Flying the Southern Cross

by Michael Molkentin

  Lyon sat facing forward, at a desk directly behind the fuel tank. The calculations he made there were critical given that they were aiming for a tiny speck in a wide and empty ocean from thousands of kilometres away with no landmarks to guide them. A slight inaccuracy early in the journey could put them hundreds of kilometres wide of their destination.

  For the Pacific flight, Southern Cross used three Wright Whirlwind J5C 220 horsepower engines, each capable of 1,800 revolutions per minute. They had a proven track record, having been employed on several previous long-distance flights, though like all machines of their era, they required diligent maintenance.

  At his disposal, Lyon had a range of navigational tools that spanned the ancient to the state-of-the-art. In addition to three traditional magnetic compasses, Southern Cross had an electrically powered Earth Inductor Compass (EIC). A generator on top of the fuselage measured bearings in relation to the earth’s magnetic field (which runs north–south). On a set at his desk, Lyon could select a compass bearing for Kingsford Smith and Ulm to follow using a gauge on their instrument panel. Its needle revealed whether they were flying ‘dead on’ or veering to the left or right of Lyon’s chosen course. According to Kingsford Smith the EIC was ‘the most valuable steering instrument we carried’.

  Tuning into the ‘T’: Jim Warner works his radio set enclosed by Southern Cross’ steel skeleton and fabric skin.

  The radio set operated by Warner represented another sophisticated navigational tool. Rack mounted inside the port cabin and powered off batteries charged by two wind-driven generators on the fuselage, the set could send and receive Morse code transmissions thousands of kilometres. Warner could tune in to United States Army navigational beacons in California and Hawaii, which projected two pairs of beams towards one another, each reaching almost a thousand kilometres out to sea. One beam consisted of an ‘A’ (dot dash) signal while the other an ‘N’ (dash dot). Along the centre of the two beams, the signals combined to give a long dash—a ‘T’. Hearing this clearly, Warner could be certain that they were heading directly for Hawaii. When he began to hear ‘N’ or ‘A’ signals, he knew Southern Cross to be straying off course. Ships and land-based stations could also use Warner’s radio signals to report Southern Cross ’ bearing in relation to their location.

  Yet despite this modern equipment, Lyon ultimately relied on the ancient navigational method of dead reckoning. This involved estimating the aircraft’s position at regular intervals based on its direction and speed, while compensating for ‘drift’ caused by the wind. The challenge was that over the ocean there were few indicators to verify where they were at any given point. Aside from the radio, he had to rely on astronomical navigation, using a sextant to calculate Southern Cross ’ position by measuring the distance of celestial objects above the horizon. Sextants represented centuries-old technology, but Lyon had one crudely modified for the air age. Fitted with a spirit bubble, his sextant could be used to estimate the position of the horizon even when it was obscured by cloud. To take shots Lyon needed to open a hatch in the fuselage and lean out into the violent slipstream while attempting to hold the sextant steady. Before the flight, he had practised by taking shots from a car speeding along California’s highways at night.

  During the first morning’s flying, things in the rear cabin quickly settled into a routine. Each hour Lyon would estimate their position on a maritime chart which Warner would then transmit in the hope that, if they did go down, someone might find them. The engine noise through Southern Cross ’ open cockpit sides and canvas fuselage made conversation impossible. To communicate with each other, the crew passed notes scribbled on scrap paper. Warner and Lyon used part of a fishing rod to pass notes over the fuel tank into the cockpit. ‘It was a strange experience’, thought Ulm, ‘for four men to sit in such a confined space and so near to one another, and yet be unable to exchange a word’. Nonetheless, via notes the crew carried on an almost constant dialogue. ‘We’re as happy as hell cracking “wise cracks” ad lib’, reported Ulm in the log.

  ‘The flying conditions were perfect’, recalled Kingsford Smith of the first morning, ‘but the monotony of the blue sea below us, the blue vault above us, and the overpowering roar of the engines began to oppress us’. At 11 am he took a break, handing control to Ulm. The cockpit was too small to lie down, but Kingsford Smith managed to doze in his chair.

