Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men

by P Fitzsimons

  Oh, young Hughie.

  Screaming himself, Hughie ran as fast as his little legs could carry him and dived into a ditch filled with water, crying, hoping against hope that the eagle wouldn’t spot him. And amazingly, it worked! For within just a few seconds the giant bird of prey had flown on, and when a minute later he carefully lifted his head from the ditch, he saw only a disappearing speck in the distance.27

  A few phone calls from the people of Dingle Bay, and the news flashed around the world—Lindbergh was still going! Now, Lloyd’s of London relented a little and offered odds, but still quoted his chances as 10 to 3 against his getting there.28 In Paris, those sitting at Café de la Paix, on one of the corners of the Place de l’Opéra, were stunned to notice that the revolving electric sign at the top of the Selfridge building, which sat across the street, was reporting in letters 6 feet high that l’Américain Lindbergh, had been spotted off the Irish coast and was heading their way! The word began to spread…

  Lindberrr! Il vient! Il vient! (Lindbergh is coming!)

  Up in the Spirit of St Louis, Lindbergh knew that the promised land, France, and its capital, Paris, were just six hours away and he felt a sudden surge of energy as his fatigue faded. Two hours after leaving the Irish coast, England appeared and almost as quickly disappeared beneath his wings.

  Nigh on two decades earlier, Louis Blériot had tootled across the English Channel coming from France, at roughly 30 miles per hour. This time, going the other way, Lindbergh and the Spirit of St Louis streaked over at a little more than three times that speed, and he was soon soaring over a France falling dark. Even in the midst of his euphoria at having arrived above the land of his destination, he began to worry that he hadn’t had time to get a French visa, didn’t speak a word of the French language, and had no French money. Perhaps he could borrow some. He would have to find someone to help when he landed.

  Soon enough, far ahead, the famed ‘City of Lights’, Paris itself appeared, looming larger with every minute, rising over the horizon in much the same way the sun came up, and shining almost as brightly. And there was the Eiffel Tower! Charles Lindbergh took the Spirit of St Louis around it a couple of times in celebration. And then it was time to land.

  But where was Le Bourget aerodrome, which he had been told was just a few miles to the north-east of the Eiffel Tower? He could see a black spot about where Le Bourget should be, a black spot surrounded by swarming bright lights, but it didn’t look like an aerodrome, which always had perimeter lights evenly spaced. Still, he went closer for a look. And then he realised. Those lights were not the lights of a factory or some such as he had first thought, but headlights, the lights of tens of thousands of Parisians who now surrounded the aerodrome and were there to greet him. Rivers of lights leading to the airfield showed how many Parisians were eager to get there. Stunned, Lindbergh brought his majestic aeroplane down from the heavens, touched, bounced and then came back to mother earth solidly, rolling to a halt at exactly 10.24 pm—thirty-three hours, thirty minutes and thirty seconds since he had left New York.

  There was a pause at the moment he shut the engine down, and then, out of the darkness, came an unnerving, almost unearthly, roar. It was the roar of people frantically running to him out of the night, like the phantoms that had so recently been with him in the cockpit, except that these people were all too real and soon had their hands upon him…29

  Never in his life, Lindbergh later wrote, had he ever seen anything like the mass of humanity waiting there for him, reaching for him, practically wanting to devour him. ‘Dozens of hands took hold of me, my legs, my arms, my body. I found myself on top of the crowd, in the centre of an ocean of heads that extended as far out into the darkness as I could see…It was like drowning in a human sea.’30

  As he was carried away, some people in the crowd started snatching at the plane, tearing off strips as souvenirs of this momentous event, this part of history, before the gendarmes succeeded in fighting them off.31 This was no ordinary crowd with an ordinary purpose—simply to greet a man who had achieved something tremendous. As many writers and commentators have noted, there was something in the air that night, something extraordinary, something that the world had never experienced before. It was instant international fame on a scale never approached before, the transformation of a flesh-and-blood person into a legendary persona whom the public felt it owned and almost had a right to devour.

