The Greatest Air Race, England to Australia 1919

There is a clear comparison between the Microlight Adventure 2007 and The Greatest Air Race 1919. While the Microlight Adventure is were Miles Hilton Barber will be the first blind man to fly from London to Sydney, The Greatest Air Race was the first air race from England to Australia.

The flying teams in 1919 used the latest technology available to them and the Microlight Flying team has done the same. Both the Greatest Air Race and the Microlight Adventure will have the same impact, enabling future generations to benefit from the experiences that the adventure throws at them. More importantly in both cases the men who take part are truly inspirational and brave.

This is the story of those who flew in The Greatest Air Race 1919.

The original race was started on a whim of Australia's prime minister at the time, Billy Hughes. Hughes was a small fiery man of Welsh extraction who happened to be in Europe for the great conference of world leaders at Versailles to carve up a defeated Germany. He saw that aviation was the coming thing, and wanted to encourage Australians to fly.

On his own initiative, but without checking with his Cabinet or the increasingly independent Australian parliament, Hughes offered a £10,000 cash prize from the public purse for the first Australian to fly from England to Australia in 30 days, on a British-built aircraft. There was a big political row about his arbitrary decision, but he had his way.

Eighteen men set off in seven aircraft. Six of them, in two planes, made it to Australia, after many adventures. Eight men, in three aircraft, crashed en route, and though not seriously injured, were unable to continue their flights. Four men, in two aircraft, were killed.

DOUGLAS AND ROSS

The first to die were Captain Roger Douglas, from Charters Towers in Queensland, and Lieutenant Leslie Ross, from Moruya, in New South Wales. They had chosen an Alliance Endeavour for the event, a single-engined machine with enclosed cabin space for both men, specially designed for long distance flying, with upholstered seats, cupboards containing quinnine for malaria, flasks of tea and coffee, water, ear-plugs, and a big supply of chewing gum (all the crews were sponsored by Wrigleys).

In a test flight in early November, 1919, prior to departure, the Alliance was damaged on landing, but Douglas and Ross were under pressure to set off quickly for Australia because Ross Smith had already left. Douglas and Ross prepared to go a day later. Douglas told the press that because of the Alliance's greater speed, he expected to overtake the Smiths the following day. On November 13, after hours of delay caused by bad weather they took off from Hounslow, now Heathrow Airport at 11.30 am.

They did not survive for long. Douglas made only one entry in his log book, recording a height of 1,200 feet. Six minutes into the flight, eye-witnesses in Surbiton saw the Alliance emerging from clouds at between 500 and 1,000 feet, go into a spin, straighten out, then spin again and crash into an English apple orchard near the cemetery. The 515 gallons of petrol they were carrying saturated the area, but there was no fire. Ross was killed instantly; Douglas died a few minutes later.

The Commission of Enquiry later blamed the crash on pilot error, in spinning the aircraft at a low altitude which did not allow enough room to regain control. The enquiry condemned the practice of enclosing the pilot's cockpit with windows, claiming it reduced vision!

Douglas' strong-minded girlfriend, Mabel Woolley, did not accept the enquiry's findings. She interrupted the coronor a number of times during the inquest. Later she told reporters she had witnessed the bad landing which she blamed for the crash, and said that her fiance had lost confidence and was uneasy about the aircraft.

HOWELL AND FRASER

Two others who were killed in the 1919 race were Captain Cedric Howell, one of the greatest of Australia's fighter pilots, and Lieutenant George Fraser, from Coburg, Victoria. Howell, who came from Adelaide, had been highly decorated in the War - DSO, MC, DFC - and had flown the legendary Sopwith Camel to such effect that he shot down 32 German aircraft. All the citations pay tribute to his fine airmanship. Fraser was an air mechanic, at 40 the oldest competitor in the race.

Flying a single-engined Martinsyde A1, they took off on December 4, as Ross and Keith Smith were nearing the end of their journey. The Martinsyde was well-equipped, with a range of 1,200 miles.

In bad weather, Howell and Fraser made it across the Channel, headed for the mountains north of Dijon in France and climbed into thick clouds, "trusting to luck we would get through". Four days after leaving England they reached Naples, the fastest of any of the competitors through the European winter. Crossing the foot of Italy, the weather was so bad both airmen were air-sick, but they reached the Southern port of Taranto, and on December 9, one day before Ross Smith reached Darwin, they set off to cross the sea to Greece and Athens.