  Controlling Southern Cross was a physically demanding exercise. The control wheels and foot-operated rudder bar manipulated the aircraft’s control surfaces with wires that ran along the exterior of the fuselage. Keeping the Earth Inductor Compass needle on Lyon’s course demanded constant weight on the controls: there were no trims or autopilot devices as would assist a pilot during a longhaul flight today. After half an hour, Ulm handed control back to Kingsford Smith, admitting in the log ‘experience does count. Smithy flying perfectly. I waver slightly from one side of course to the other’.

  ‘A strange experience’: At no point during the most significant journey of their lives could the members of Southern Cross’ crew speak to each other owing to the engine noise. Left to right: Harry Lyon, Charles Ulm, Charles Kingsford Smith and Jim Warner.

  Using radio transmissions from Southern Cross, Sydney newspaper The Sun provided Australians with news coverage unlike they had ever experienced before.

  Southern Cross’ 3,000-litre fuel tank extended its range considerably but blocked access between cockpit and cabin. The crew used a fishing rod to pass messages to each other.

  Shortly after 1 pm—four hours since take-off— Kingsford Smith and Ulm encountered their first ‘blind’ or ‘instrument’ flying conditions. ‘Clouds just seemed to blow right up’, logged Ulm. For the next half hour, Southern Cross climbed through a damp, murky haze in an attempt to reach clear skies. Unable to see the horizon, Kingsford Smith had to rely on a pair of spirit levels set into the timber instrument panel before him, indicating the aircraft’s rate of climb and bank. At 2,900 feet, as suddenly as it had smothered them, the cloud ended. ‘We burst out of this grey wilderness and the steel blue plain of the ocean once more opened up before us.’ Kingsford Smith then descended back to 1,200 feet. ‘Trying to make better speed down here’, explained Ulm in the log.

  Changing altitude to avoid cloud formations began to worry Kingsford Smith and Ulm as the afternoon wore on. At 3pm, Lyon calculated they were 843 kilometres from San Francisco and still some 3,000 kilometres from Honolulu. Although this represented only a slightly slower average speed than Kingsford Smith had predicted, the rate at which they were pumping fuel into the main tanks during the afternoon suggested they were burning through it far quicker than anticipated. Behind the pilot and co-pilot four glass tubes provided the approximate fuel level in each of the main tanks, but there was no way to measure fuel remaining in the large auxiliary tank.

  Consulting the gauges and their notes on fuel consumption, Ulm and Kingsford Smith made a series of calculations. They checked and re-checked them again; the results were worrying. Although the two airmen disagreed over precisely how much fuel remained, they did agree that given their average ground speed and estimated position, they did not have enough to reach Honolulu. Even Ulm’s significantly more optimistic calculations suggested they would run out of fuel some time during the night, perhaps 300 kilometres from land.

  Conferring via notes, they decided to run the outer wing tanks until empty. ‘It was patent to us’, explained Ulm later, ‘that when these outboard wing tanks yielded up the last of the gasoline that they held, we would definitely know what petrol was at our disposal’. The note that follows in the log suggests how these dire mathematics focused Ulm’s imagination on the prospect of an open ocean ditching in the middle of the night: ‘Have not sighted vessel since leaving San Francisco’.

  ‘PERFECTLY GLORIOUS

  SUNSET’

  Flying into the night, 31 May–1 June 1928

  ‘Perfectly glorious sunset everything lovely’: For the journey’s fi
rst leg, the crew enjoyed almost perfect flying conditions.

  As the afternoon hours dragged by, the endless blue ‘vault’ above Southern Cross began to pale and the clouds took on a golden hue as the sun sank lower in the sky. After nine hours in the air they had covered, according to Lyon’s dead reckoning, almost 1,300 kilometres— about a third of the way to Hawaii. ‘Away on the starboard bow’, recalled Kingsford Smith, ‘the sun was setting in a great ball of fire and I witnessed such a spectacular and glorious sunset as I had seldom seen before’.