  Six minutes after the Lone Eagle had landed, the New York Times received the cabled news and, after the editor had posted a bulletin of it in the front window of its offices on West 43rd Street, the word spread. Upstairs, journalists, editors and copy-editors were focusing on filling the first six pages of the following day’s edition with pure Lindbergh. Other papers around America were doing much the same, to the point that 25,000 more tons of newsprint than usual were used up.32

  Within minutes of that first posting in the window, the ferries on New York Harbour were tooting their whistles, ships were blowing their horns and fire-engines were letting off their sirens, even as people were spilling onto the streets, laughing, crying and exulting all at once. Lindy! Lindy! ‘Lucky Lindy’, the ‘Lone Eagle’, has done it! Can you believe it!?!?

  What Lindbergh had achieved—linking two nations and continents with one flight and suddenly making the world a much smaller place—so resonated with that world that he became almost instantly an international celebrity more famous than any person who had ever lived, at least while still alive. President Calvin Coolidge sent warmest congratulations on behalf of the nation, and noted that after the celebrations in Europe he would like Lindbergh to come home with his marvellous plane. Oh, and he was sending a boat to pick them both up—the light cruiser USS Memphis, with the commander of the Atlantic fleet, Vice-Admiral Guy Hamilton Burrage, as his host.

  In the meantime, a whirl of receptions and honours in Paris proceeded whereby Lindbergh was paraded before huge crowds of cheering Parisians—even as 100,000 telegrams and cables, 14,000 packages and three and a half million letters poured into the American Embassy.33

  Amidst the craziness of it all, Lindbergh made time to visit Charles Nungesser’s bereaved mother in her humble Parisian apartment. Crying, she kissed him on both cheeks and told him, ‘You are a very brave young man. I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart. I too, have a brave son, who I have never ceased to believe is still fighting his way back to civilisation.’34

  Softly, quietly, Lindbergh kept holding her hand as he told her she must never give up hope, that all things were possible.

  And then it was back to the craziness, with 10,000 Parisians having congregated outside Madame Nungesser’s apartment once the word got out that Lindbergh—‘Lindberrr! Lindberrr! Lindberrr!’ they chanted—was there.

  If there was one man in all Paris who could understand what it was like to be in the eye of a cyclone of such sudden and stunning celebrity, overwhelmed at what was happening, it was Louis Blériot. When Lindbergh was asked if there was any Frenchman he would particularly like to meet, the American had no hesitation in naming Blériot—and a grand lunch was duly arranged in Louis and Alicia Blériot’s gracious Parisian apartment in the Avenue Kléber.

  Yes, there were ministers of the French cabinet there, and leading figures in the French aviation industry, thirty powerful guests altogether, but the bond between the two men was immediate and personal. At the height of the lunch, the distinguished French aviator and successful aeroplane manufacturer—now a silvery-haired 55-year-old—stood up and made a speech in honour of France’s guest: ‘So that you may not forget me, I present you with an ordinary piece of wood, of no value to anyone, but which is very dear to me, a fragment of the victorious propeller of the Channel. Kindly accept it as a souvenir of this day that you have so affectionately devoted to me. Monsieur Lindbergh, I raise my glass to you, to your country, and to all who are dear to you.’35

  Warm applause all round, and Lindbergh was greatly touched by the gift. A short time
later, the two aviators adjourned to the balcony to have a quick private chat, with only Blériot’s daughter Simone along, s’il te plait, to translate for them, and to remember this exchange.

  Blériot: ‘J’admire votre courage in this marvellous exploit because you risked your life for thirty-six hours, while, moi, I risked mine for only thirty-seven minutes.’

  Lindbergh: ‘No, Monsieur Blériot, I don’t accept what you say, for I wouldn’t go up in your aeroplane for even one minute.’36

  Touché!

  A whirlwind tour through Europe followed, during which the reluctant but still gracious Lindbergh was fêted by presidents, prime ministers, princes and kings, including King George V himself, the keenest royal aviator of them all, who wasted no time in coming to the point once they met in Buckingham Palace.

  ‘Now tell me, Captain Lindbergh,’ said King George V, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India. ‘There is one thing I long to know. How did you pee?’37

  A short time later, the King introduced him to his family, including his infant granddaughter, Elizabeth.