After eight hours in the air they were seen flying over St George's Bay, Corfu, only a hundred miles from their take-off point. It was never discovered why they had flown such a short distance. Their aircraft fell into the sea in semi-darkness. Local peasants said they heard cries for help over the water, but the sea was too rough to go out. The aircraft was located the following day in 12 feet of water, and the log recovered. Captain Howell's body was washed ashore and later recovered from its Corfu grave to be buried with full military honours in Heidleberg Cemetary in Victoria. Lieutenant Fraser was never found.

WILLIAMS, WILLIAMS, RENDLE AND POTTS

The first airmen to drop out of the race were the four in the Blackburn Kangaroo, known as the "bomber with a pouch". The navigator was Captain Hubert Williams, of Mt Bryan East in South Australia, later knighted for his aviation exploits in the Arctic. The two pilots were Lieutenant Valdamar Rendle, from Brisbane in Queensland, and Lieutenant Reg Williams, from Wodonga, Victoria. Their mechanic was the exotically named Garnsey H.M.St Clair Potts, from Euroa in Victoria.

The Blackburn Kangaroo was a twin-engined biplane, originally intended to be piloted by Charles Kingsford Smith, the legendary "Smithy" and later the most famous of Australia’s airmen. But Kingsford Smith was a poor navigator, there were personality conflicts and he was ousted.

The Kangaroo had a top speed of 107 mph, and on one day's flying before it crashed, it covered 120 miles in five hours which would have been a frustrating experience. The Kangaroo struggled across Europe in bad weather - snow, storms, high winds - and then made the jump from Taranto in Southern Italy to Crete in one day, December 5. They landed safely, but the airfield at Suda Bay was notoriously bad, with a tendency to flood, and the Kangaroo was bogged down in mud for the following three days.

On December 8, they left Crete to fly across the Mediterranean to Cairo. Forty miles out to sea, an oil leak developed and they turned back. Rendle skillfully returned the aircraft to Crete on one engine, but they crashed on landing into a wall protecting a mental hospital. Though the aircraft was damaged, no one was injured. The crew were waiting for spare parts when they heard that Ross Smith had made it to Darwin. They lost heart and returned to England by ship.

POULET AND BENOIST

The two Frenchmen set out before anyone else, October 14, a month before Ross Smith. Etienne Poulet, the pilot, wanted to commemorate the memory of his great friend, Jules Vedrines, a French ace killed on an attempted flight to Australia in April, 1919.

"I was Vedrines' friend," said Poulet. "He had planned to make the flight. Death prevented Vedrines. I replace him. Voila Tout!"

Poulet used all his savings to make the flight, and chose a Caudron C4 biplane, fitted with two 80 HP rotary engines manufactured by the famous Le Rhone company. Cooling in rotary engines is provided by the motor spinning at the same speed as the propeller, but they were not reliable. Poulet was accompanied by an old friend, mechanic Jean Benoist.

Their aircraft had a top speed of 94 mph, and cruised at 70 mph, as a result, they made slow progress in bad weather. Their route took them through Rome, Albania, Greece, Turkey and Syria, and what was then Mesepotamia and Persia (now Iraq and Iran). They had mechanical problems in Beluchistan, and were plagued by tribesmen, who thought they were devils and threw flaming torches at them while they repaired their aircraft. They landed at Karachi in what was then British India (now Pakistan) on the day Ross Smith took off from London in the Vickers Vimy. Benoist went down with malaria, and the Frenchmen dragged their way slowly, up through Delhi and down to Calcutta, knowing four formidable Australians were chasing them and getting close.

The Frenchmen were at Akyab in Burma when they were caught by Ross Smith. They flew together to Rangoon, and set off together for Bangkok. But the Frenchmen turned back because of rotten weather, and on December 9 came a cropper with a broken propeller and a cracked piston in a place called Moulmein, still in Myanmar, a hundred miles across the water from Rangoon.