  They had spent most of the day as low as possible (under 2,000 feet) to conserve fuel, but Kingsford Smith decided it safer to fly at a higher altitude during the night where they had a better chance of avoiding bad weather. It represented a difficult decision as climbing would consume more fuel. As Southern Cross gradually ascended past towering, golden clouds, their thoughts, in Ulm’s words, vacillated between ‘black pessimism and a wild exhilaration’. The anxiety subsided at 8.06 pm when, having cleared 3,000 feet, the outboard wing tanks emptied. ‘Here was a definite milestone in our gas supply’, explained Ulm. Though not guaranteeing that it would last to Hawaii, it was an encouraging sign that they had over-estimated the rate of their fuel consumption earlier. ‘We felt … like reprieved men who had passed through a shadow that had lifted at a most appropriate moment.’

  Southern Cross levelled out at 4,000 feet. As the sky darkened, hot exhaust gases from the engines began to glow, at times flaring from ‘blue to yellow, and even red’. Warner would later describe how he ‘managed to kill quite a bit of time watching the blue flame pouring out each pipe’ coming off the engines. ‘The fireworks were pretty, but the noise was disgustingly monotonous.’ A description of the phenomenon in one of Warner’s radio transmissions appeared in newspapers on both sides of the Pacific the following day. The imagery of Southern Cross streaking across the night sky towards Australia with a luminous, comet-like tail thrilled readers and provided newspaper editors, who lacked the benefit of photographs, with a compelling illustration.

  Crossing the Pacific would be the first step towards circumnavigating the globe in Southern Cross for Kingsford Smith.

  Although a milestone in aviation history, the trans-Pacific flight also broke new ground in wireless communications. From a retractable, 120-metre wire aerial trailing behind Southern Cross, Warner managed to transmit and receive messages over twice as far as anyone had before. By sunset, Warner’s Morse code messages were audible to listening stations on both sides of the Pacific, including at Amalgamated Wireless Association’s receiving hut at La Perouse in Sydney. Throughout the flight, wireless operators listened for Southern Cross’ messages 24 hours a day, passing them on to Radio Station 2BL which, via an agreement with The Sun , broadcast them into Australian homes. By the end of the flight, 2BL’s engineers had rigged up equipment enabling the live broadcast of Warner’s dots and dashes directly into listeners’ living rooms. It was an unprecedented thing in an age that longpreceded ‘live’ news coverage, and one in which Australians, so far from Europe and North America, felt isolated from great events.

  The Sun and its partners were not, however, the only ones who could hear Warner’s transmissions. Anyone with a radio receiver of adequate power could tune in. In fact, the most complete record of Southern Cross ’ radio transmissions during the flight comes from the USS Omaha, docked in Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, at the time. A friend of Warner named Charlie Hodge was the ship’s wireless operator and throughout the flight he recorded in a log any messages bearing the identifier ‘KHAB’— Southern Cross’ radio call sign. He stayed awake and ‘tuned in’ for as long as his friend was in the air, the longest stretch being 33 hours during the Hawaii to Fiji leg.

  More to the point, rival press outlets could also hear transmissions from Southern Cross , threatening the exclusive deals Ulm had signed with The Sun and The LA Examiner. In the evening, Warner received sharp messages from the owners of both newspapers claiming that Associated Press was reporting their messages freely. On Ulm’s instructions, Warner broadcast a message warning operators not to pass the messages on to anyone other than their intended recipients. Ulm also sent a message to the editors, apologising and reassuring them that the deals still stood. His broadcast to The LA Examiner illustrates how he continued to manage the business side of things even at 4,000 feet above the Pacific and reveals something of the charm he wielded in his business relationships.