  Finally, it was time to head home on the USS Memphis, which had come for him and the Spirit of St Louis, and, if it were possible, the celebration of his feat now ascended to a higher level still.

  On the day that Lindbergh left Europe, back in New York one of his previous rivals, Clarence Chamberlin, left New York in Columbia, a Wright-Bellanca WB-2, bound for Europe. On board he had Charles A. Levine, his principal sponsor for the trip. A day later they landed in Germany. Well done, but no-one cared particularly. The world had its hero and it was Lindbergh.

  For when, after passing through the Virginia Capes at five o’clock on the afternoon of 10 June 1927, the Memphis steamed up Chesapeake Bay, to arrive at the mouth of the Potomac River on the following morning, where President Coolidge and tens of thousands of adoring citizens were awaiting Lindbergh before the Washington Monument, he was not alone, even on the water. For this time, not only did he have his usual companions of Courage, Skill, Faith, Adventure, Ambition, Daring and Emprise along for the ride, but the cruiser was being escorted by eighty-eight planes and the US Navy dirigible Los Angeles above, and four destroyers all around her. Church bells rang out, fire sirens wailed in ecstasy and people on the shore cheered and screamed.

  Did any man, ever, anywhere, make such an entrance? Standing on the bridge of the cruiser beside Vice-Admiral Burrage, Lindbergh could no longer hold it in. ‘It is a great and wonderful sight, and I wonder if I really deserve all this.’38

  Maybe, maybe not. But when President Coolidge—after pausing to bow low in welcome to Lindbergh’s mother, who had joined the festivities and was with them on the elevated stage39—pinned the Distinguished Flying Cross on his lapel before the largest crowd ever assembled in Washington, and Lindbergh made a brief speech of 106 words in reply, the assembled press and radio reporters immediately compared it to the Gettysburg Address.40 About thirty-five million Americans had listened in around the country.

  As part of the general madness that ensued—four and a half million New Yorkers turned out for Lindbergh’s ticker-tape parade up Fifth Avenue—it became all the rage to offer large cash prizes to encourage flyers to travel long distances between two fixed points over natural obstacles. One such prize was for the first pilot to fly from San Francisco to Honolulu, a distance of 2387 miles. The offer was put up by a pineapple magnate from Hawaii by the name of James D. Dole, and he offered no less than US$35,000, consisting of US$25,000 for the first one there and US$10,000 for the second. The response was immediate, and with so many pilots announcing their intention to go for the prize, it soon became apparent that the only fair way to do it was to start them all off from the one place at the one time. And so the ‘Dole Race’ was born…

  News of Lindbergh’s stunning feat was published around Australia, with coverage in the Argus being typical: an account of the flight, and the overwhelming reception in Paris, and a map showing the flight path. Too, there were stunning details on just how much money was being offered to Lindbergh since his success: US$200,000 for acting roles; $250,000 from Vaudeville; $100,000 for miscellaneous writing; $50,000 for book royalties; $30,000 to $100,000 for testimonials and endorsements from manufacturers; and a film offer of $500,000 had already been cabled to Lindbergh in France.41 Particularly interesting to many, however, was an accompanying article entitled ‘AMERICA TO AUSTRALIA: LINDBERGH’S NEXT PLAN’, which quoted one of Lindbergh’s financial backers, Harry Knight, saying that the next goal of the Lone Eagle was to be the first man to fly across the Pacific, and that he would go via the Hawaiian Islands to land just north of Sydney.42 The Sydney Morning Herald editorial gave details that he would try to do it in two hops, with Hawaii being his first landing spot.43

  Lindbergh now crossing the Pacific? But that was Smithy’s plan! Smithy’s dream, dammit! He’d been wrestling with that pretty much since the Great War was over, and now Lindbergh was going to beat him to it? He thought not. Keith Anderson felt much the same. As did Charles Ulm. What was obvious to all of them was that time was now of the essence. If not Lindbergh himself, then someone would soon be crossing the Pacific, and they felt it was morally right it be them. Clearly, they had to fast-track plans to achieve it, and a big part of that really would be breaking the record for flying around Australia.