MATTHEWS AND KAY

The two competitors who flew the furthest without actually reaching Australia were the first Australians to set off. They were Captain George Matthews, a Gallipoli veteran from South Australia, and Sergeant Thomas Kay, from Spring Mount, Victoria. Both were employed by the Sopwith Aviation Company. Matthews and Kay flew a two-seater single-engine biplane, the Sopwith Wallaby, which had a cruising speed of 107 mph, fast for its day.

They left on October 21, but were held up by fog in France, and captured in war-torn Bulgaria to be imprisoned as alleged Bolsheviks. They escaped only when their guards were drunk. In Turkey they were stuck in a quagmire, and repaired a leaking water-jacket with that valuable stand-by, hardened chewing gum. They crossed Syria, Iraq and Iran with a troubled engine, damaging their aircraft once in a forced landing in a 40 mph crosswind.

At Karachi, Matthews and Kay met up with Ray Parer and John Mackintosh, two other competitors, who kept them occasional company in the series of misfortunes that dogged all four flyers across India. They met again in Calcutta where Matthews had a warped propeller, which restricted speed to 75 mph. There were delays at Rangoon, fever in Bangkok, and engine problems in Indonesia. On April 17, 1920, trying to reach Bima and less than 2,000 miles from Darwin, they crashed in a banana plantation on the island of Bali. Kay broke his ribs, and the Wallaby was damaged beyond their ability to repair it. They took the wreckage on to Australia by ship.

PARER AND MACKINTOSH

Two pilots who did make it, were Ray Parer and John Mackintosh. They were the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kids of aviation, classical examples of the hooligan element inside pilots. Parer came from Melbourne in Victoria, earned his wings in World War 1, but had been banned from combat flying because of an alleged weak heart (considering that much of what happened to Parer would have caused a normal man a hundred heart-failures, the doctor who made that diagnosis was mistaken).

Mackintosh was born in Aberdeen in Scotland, worked his passage to Australia, and was a stretcher-bearer with the Australians at Gallipoli. He had made one flight only in his training as a pilot when the war ended, and learned how to fly an aircraft on the Australia flight.

Like hundreds of other Australian pilots, Parer and Mackintosh were mooching around London after the war when they heard about the prize money offered for the first flight to Australia. They were in the middle of securing sponsorship from a Scottish millionaire distiller, Peter Dawson, when news came through that the Smith brothers had won it. They decided to make the flight anyway, backed by Peter Dawson, and named the old DH9 they bought "P.D.". It was a single-engine two-seater biplane, used as a bomber in the war.

Both men set off in a heavily laden aircraft on January 8, 1920, into a 40 mph wind, and an amazing series of adventures. They had to land in Paris to repair a wheel, and passed some time virtually living in the Folies Bergeres - Parer suggested later that all the girls wanted was someone lively to talk to, an extremely unlikely excuse for delaying his flight. Mackintosh, who was "business manager", carried various bogus documents which he waved at officials to convince them, sometimes successfully, that they were as good as cash in payment for the fuel they picked up.

They soon ran into mechanical problems, losing all their oil pressure crossing the sea to Pisa. Heading north, they were lucky to land the aircraft without the engine seizing up. Not long afterwards, petrol gushed out of the engine at 3,000 feet and caught fire, scorching the fusilage. Parer side-slipped the aircraft vertically down to 1,000 feet to blow the flames out, landed and fixed the jammed carburettor needle that caused the trouble.

Peter Dawson bailed them out of a high-living spree in Rome, after they had been penniless for days, living on credit, and on February 2, 1920, they set off for Naples. On the way, Mackintosh decided he wanted to photograph Mount Vesuvius. But when they flew over the smoking crater, there was a terrific bang, the engine cut, and they plummeted downwards. Parer ripped skin off the palms of both hands holding himself in the cockpit, then the engine started again, and they escaped. They flew over the Appennines at 14,000 feet in freezing cold, and lost all their maps on the way to Brindisi when a storage compartment blew open. In Athens, they wined and dined for five solid days on Peter Dawson's money, and then flew - without maps - to Suda Bay in Crete.

Their engine popped and spluttered all the way across the Mediterranean to Egypt. At one stage they were down to 500 feet, with their life-jackets blown up. But they reached Egypt and landed on a strip of beach at Mersa Matruh, and then flew on to Cairo, where they obtained maps through to Karachi. There was another monumental party in the Cairo gin-joints, this one lasting 5 days.

