Flying the Southern Cross

by Michael Molkentin

  After nearly 40 minutes Southern Cross cleared the storm at 5,000 feet. Yet another wall of ‘tropical violence’ lay ahead, extending up, Ulm reckoned another thousand feet. It appeared threatening enough for Kingsford Smith to momentarily disregard fuel economy and attempt to climb in circles to get above it. Struggling against the turbulence to work his set, Warner provided listeners on both sides of the Pacific with intermittent glimpses of the turmoil through which they were flying. ‘It is a race between us and the clouds to the 10,000 feet elevation’, he transmitted. ‘It is going to be a bad night. The motors are doing heavy pulling now to the 6,500 feet altitude. It is getting dark.’

  In Sydney, radio station 2BL’s chief engineer Ray Alsop had set up a powerful receiver at his home in Roseville to receive Southern Cross ’ transmissions. Throughout the night, he relayed these to the station, which broadcast them live into the sitting rooms of families around the region. As Warner’s faint dots and dashes arrived, Alsop provided a running translation. ‘Therefore’, as The Sun explained to its incredulous readers the following day, ‘radio fans actually heard the Southern Cross ’.

  After an hour of climbing, listeners in Sydney learned that the aircraft had finally topped the storm at 7,500 feet and emerged under a clear, star-filled sky. ‘There’s our friend the moon peeping over a bank of clouds’, tapped Warner with his brass key. He sent personal greetings to a number of friends (‘Jim’s thinking of you all’) followed by a reassuring sign-off to conserve the batteries: ‘Sure having a nice ride here among the clouds. We now a bit away from the clouds but a solid heavy rolling mass under us’.

  Levelling out at 8,000 feet, Ulm described the stars ‘popping out all over the Heavens’ in the log. Among them, the Southern Cross appeared, heralding his and Kingsford Smith’s imminent return to their own hemisphere after almost a year. As they left the storm behind, Kingsford Smith descended to less frigid altitudes and the crew settled back into the routine of night flying.

  At 11.30 pm, with the weather still calm, a jab in the back woke Ulm. A message from Lyon appeared, stating they had just crossed the equator and that they should soon be over the Phoenix islands. As well as representing a haven for emergency landing, in the absence of the radio beacon and ships, the islands would provide Lyon with the only opportunity on this leg to confirm his dead reckoning. For half an hour all eyes aboard Southern Cross eagerly searched for them, shadows cast by the moonlight producing several false sightings. Just before midnight, Lyon sent a message forward presenting the flight’s cocommanders with a difficult decision. They should, he estimated, be right over the Phoenix islands. If they continued on their present southerly course they would cut across the Samoan islands, about 880 kilometres away. Alternatively Lyon suggested, they could steer a course to Suva, which lay an estimated 2,000 kilometres to the south-west.

  It all came down to fuel. After a tense discussion on note paper, Ulm and Kingsford Smith agreed that they had enough left to make it to Fiji if the wind cooperated and they had no more bad weather to avoid. Of critical importance was the accuracy of Lyon’s dead reckoning. Without sighting the Phoenix islands he could not be entirely sure of where they were, making the decision to continue to Fiji a real gamble. Unknown to any of the crew, however, at that moment the crew of the Sonoma, a ship en route to Australia from San Francisco, heard Southern Cross pass overhead. They were among the Phoenix islands, something they tried to communicate to Warner but that he could not receive owing to the dead receiver battery. On instructions from the cockpit, Lyon dialled up a new heading on the Earth Inductor Compass, steering them for Suva.

  For an aircraft of its size, Southern Cross had relatively small control surfaces, making it difficult to handle, especially in bad weather. Its broad wing and large, fixed undercarriage didn’t help either.

  Just before dawn, the heavy, languid calm came to an end, replaced again by lashing rain and wind gusts that caused Southern Cross to pitch and heave violently. Ahead, an enormous black nimbus cloud, lit up by flashes of blue lightning, loomed up some 12,000 feet. ‘Smithy looked worried and worn out’, recalled Ulm. Knowing they could not possibly get above such a towering storm, Kingsford Smith instructed Warner to reel in the antennae and descended to 400 feet in an attempt to pass beneath it. Torrents of rain and violent air currents threw the aircraft about violently, making it dangerous to be so low and compelling Kingsford Smith to change his mind and climb into the storm. The instrument panel light had blown, so Ulm held a torch on the gauges.