  By late May, Ulm had succeeded in doing a deal with the editor of the Sun, Herbert Campbell-Jones, who agreed to back them—in no small part on the strength of how many extra newspapers his group had sold a few years before when Ulm had provided the paper with exclusive pictures of the approaching British naval squadron. Too, there was the fact that in the newspaper war the Sun was the young, thrusting upstart taking on the likes of the conservative Sydney Morning Herald, Perth’s Guardian, Melbourne’s Age, and the Brisbane Courier, and it cared little for traditional ways. Aviation, itself young and thrusting, and filled with colourful characters, was the perfect subject for the Sun to ‘own’, and Herbert Campbell-Jones intended doing just that, whatever the cost—and if the conservative rags didn’t like it, then all to the good. The Sun would get exclusive reports from the flyers, who would be handsomely paid for their efforts.

  With the Sun on board, Ulm was soon able to stitch up the support of the Vacuum Oil Company as well, as it was clear that the whole venture would be receiving good publicity.

  And yet who should make the attempt with Smithy? This proved to be a serious point of contention. The Bristol Tourer could comfortably carry all three of them, but carrying any more than two pilots was unnecessary, considering that it would be better if the weight of the third man was carried in petrol, allowing for longer hops.

  Keith Anderson, who was a man as slow to anger as he was to calm down, rose to a boiling fury when he realised that Ulm and Kingsford Smith had agreed that he would be the one left behind—reduced to following them in the company’s other Bristol, a few days behind, carrying one of the other sponsors whom Ulm had lined up. And this, despite the fact that Ulm didn’t have a pilot’s licence, nor did he have the first clue about the mechanics of an aircraft! Anderson simply couldn’t believe that Smithy, his great friend, had done it to him…

  But in fact, Kingsford Smith was in a very difficult position. The first thing was, given Keith Anderson’s engagement to Bon Hilliard, his ex-girlfriend, Keith was hardly in a position to lecture him about what was and wasn’t acceptable under the Old Mates Act. And secondly, well, there was one incontrovertible fact that he couldn’t get around. For five years, he and Keith had talked endlessly about their dream to fly across the Pacific, and nothing had actually happened. Charles Ulm had been on the ground for only weeks, and already things were starting to fall into place, in terms of contacts, plans, sponsorship monies…the lot. If Smithy was really going to do this, really going to fly across the Pacific, then he felt he had to give Ulm a fair go in organising the whole thing
and if Ulm wanted to go in the first plane with him, then that was the way it was going to have to be. Sorry, Keith.

  So it was that when on the morning of 18 June 1927 Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm set off from Mascot airport to go round Australia in one of their Bristol Tourers, a fuming Keith Anderson was there to see them go.

  In the open cockpit, Ulm and Kingsford Smith wore thick World War I-issue flying suits, as necessary protection against the cold air and rain they would be experiencing, but which made them sweat like the Dickens as they kept busy feeding 5-gallon tins of petrol into their main tank via a funnel. A false start shortly after take-off necessitated their return to Mascot to use the other plane, but they were soon on their way again and before their out-stretched wings, the sometimes lush, sometimes stark, always endless landscape of Australia rolled out before them and gradually ceded to their assault.

  It was a gruelling exercise to fly for as much as twelve hours a day, only to land and become frantically busy getting the petrol supplies they had organised into the tanks and on board, and then work late into the night on the plane and the recalcitrant old engine to ensure everything would be ready for take-off at dawn the following day. Too, Ulm would have to find time to file his ‘EXCLUSIVE!’ reports to the Sun in Sydney, the Age in Melbourne and the Courier in Brisbane (and at least they would get the name right, whereas the Sydney Morning Herald had reported the departure of Mr C.T.P. Ulm and Mr Hungerford Smith!).44 Broadly, while Smithy’s key responsibility was to fly and look after the plane, Ulm did everything else; from helping to navigate, to cooking, organising, writing and assisting Smithy with the engine maintenance. One way or another, despite their disparate personalities—Smithy extroverted, and Ulm intense—they were, as they discovered, a very good team.