Flying north to Mesepotemia, they were forced to land in the dark by the light of the moon in the desert, and kept themselves warm in the bitter cold by burning every bush within reach. When it rained they went to sleep in the open cockpits. The following morning they woke to find an Arab standing by the wing. Parer drew some maps in the sand and asked the Arab where they were. They worked out they were only 30 minutes flying from Bagdad.

More Arabs clustered around, and Mackintosh tried to "impress" them to go away by hurling a can in the air and shooting holes in it with his revolver. The noise doubled the number of spectators. Mackintosh then took a couple of grenades out of the cockpit and beckoned the Arabs to follow him. He led them to a nearby dune, threw the grenades, and he and Parer dropped to the ground. The Arabs were thrown off their feet, and were less than amused. Both pilots legged it for their aircraft, swung the propeller, and got into the air ahead of an angry mob, which Mackintosh did nothing to placate by "indicating to them an Australian farewell in no uncertain manner."

Mackintosh continued his diplomatic mission through Persia, delighting in flying low over villages and firing a Very light pistol in red, yellow and green colours. In 1920, just the sight of an aeroplane was enough to terrify remote villages; the lights added an extra dimension. Had they been forced to land, it is doubtful if they would have survived the experience.

In British India, disheveled and disreputable, they arrived in the capital, Delhi, to be given a frigid welcome. Parer took umbrage at this, and was also insulted when he was reported for not paying for fuel supplies. In Calcutta, again penniless, they fell in with an ex-Indian Army major called Cairncross who had little difficulty persuading them to make money by leaflet-dropping. This often caused riots, with horses bolting and crowds of people fighting to catch the falling paper. But they made £2,000, and paid off as many of their debts as they had to.

Local officials heaved sighs of relief when Parer and Mackintosh set off on April 1 for Akyab in Burma. But flying to Rangoon, just after crossing mountains into the Irrawaddy Valley, the engine stopped. Parer brought PD down to land on a sand bank in the middle of the river. Thousands of friendly Burmese gathered, and hundreds swam to the sandbank, making takeoff impossible. Mackintosh, true to character, cleared the crowd with his Very pistol. Both airmen then persuaded hundreds of people to carry the aircraft across the river, which they did, with water lapping shoulder-high. More sign language, and out came the machetes to clear a make-shift runway. The two pilots took off safely and flew to Rangoon, dropping leaflets over the city before landing at the race-course. But the European reception committee which had been waiting for them was upset when they did not arrive on time, and had gone home in a huff.

It was in Rangoon that a local Chinese millionaire proposed a marriage between two of his pretty daughters and Parer and Mackintosh, in an effort to gain entry into the snobbish British clubs in the City. Ray Parer is said to have declined ("time is too short for a serious romance"), and persuaded Mackintosh to join him in politely declining the offer.

They set off on April 4 to cross the Gulf of Mataban, heading for Moulmein. At 4,000 feet, halfway through the hundred mile journey, a hole was blown in the exhaust pipe, sending flames down one side of the fusilage. At the same time petrol began over-flowing down the other side. Parer formed the opinion that three cylinders were moving loosely in the crankcase (and was confirmed in his view when the engine stopped). Mackintosh blew up all the spare tyres in preparation for a water landing, but as they were low over the water the engine came back to life, and began running unevenly.

Moulmein came into view, with Poulet and Benoist still in residence, and Parer circled the race-course to land. But a huge crowd of Burmese swarmed onto the course to watch them, effectively blocking their landing area. Parer chose to crash in a small area, wiping off the undercarriage, breaking the propeller, and crushing the radiator, but avoiding the spectators. He leapt out of the aircraft and started lashing the enthusiastic Burmese with his fists, furious at what he thought was the end of his flight, and was just refrained from shooting a few.

But they found one way or another to repair the aircraft, fitting a huge Italian propeller that did not really work, and two car radiators in place of the broken aircraft radiator. It was not considered safe to take off from the race course with two people on board, so Mackintosh drove 60 miles to a beach at Amherst, while Parer used the main street of Moulmein as a runway, with the DH9 as lightly loaded as possible. He was unable to climb any higher than 1,000 feet.