  After an hour, they were back at 8,000 feet. The sun was just coming up, revealing as Ulm wrote in the log, ‘a cheerless dawn—rain, cold and blind flying’. The climbing and dodging about worried both pilots. Kingsford Smith was convinced that they were ‘out of luck’, and would be forced to ditch in the ocean before sighting land. To Lyon, he wrote an uncharacteristically anxious-sounding note. ‘Harry can’t you get a star position at all? Or can’t Jim get a radio bearing? Getting pretty serious if we don’t get one in a few hours.’ Ulm remained slightly more optimistic about the fuel but he doubted they were still on course after all the erratic manoeuvring.

  Southern Cross’ open-sided cockpit made speaking impossible, fur-lined overalls necessary and often resulted in the pilots being drenched by rain.

  To conserve fuel, Kingsford Smith took them back down to 500 feet. They met with more bad luck, though; the prevailing north-easterly tail winds enjoyed the previous afternoon had been replaced by a vigorous south-westerly headwind. It sapped Ulm’s optimism and brought the rest of the crew’s spirits down to rock bottom. Notes from Warner and Lyon appeared asking about the fuel situation. Kingsford Smith levelled with them: ‘We have 5 hours gas and are only making about 60 knots [111 kilometres per hour] against wind’. Lyon’s last sextant shot had put them 1,277 kilometres from Suva. It was not encouraging arithmetic; as Warner explained in his characteristically wry fashion, it ‘left about 170 miles to swim and me with a bad corn on each foot’. He wasn’t alone. Even Ulm acknowledged in the log at 9.30 am that it was ‘doubtful’ they would reach Suva, though he still held out hope for reaching land.

  A sudden change in the bleak outlook came just after 10 am. Ulm, trying the hand-pump instead of the motorised pump, shifted the last fuel from the auxiliary into the main tanks and discovered that more remained than they had calculated. It was enough, in fact, to keep them airborne for an additional two hours beyond their previous predictions. ‘Whoops of joy on board’, he recorded. ‘We’ll make it now OK. Hot dam.’

  Around midday, after another six hours of tropical thunderstorms, the weather finally cleared, leaving a dull overcast day. Ulm logged that they had been in the air for 32 hours and should be sighting land soon. The crew began what Warner described as the ‘grim game’ of watching the horizon for land. ‘If no member of the team sights land before the gas gives out your side loses and you don’t need an umpire.’

  For an hour and a half they flew on, bucking against the headwind. Warner kept transmitting their position, but because of the broken generator could not receive bearings from land-based stations. He watched Lyon with mounting anxiety, noting the navigator’s ‘noble brow corrugated’ with worry as he checked and re-checked his dead reckoning.

  Unable to hold on any longer, Warner had to relieve himself in the cabin. The crew typically used a bottle when they needed to urinate, afterwards emptying it out the window. At this moment, however, Warner required something more substantial in the way of relief and spread out a newspaper on the floor to squat over. At the most inopportune time, Southern Cross hit turbulence, causing the hapless radio operator to fall into his own mess. Already stripped to his underwear and singlet, he was forced to jettison these and complete the flight naked.

  At 1.10 pm Ulm sighted the north coast of Vanua Levu, the second largest island of the Fiji group. According to Lyon, ‘the excitement and relief was immense’. Ulm recalled that he and Kingsford Smith ‘nudged each other in delight … we were on
the verge of triumph’. Within two minutes, they could see islands everywhere on the starboard horizon. ‘We were soon flying low over some of the sweetest looking little islands ever constructed’, recalled Warner. ‘Even the coral reefs looked good enough to eat.’ In the moments that followed, as they swept in low over Fiji’s northern islands, Ulm made a triumphant declaration to Kingsford Smith on the back page of the log. ‘The rest is easy. Its hard to realize its over and that at the moment we are exceedingly famous.’ The events of the previous 30 hours had, however, tempered his confidence that he and Kingsford Smith could do the last leg alone. ‘I’ve nearly changed my views re taking Jim on to Aussie with us. Remind me to talk with you re this’ (this is reproduced on page 166).

  Lyon’s chart of the equatorial region provides evidence of the Intertropical Front’s fury. His position fixes record variations in Southern Cross’ ground speed from 68 to 145 kilometres per hour and the map bears the stains of ink spilled in the turbulence.

