker aircraft company in the Netherlands where it had been overhauled, in June 1930 he achieved an east–west crossing of the Atlantic from Ireland to Newfoundland in 31 1/2 hours, having taken off from Portmarnock Beach (The Velvet Strand), just north of Dublin. New York gave him a tumultuous welcome. The Southern Cross continued on to Oakland, California, completing a circumnavigation of the world, begun in 1928.[46] In 1930, he competed in an England to Australia air race, and, flying solo, won the event taking 13 days. He arrived in Sydney on 22 October 1930.[47]
In 1931, he purchased an Avro Avian he named the Southern Cross Minor, to attempt an Australia-to-England flight. He later sold the aircraft to Captain W.N. "Bill" Lancaster who vanished on 11 April 1933 over the Sahara Desert; Lancaster's remains were not found until 1962. The wreck of the Southern Cross Minor is now in the Queensland Museum.[48]
Disappearance and death
Kingsford Smith and co-pilot John Thompson 'Tommy' Pethybridge were flying the Lady Southern Cross overnight from Allahabad (modern Prayagraj), India, to Singapore, as part of their attempt to break the England-Australia speed record held by C. W. A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black, when they disappeared over the Andaman Sea in the early hours of 8 November 1935. Aviator Jimmy Melrose claimed to have seen the Lady Southern Cross fighting a storm 150 mi from shore and 200 ft over the sea with fire coming from its exhaust.[53] Despite a search for 74 hours over the Bay of Bengal by one person, British pilot Eric Stanley Greenwood, OBE, their bodies were never recovered.[52]
Kingsford Smith was survived by his wife, Mary, Lady Kingsford Smith, and their three-year-old son Charles Jnr. Kingsford Smith's autobiography, My Flying Life, was published posthumously in 1937 and became a best-seller.[54]
Eighteen months after the disappearance, Burmese fishermen found an undercarriage leg and wheel, with its tyre still inflated, which had been washed ashore at Aye Island
Honours and legacy
In 1929, Kingsford Smith was honoured by the Australian Aero Club Federal Council with the Oswald Watt Gold Medal (Australia's highest aviation award) for his record-breaking 12 day and 18 hour flight from Derby, Western Australia to Croydon, London.[64] The following year, Kingsford Smith was again honoured with the Oswald Watt Gold Medal for his 1930 England to Australia and Trans-Atlantic flights.
In 1930, Kingsford Smith was the inaugural recipient of the Segrave Trophy, awarded for "Outstanding Skill, Courage and Initiative on Land, Water [or] in the Air".[65]
Kingsford Smith was knighted in the 1932 King's Birthday Honours List as a Knight Bachelor.[66] He received the accolade on 3 June 1932 from His Excellency Sir Isaac Isaacs, the Governor-General of Australia, for services to aviation and later was appointed honorary Air Commodore of the Royal Australian Air Force.[67]
In popular culture
- Kingsford Smith made a cameo appearance as himself in the feature film Splendid Fellows (1934)[86]
- A documentary was made about his life: The Old Bus (1934)[87]
- The 1946 Australian film Smithy was based on his life, with Ron Randell as Kingsford Smith and John Tate as Ulm[88][89]
- His life was dramatised in the 1966 radio play Boy on an Old Bus by Richard Lane.
- The 1985 Australian television mini-series A Thousand Skies, has John Walton as Kingsford Smith and
See also
- History of Aviation
- List of firsts in aviation
- List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea
Sources
- Blainey, Ann (2018), King of the Air: The Turbulent Life of Charles Kingsford Smith, Carlton, Vic: Black Inc. ISBN 978-1-7606-4107-8* Grant, James Ritchie. "Anti-Clockwise: Australia the Wrong Way". Air Enthusiast, No. 82, July–August 1999, pp. 60–63.
- Kingsford-Smith, Eric (1928), "Captain Kingsford-Smith", The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, (Friday, 6 July 1928), p. 9.
External links
- The Pioneers – Charles Kingsford Smith
- Charles Kingsford Smith biography Ace Pilots
- Sir Charles Kingsford Smith Australian Heroes
- Charles Kingsford Smith about the Tasman flight
- Charles Kingsford Smith (includes photos of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and his aeroplane, the Southern Cross)
- Sir Charles Kingsford Smith Sound Recordings and Newsreels
- Photographs from an album kept by Charles Ulm's wife, Mary, including many of Charles Kingsford Smith: National Museum of Australia
References
- Smithy Corrigin Chronicle and Kunjin-bullaring Representative, 21 November 1935, retrieved 9 June 2025^
- 1897/C9077 birth of Smith, Charles Edward Kingsford Queensland birth index, Queensland Government, retrieved 25 June 2017^
- Family Notices The Brisbane Courier, 13 February 1897, retrieved 25 June 2017