They flew on down the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, but their oil pressure dropped, and when they reached Penang, the engine seized. They landed on a polo field while a game was in progress, scattering players in all directions, and were immediately criticised because "no permission had been granted...or even sought!"

This was on May 26, 1920. Three weeks later the intrepid pair were ready to go again, and towed their DH9 to a nearby race-course. Local officials reluctantly cut down two trees to enable Parer to take-off, just as well because he barely cleared the five foot fence. But 10 miles later the exhaust pipe vibrated loose. They landed on a road in a rubber estate, breaking a tail-skid, repaired them both, and then set off for Singapore where they landed on a golf course.

An Australian businessman gave them workshop facilities, and Parer managed to negotiate a sponsorship deal with a sportsman in Shell Oil - free petrol to Darwin. At the same time they heard that a sea-watch by the cruiser HMAS Sydney, arranged for the race, had been called off, so they were on their own through the Dutch East Indies (now called Indonesia).

They had more engine problems hopping from island to island. On the way to Surabaya Parer was forced to land on a dry river bed. They got off safely the following day, with a make-shift sand-mat runway. But at Surabaya itself the DH9 was taxied into a ditch, crushing the undercarriage again, and breaking yet another propeller. Local Dutch authorities came to their help, ordered a new undercarriage and a propeller to be constructed in Jakarta (then called Batavia), and after a six-day delay, Parer and Mackintosh took off for Bima.

By this time they were both physically exhausted. They had had little sleep, poor meals, and were depressed and nervous in the tropical weather. Despite this, they made a successful jump to Bima and then across to Timor, the last island before Australia. They spent a day there constructing a raft as a life-saver if they did not make it across 550 miles of the shark-infested Timor Sea. The raft was made from two tyre inner tubes (inflated), two bamboo poles, and wire netting to "serve as a protection against sharks". They tied it the wing and wondered if the aircraft would fly.

On August 2, heavily loaded, the DH9 was lined up for take-off. Parer cleared a spluttering engine by removing a piece of perished rubber from the carburettor. They barely managed to clear the trees at the end of the runway, and climbed painfully to their ceiling of 1,000 feet. They had fuel for seven and a half hours flying. After six hours Parer was worried, feeling he should have sighted land long ago. He and Mackintosh were continually seeing mirages, alternatively land or steamships, which vanished when they rubbed their eyes. Then they saw Bathurst Island, and flew on to Darwin. They made a perfect landing and as they rolled to a halt on the runway the engine stopped - out of fuel!

They had been 206 days on their odessy, and were awarded Air Force Crosses. The more the Australian public heard about the antics the two airmen had got up to, the more they loved them.

John Mackintosh was killed in 1921 when he crashed an aeroplane carrying two passengers. It was said one of the passengers had been drunk, gone beserk and attacked Mackintosh..."as often happened" in those days.

Ray Parer took part in the 1934 England-Australia air race, and reached Darwin again after a similar series of adventures. He died in a hospital bed at the age of 73 in 1967.

ROSS AND KEITH SMITH, SHIERS AND BENNETT

The 1919 race was won by four men in a Vickers Vimy bomber. They were Ross Smith and his brother Keith, and Jim Bennett and Wally Shiers. But it was Ross Smith who most dominated my flight, as he came to dominate the 1919 race.

Ross was born in Semaphore, South Australia, in 1892, younger by a couple of years than Keith. Educated at Queens School in north Adelaide, he was school cricket captain. The whole team enlisted in the First World War; five were killed. In 1915, Ross was sent to Gallipoli, where Australia came face to face with modern warfare, and eight thousand young Australians died of the experience. He was there four and a half months, and wrote a graphic private account of his experiences, as an invalid on the way to England.

In 1916, now a lieutenant, he was transferred to a machine-gun section with the Australian Light Horse in Egypt, and fought in the Battle of Romani, which prevented the Turks taking Cairo. Later that year he transferred to the Australian Flying Corps, first as an observer, later as a pilot, and was promoted captain. He became personal pilot to Lawrence of Arabia.