  TO 6ARD

  Personal to Eric Cullenward stop We dont break our word or violate contracts sorry you were troubled but same beyond my control will loyally serve Examiner until contract concluded stop Gee its great out here but apparently business worries even reach me here stop Smoke two cigarettes at once one for me Smithy and I both crave the odd smoke love and kisses cheerio

  Intending to control the story reported in the press and perhaps aware of Warner’s nervous disposition, Ulm instructed his radio operator to only send messages that he had first approved. Nonetheless, Charlie Hodge’s radio log indicates that throughout the flight both Americans slipped personal transmissions in between the ‘official’ ones ordered by Ulm. At 8.30 pm, for example, Ulm passed Warner a message to send:

  Thirty eight hundred feet above endless miles of clouds. No stars or moon visible yet. Perfectly clear up here. No necessity go higher yet. Motors haven’t missed a beat thanks to Maidment. Smith must be in love I can’t make him eat. He’s had three to my ten sandwiches to date. Stars are just coming up. Will send more later. Chas Ulm, Southern Cross.

  ‘A long shot at a dot on the map’: Lyon relied on the age-old maritime technique of dead reckoning to calculate Southern Cross’ position every hour during the flight. Basically it involved deducing one’s position based on known or estimated speed and course, while allowing for the wind.

  ‘ “Wise cracks” ad lib’: The crew’s reliance on passing notes allows us to eavesdrop on their conversations to gain an insight into both matters technical and the relationships between the crew.

  ‘It’s now a very small world we live in’: The trans-Pacific flight foreshadowed the globilisation of transport, communications and the media.

  Typical for a man of his generation and the same as his three comrades, Kingsford Smith smoked heavily. Abstaining for dozens of hours at a time provided one of the flight’s most frequently mentioned discomforts.

  To this, Warner added for his listeners on both sides of the Pacific:

  The moon shining down is casting our shadow into the clouds with a great white circle around the faint shadow of the Southern Cross on the clouds. I’m sending this as I see it. Jim. Radio Opr.

  The addition of such striking descriptions and running commentaries would make Warner an object of great fascination to the Australian public. It was via his electronic ‘voice’, produced in the staccato rap of a brass key, that they could follow, in what we would call ‘real time’ Southern Cross ’ record-breaking journey. They, like us, have good reason to be thankful that he disregarded his employer’s instructions and that he had such a patient and resilient friend in the United States Navy.

  ‘Sailing lazily on the Milky Way’

  To estimate the aircraft’s drift and ground speed (which he needed to measure their position accurately) Lyon had a crude ‘speed and drift indicator’ bolted to the side of the fuselage, just outside the rear cabin door. This, as he explained in his memoirs, made it necessary for him ‘to open the door to an angle of forty-five degrees and prop it so while I laid down on the floor, stuck my head out and manipulated the instrument’. Peering through it, he would measure the aircraft’s speed and drift against objects on the ground, typically the white caps on waves. To provide a reference point in the dark, he had calcium flares that ignited on contact with the water. At 10 pm, he threw some out. All eyes watched them—the only thing visible in the all-consuming darkness surrounding Southern Cross . ‘They struck the water and burst into a white blaze and we watched them for about twenty minutes’, wro
te Kingsford Smith. Lyon followed them with his drift indicator, the violent slipstream outside the aircraft buffeting his head violently and occasionally causing the cabin door to slam shut, providing him with ‘a most resounding thwack on the back of the head’. Perceiving ‘a very slight drift to the southward’ he accordingly provided Kingsford Smith with a revised heading on the Earth Inductor Compass.

  During that first night’s flying, the difficulty of Lyon’s job was augmented by the fact that, since midday, Warner had been unable to pick up the Army radio beacon. Then, just before midnight, the artificial horizon on Lyon’s sextant broke, preventing him from factoring astrological measurements into his dead reckoning until he could see the horizon again. Fortunately, around 1 am Warner made radio contact with a steamer, the Maliko. Assisted by a radio compass, its navigator informed Warner that Southern Cross was actually a few miles north of Lyon’s estimated position. There was also some non-official banter between the crews, Maliko’s captain being an old friend of Lyon’s. On a scrap of paper, Warner passed on a message:

  ‘Harry, how would a high ball go now?’

  Lyon scribbled a reply and passed it back: ‘Did Hansen say that? Tell Hansen fine.’