  For an hour and a half Southern Cross passed over dozens of islands separated by translucent green water. At 3.45 pm, they circled Suva, their landing ground at Albert Park clearly marked out by the thousands of Fijians surrounding it, with, as one journalist described it, their ‘great fuzzy hair’ and ‘dressed in all colours of the rainbow’. The local government had cleared trees and telegraph poles from the park, but warned that it would not be big enough to handle an aircraft. Nonetheless, everyone on board still expressed shock at how small it looked from the air: ‘about as large as a pocket-handkerchief’, reckoned Warner, ‘and not half as useful’. Almost despairing, Kingsford Smith circled the town and bay, seeking a better landing spot. Not seeing any, he turned back and ordered the Americans to climb into the tail. Still naked following his toilet misfortune, Warner, along with Lyon in his underwear, clambered through the maze of wires, careful not to put their feet through the aircraft’s floor, which in the extreme aft section, consisted of canvas only.

  Southern Cross at Richmond aerodrome, near Sydney, shortly after the Pacific flight in 1928. Finding airstrips long enough to accommodate it proved one of the key logistical challenges of the journey.

  Inspecting Albert Park today, it is obvious that landing a three-engine aircraft without wheel brakes there was a remarkably risky thing. High ground to the park’s north, east and south meant that Kingsford Smith had to approach from over the water, from the west. From this direction, however, he had to clear the Grand Pacific Hotel, situated between the bay and the park, and then a road flanking the park’s western edge on a 3-metre embankment. The park’s diminutive length—330 metres—meant that Kingsford Smith had to touch down as close to the road as possible if he hoped to avoid crashing into the tree line at the park’s far end.

  He brought Southern Cross in over the bay at 100 kilometres per hour, just clearing the hotel roof. As they crossed the road and dropped suddenly, Ulm felt ill, certain they were about to crash. The crowd gasped and the wheels touched down, 45 metres inside the park. The aircraft bounced back into the air and then slammed down again. It sped on towards the trees, Kingsford Smith whipping the aircraft around in a dramatic 180-degree turn at the last moment. The machine stopped, right between two trees at the end of the park. ‘The plane’, as one journalist breathlessly reported, ‘had nothing whatever to spare’.

  Descriptions of the dramatic landing appeared in newspapers all around the world in the following hours. They all emphasise the extreme peril of the landing, how it nearly resulted in a catastrophic accident and the remarkable skill of Kingsford Smith’s ‘ground loop’. What none of them mentioned, however, and what Ulm neglected to note in the log, was Warner’s brush with death. When Kingsford Smith bounced Southern Cross , the force sent the radio operator crashing through the tail section’s canvas floor. The aircraft trundled on leaving him naked and unconscious in the mud. Fortunately a British nurse rushed forward and, after covering him with her cape, established that miraculously he had escaped injury from the aircraft’s tail wheel. The incident remained outside the trans-Pacific flight’s narrative for three decades. None of the crew mentioned it in their memoirs and no journalist acknowledged it in the press (The Sun reported that ‘Warner exited first’ after landing, which strictly speaking was not untrue). The story emerged in 1958, told by an elderly Warner to a Sunday Telegraph reporter when he visited Australia to mark the flight’s 30th anniversary.

  ‘About as large as a pocket handkerchief and not half as useful’: Kingsford Smith only narrowly avoided disaster when landing Southern Cross at Albert Park.

  ‘LOOKS CLEAR AHEAD’

  Interlude in Fiji, 5–8 June 1928

  ‘Waving arms and open mouths, all shouting … locked us in on every side.’

  Southern Cross had left Kauai at 5.22 am on Sunday, 3 June 1928. It covered the 5,000 kilometres to Suva in 34 hours and 30 minutes, but because of the International Date Line, arrived in Fiji in the early afternoon of Tuesday, 5 June. Unlike in Hawaii, Ulm would not record his experiences in Fiji in the log. From other sources, such as the aviators’ memoirs and reports from news correspondents, it’s clear that the flight’s ‘organising manager’ did not have time to give the log a thought during this stopover. Lacking the assistance of the United States military and with only basic local infrastructure, Ulm would need to bring to bear his utmost skills at coordinating resources and managing people to get Southern Cross back into the air for the journey’s final leg.

  By radio, Ulm instructed Suva’s authorities to provide necessary measures for keeping crowds a safe distance from the aeroplane.