By the end of the war he had been awarded two Military Crosses and three Distinguished Flying Crosses; none of these were handed out with the cornflakes. Once, as an observer, he landed by a downed British pilot and held the Turks at bay with his revolver while the pilot was rescued. Another time he chased an enemy aircraft down to the ground behind enemy lines, forced the occupants out, landed, and then destroyed the machine on the ground.

If it is all Boy's Own stuff, which it is, Ross Smith had lived a very full life by the time he was 26. He had also been very lucky.

At the end of the war he surveyed potential air routes between Cairo and Calcutta, flying a Handley Page bomber, and went on by ship to recommend landing sites between India and Australia.

His brother Keith, navigator on the Australia flight, had been a flying instructer in the war, after unsuccessfully applying to join the Australian Army and paying his own passage to England to enlist. He was a lieutenant at the end of the war.

The other two crew members were Sergeant Jim Bennett, from St Kilda in Melbourne, and Sergeant Wally Shiers, from Stepney, South Australia. They were both mechanics and had accompanied Ross Smith on the survey he made prior to the Australia flight.

They were backed by the Vickers Aircraft Company, which had provided Alcock and Brown with the aircraft that first crossed the Atlantic earlier in 1919. At first, Vickers were reluctant to get involved with the Australians. They had one success, why risk their reputation in another event they could lose? But Ross Smith's war record, plus heavy lobbying by a British General, A.E.Borton, convinced Vickers to provide a Vimy bomber.

The Vimy was a twin engined bi-plane aircraft, huge by the standards of the day, fitted with Rolls Royce Eagle Mark 8 engines. There were only four of these engines in existance, and one installed in Ross's aircraft had been held as a spare for the Atlantic flight. The starboard radiator of Ross's aircraft had actually crossed the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland with Alcock and Brown.

The Vimy could cruise at 90 mph with a maximum speed of 110 mph. It carried 516 gallons of petrol, and could stay in the air more than 14 hours.

Ross Smith's approach to the flight was professional. He made his crew do physical exercises daily to be fit for the ordeal. Shiers and Bennett worked the engines over until they were familiar with them. Keith culled maps and noted landmarks over half the world. Ross dealt with the organisation and flight planning. Spares were stowed everywhere in the aircraft, including bully beef, Army dog biscuits (about the size of a bathroom tile and, it was said, almost as hard) Bourneville chocolate, Bovril, and Wrigley's chewing gum. They were obsessed with cutting weight, and resolved to leave England with only the clothes they stood up in, plus shaving gear and a toothbrush. Their registration mark was G-EAOU - "God 'Elp All Of Us".

By the second week in November, 1919, they were impatient to go, but the weather was poor. Matthews had left on October 21 and was somewhere in Germany. Poulet and Benoist were in India, and, though not in the race, would steal all the thunder if they got to Australia first. Then on November 11, one year to the day after the Great War ended, the fog lifted and the rain stopped. Ross Smith flew the Vimy from Weybridge to Hounslow. Next day they wheeled the aircraft out and made it ready to go, even though the weather forecast was not encouraging.

Despite the weather, they took off just after 9 o'clock in the morning, carrying away the equipment of a persistent press photographer who stood at the end of the runway. Skies were clear over the English Channel, but they ran into cloud over France, and climbed to 9,000 feet to try and see where they were going. The ground was not visible, and they flew dead reckoning above the cloud. It was cold and their sandwiches froze solid. After hours of blind flying, Ross wrote in his diary: "This sort of flying is a rotten game. The cold is hell, and I am silly for ever having embarked on the flight."

But they had a following wind, and when they broke through a hole in the clouds and descended, found they were over Roanne, just 40 miles north of their destination, Lyons. Ross later said this was the most difficult stage of the whole flight.

Next day they reached Pisa in Italy, where they were bogged down all the following day. It rained so heavily the airfield was flooded. They were only able to get off on December 15 because Bennett sat on the tail to keep the nose from dipping into the mud, and then scrambled on board as the Vimy gathered speed, helped by a rope around his waist, held by Shiers. That day they had the first of two emergency landings to repair an oil-gauge. Landings-out were much more common in those days, and caused far less comment than they do today. They flew on to Rome, averaging only 50 mph in a strong headwind.

