Sky Roads of the World by Amy Johnson

Author:Amy Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RHE Media Limited
Published: 2014-05-19T15:43:24+00:00

Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm after landing the Southern Cross at Eagle Farm Brisbane 9 June 1928.

Of their plane the Southern Cross, which has become one of the most famous aeroplanes in the world owing to the number of wonderful flights she has accomplished, ‘Smithy’ says: ‘She had borne us in safety over 7,389 miles of ocean; her three engines had revolved without a fault over 24,000,000 times; she had lifted the heaviest burdens we could place on her; she had flown safely through the fiercest storms and blinding rain; she had answered every call; she had not failed us once and she had herself come through unscathed.’

Kingsford-Smith was later knighted for his work in aviation, but to his friends he was always affectionately known as ‘Smithy.’ When he went missing on a solo flight to Australia in November 1935, and was finally assumed dead, we all felt we had not only lost the greatest pilot and leader aviation has ever known, but a charming personality which smiled its way through enough troubles and adversities to have embittered any ordinary man.

Before he went on that fateful flight to Australia he was destined to add still more glory to the history of the Air Conquest of the Pacific, and of this I will tell in a moment.

As an entr’acte to Smithy’s next flight across the Pacific in 1934 with Captain P. G. Taylor, were several other flights, though none followed the same route to Australia which had been pioneered by Kingsford-Smith and his companions.

In 1929 the airship Graf Zeppelin crossed part of the Pacific as a stage in a round-the-world flight. A crossing was made from Los Angeles to Tokyo, the northern route of the Pacific, and with Dr. Hugo Eckener in command, the flight passed almost without incident. So much so, that Major A. E. W. Salt, M.A., noted authority on the world’s aerial transport system, said in a book he wrote in 1930: ‘Kingsford-Smith and Ulm did what they set out to do, but despite their success, an airship seems to be the natural vessel for such a flight, especially since the Graf Zeppelin has flown across the Pacific from Tokyo (Nasumigaura) to Los Angeles, between August 23rd and 26th, 1929, 5,800 miles in 61 hours 57 minutes.’

The Graf Zeppelin, advanced product of the advanced mind of Count Zeppelin of wartime fame, made a round-the-world flight in 1929, carrying 20 passengers and a crew of 40 men. Including time spent on the ground, she took 21 days 7 hours 32 minutes for a journey which took Magellan, four centuries earlier, a period of three years.

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