  Before the propellers had even stopped spinning, the crowds lining Albert Park’s perimeter surged forward and surrounded Southern Cross. Pith-helmeted British soldiers, their presence organised in advance by Ulm, cordoned off the aircraft just in time. The crew emerged from the cabin dishevelled, bleary-eyed and, looking according to one reporter, ‘grey and nervy’. Ulm recalled how ‘waving arms and open mouths, all shouting something at us, locked us in on every side’. When a journalist called to him, asking if they intended to head for Brisbane tomorrow, he snapped, ‘Give us a chance. We do not know yet’. Moments later, a car conveying the Mayor and Governor parted the crowd and arrived to rescue the aviators from the barrage of questions, photographs and autographhunters. Ulm shook the Governor’s hand and inhaled deeply on a cigarette. ‘Phew! That’s better. That’s just what I wanted.’ Kingsford Smith, ‘stone deaf’, kept asking people to repeat themselves, while Lyon continuously apologised for his scruffy appearance.

  Satisfied with the ring of soldiers and native police surrounding Southern Cross , the airmen were driven across the crowded park to the Grand Pacific Hotel, where the Mayor had offered to host them. They joined the official party on the hotel’s balcony, overlooking the park. To an audience of some 10,000 locals, for whom the day had been proclaimed a public holiday, the Mayor gave a speech that, as one reporter explained, ‘stammered with an emotion shared by all’. Kingsford Smith replied; his typical swagger noticeably absent. He admitted it had been a harrowing night and put their safe arrival down to the skill of his American colleagues. Lyon then spoke, directing credit back to Kingsford Smith’s flying and toasting with a high ball of whisky. ‘We would willingly do the trip again for stuff like that.’

  The Mayor of Suva and a Fijian chief greet the Pacific fliers.

  Over a meal, Kingsford Smith and Ulm made plans for the next leg. Ulm hoped to fly to Brisbane the following day, but both agreed that it would be impossible to take off from Albert Park fully loaded. They would need to find and prepare an alternative airstrip from which to start the journey’s final stage. Local pilots reckoned they might not get away for four or five days, something Ulm considered ‘a matter of grave concern’. Ulm and Kingsford Smith also probably discussed taking the Americans, or at least Warner, on to Brisbane. As their contract stood they would otherwise be boarding an ocean liner for the United States in two days’ time, leaving the two A
ustralians to fly to Brisbane by themselves.

  Suva’s European community contained a handful of ex-war pilots including Major Clive Joske and Captain Sam Ellis, whose signatures appear on a five-shilling note Ulm kept as a souvenir.

  British soldiers and Suva’s officials welcome Southern Cross’ crew at Albert Park, 5 June 1928.

  Ulm and Kingsford Smith hit the ground running the following morning. After a breakfast of kippers, bacon and eggs, and some quick photographs with hotel guests and reporters in the lobby (‘I feel like a million dollars’, Ulm told one), the two airmen split up to inspect possible take-off sites. As in Hawaii, the cooperation of local authorities proved crucial. The Governor loaned Kingsford Smith his private boat to sail out to Naselai beach, the most distant option at 30 kilometres away. He would be gone most of the day. The manager of Colonial Sugar Refining meanwhile escorted Ulm to nearby Nausori, inland from Suva, where he inspected two sites but found that the most suitable would require 300 men and 24 hours to prepare. Whichever location they selected, getting Southern Cross there, along with fuel in time to take off the following day, represented an immense logistical challenge.

  Suva’s central business district as it appeared around the time of the trans-Pacific flight.

  Finding a solution to this problem should have occupied the rest of Ulm’s day, but commitments to the press and Suva’s social scene intervened in a most frustrating manner. Returning to Suva, he cabled his log entries from the previous leg to The Sun—some 2,000 words that would appear in the following afternoon’s edition. He then tended to the dozens of cables pouring in from around the world, from everyone, it seems, from the Australian Prime Minister to the Limbless Soldiers’ Conference, meeting in Sydney that day. Most offered congratulations but some related matters requiring Ulm’s immediate attention. Plans for their arrival at Eagle Farm aerodrome in Brisbane and the subsequent publicity tour to Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra consumed his morning. With characteristic thoroughness he cabled instructions covering every detail: from where spectators should be arranged to how many police were required and where they needed to stand to maintain a safe boundary around the aircraft.