On December 16, they flew to Taranto, at the foot of Italy, after crossing the Appennines in the roughest passage of the whole flight. In one air pocket they estimated they fell 1,000 feet. Next day, in low cloud and driving rain, they travelled via Corfu and the southernmost tip of Greece, past Kythira to land in Suda Bay in Crete.

In Taranto, and Crete, and most of the route they followed, the Smiths landed at RAF camps. These was the days of the British Mandate, one of the later phases of Empire-building, and after the First World War there were British bases everywhere. This made the politics of the flight, by contrast with today, very easy indeed.

On November 18, the seventh day out of London, in more low cloud and rain, they set off across the Cretan mountains and then the Mediterranean to Africa. They made land-fall at Mersa Matruh and flew directly to Cairo. It was here the famous chewing gum incident occured, when Shiers discovered a broken manifold pipe and no replacement could be found for 2 weeks. The flight could have ended there as far as the 30 day limit went, but Shiers set the whole crew to chewing gum. He pasted the gum around the cracked pipe and wrapped tape and glue over it. Ross test-flew the repair and found it worked. Wrigleys must have been pleased with the publicity. It was the sort of repair my engineer Mike Atkinson would have been proud of.

Ross was worried about the delays to his flight, especially at Pisa, and wanted to catch Poulet and Benoist in India. Instead of resting as planned on November 19, he flew on to Damascus, crossing battlefields where he had fought as a machine gunner, and through a thunderstorm that soaked them to the skin. On the following morning they found the Vimy, which weighed 6.5 tons, sinking in the mud, and only just got away from Damascus. Heading for Baghdad, they landed short before darkness at an Indian cavalry camp at Ramadie. The Indian troopers proved invaluable; 50 of them held the Vimy down half the night when a storm blew up. It was noon before the broken cables and damage were repaired.

Ross Smith flew on to Basra in Iraq, then an RAF station, where he called a rest-day to allow Shiers and Bennett to use the maintenance facilities. On November 23, they flew to Bandar Abbas in Iran, and then, with no problems, they made a long flight through to Karachi, "Gateway to India" and a great welcome. They were delighted to find the Frenchmen were in Delhi, only one stage ahead of them. But when Ross reached Delhi on November 25, Poulet and Benoist had left and were struggling through to Calcutta. By this time, Ross knew he could catch them whenever he wanted, and coolly called another rest-day. The four Australians spent all day working the Vimy over, because they would soon be entering uncharted territory where there were no airfields, and landings would be made wherever they could, often on racetracks.

On November 27, the sixteenth day after they left London, Ross left for Allahabad. An hour into the flight they had a second forced landing at Muttra, again with a faulty oil gauge. Shiers fixed it and they climbed away and circled the Taj Mahal at Agra, taking the first ever aerial photographs of the palace, before an uneventful flight down the Ganges to Allahabad. Poulet had been there and gone, and was still ahead of them.

Ross was still looking for the Frenchmen when he set off on November 28 for Calcutta, but when he got there he found a huge crowd waiting at the only possible landing field, the race-course. It was a tight landing, and luckily, no racing was in progress. Poulet had left that morning.

November 29, 1919, was a Saturday, and there was racing at Rangoon, which could not possibly be cancelled to allow one of the "Flying Gharries" to land. So Ross Smith was forced to go to Rangoon in two stages, via Akyab in Burma. He nearly did not make it. The aircraft was ten feet off the ground at Calcutta when a hawk flew into the port propeller. The Vimy shuddered, but though the big bird ended up as so much meat and feathers, the propeller was not shattered and the aircraft continued to fly. One of the hawk's wings remained jammed in the bracing wires through to Burma.

At Akyab, on the coast of Burma, the Australians at last caught up with Poulet and Benoist. The six of them had a party, discussing each others flight, and resolved to fly on for a while together. Ross must have known the Frenchmen could not stay with him for long. On November 30, the Caudron left an hour ahead of Ross (the Australians were suffering from the previous night's party, and had to catch up with maintenance) but Ross's much faster machine was still the first to reach Rangoon. It was also the first-ever aeroplane to land there. Poulet took two hours longer, but made it in time to have dinner with the governor, the splendidly named Sir Reginald Craddock.

