1930
Charles Kingsford Smith’s cigarette case
The magnificent men
Charles Kingsford Smith and his fellow aviator Charles Ulm were the best of friends. Ulm presented Kingsford Smith with this gold cigarette case inscribed ‘Smithy Old Son / We made it / Charles’. They had just crossed the Pacific from California to Queensland – the first aviators to do so. But they were soon to become the most bitter of enemies.
Kingsford Smith and Ulm served with great bravery and were wounded in World War I. On one Western Front mission Kingsford Smith was shot, fell unconscious and then pulled himself together and landed the plane.
After the war Kingsford Smith tried anything that would get him in the air. He gave lessons, worked the stunt-flying circuit in the USA, joined a flying circus and ran joy flights. Back in Australia in 1927, he and pilot Keith Anderson joined with Ulm in an air-transport business called Interstate Flying Services. That year, as a publicity stunt, Kingsford Smith and Ulm flew around Australia in 10 days and 5 hours, halving the previous record.
A combination of tenacity and publicity raised enough money for Kingsford Smith and Ulm to finance the first trans-Pacific air crossing. Together with two crew (navigator/engineer Harry Lyon and radio operator Jim Warner), they took off from Oakland, California, on 31 May 1928 in the Southern Cross, a three-engine Fokker monoplane. Tropical storms almost cost them their lives. The engines were so loud that the crew communicated with handwritten notes. Flying via Hawaii and Fiji to Brisbane, they made the jump in 83 hours 38 minutes, landing at Eagle Farm, Brisbane, on 9 June 1928 as national heroes.
The hard-drinking, womanising Kingsford Smith made the absolute most of his fame.
He and Ulm flew the Southern Cross to England, then across the Atlantic and North America to Oakland – the first around-the-world flight. In 1928, Kingsford Smith made the first non-stop flight across Australia, from Point Cook near Melbourne to Perth.
The following year, on their way to England, Kingsford Smith and Ulm were forced down in the Kimberley and were lost for almost a fortnight. Their friends Keith Anderson and Henry Smith ‘Bobby’ Hitchcock crash-landed in the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory and died of thirst and exposure while searching for them. Kingsford Smith and Ulm continued on to London and completed their flight in record time.
In 1930 Ulm was best man at Kingsford Smith’s wedding, but both the marriage and the two men’s friendship were destined for the rocks. Ulm ran the business and Kingsford Smith continued to fly stunts. In 1931, Kingsford Smith published his autobiography. Ulm found that he had mostly been written out of the narrative, and he contacted his lawyer. The friends never reconciled.
Kingsford Smith continued to take reckless challenges and to pursue publicity even as his fortunes declined. By 1932, when he was knighted, he was running joy flights.
Ulm established the mail service from Australia to New Zealand and intended to establish a trans-Pacific service. With a crew of two, he took off from Oakland in December 1934 but failed to make it to Hawaii and was never found.
There was only ever going to be one fate for Kingsford Smith. On 6 November 1935, while flying at night on a London–Sydney run, his plane went down off the coast of Burma, south-east of Rangoon. Wreckage from the Lady Southern Cross confirmed Smithy’s fate, although his body was never recovered.
Kingsford Smith and Ulm’s courage connected Australia across the Pacific and to Europe. Their friendship helped Kingsford Smith achieve greatness, but his ego tore the two men apart.