Both Poulet and Ross Smith were nervous about the flight over the Thai mountains to Bangkok, covering terrain as inhospitable as any in the world. They resolved to fly together again. Both crews were up just before daybreak, but the Frenchmen had trouble starting one engine. As it was hot and very humid, the Australians wanted to get into the air, so Ross took off early. Again, he nearly did not make it.

There were three factors working against an easy takeoff; the small racecourse, the huge size of the Vimy, and the heavy load of fuel. Ross felt he had just enough speed to clear the fence at the far end, but from the ground Poulet thought the Vimy was going to hit a tree. The aircraft wheels just brushed through the branches, however, and flew on. One foot lower, said Poulet to those watching, and it would have crashed.

The Thai mountain range, east of Moulmein, was covered in cloud. Ross believed the mountains to be 7,000 feet high, and took a chance and climbed the Vimy to its ceiling, 11,000 feet. They were fighting a 20 mph headwind and were soon enveloped by cloud. Visibility was so bad at times that Shiers and Bennett in the back cockpit could not see the Smith brothers in the front. They had little confidence in their maps. Their plan was to fly at 11,000 feet until they estimated they were through the mountains, and then descend to find out if they were right. If they were wrong it would all be over very quickly.

They flew blind for an hour before descending. What a feeling of profound relief it must have been when they broke through cloud at 4,000 feet, and found themselves in the valley north of Bangkok. They landed there without further incident.

On December 2, Ross left Bangkok, heading for Singora, following the east coast of Malaysia. The weather was fine at first, but later they ran into a tropical rainstorm. The rain lashed against their faces and made it impossible to wear goggles. Ross and Keith took turns to fly. One poked his head up and held the wheel as long as he could endure the tearing rain, normally about five minutes, then the other took over. In this way, they flew for three hours.

They left the storm 80 miles from Singora, but when they reached their "landing field" found that whoever constructed it had no idea what an aircraft required. Trees had been cut down, but tree stumps were left, some as high as 18 inches. They had not enough fuel to go on to Singapore, so Ross chose a narrow track to land on in a cross-wind, and put the Vimy down safely, breaking only the tail-skid.

Instead of the 500 gallons of fuel they were expecting to buy in Singora, there was only 500 litres. Telegrams were sent for extra fuel, to be dispatched by rail. There was a tropical rainstorm overnight, ten inches of rain fell, and the four weary Australians had to hang on to the Vimy to stop it being blown away.

Next day Ross and his bedraggled crew and hundreds of Malays began uprooting trees to make a decent runway. This they completed by noon, 50 yards wide by 400 yards long. The tail-skid was repaired. Now all they needed was fuel, which arrived late, and with rain still falling it was considered unsafe to put it in the aircraft. Refuelling was normally done by Keith handing Ross a 4-gallon can, and Ross pouring it slowly through chamois leather into the tanks.

On December 4, Ross spent his 27th birthday pouring 50 cans of petrol into the Vimy. Then he told his crew to get on board and they lined up for takeoff. There were rainshowers, and deep puddles down the whole "runway". Fifty yards into the takeoff run the Vimy hit a puddle and lost momentum. The aircraft went through three more puddles, and with 70 yards left still had not reached flying speed. But Ross kept the throttle open, the aircraft staggered off the ground, brushed through the branches of trees, and flew on.

They went via Kuala Lumpur down to Singapore, and landed on yet another racecourse, the smallest they had encountered so far. Jim Bennett did his tail-balancing act once more, this time hanging on to the plane to slow it down before it hit the fence at the far end. Singapore was another rest day, to prepare for island-hopping 2,500 miles to Darwin, and they jettisoned everything they could (mainly photographic equipment) to make it easier to get away from the tiny racecourse.

December 6, 1919, was another difficult takeoff. The Vimy struggled into the air and approached the trees beyond the fence, looking to observers certain to crash. But Ross heaved it through the top branches of the trees and wallowed on to safety. They headed south to the Equator and the daily thunderstorms that are a feature of Sumatra and Java. It was a long flight through to Bandoeng, nine hours, and the Australians now had the œ10,000 cash prize firmly in view.

They were met in Bandoeng by representatives of the Dutch Air Force. Ross was anxious to find out if his recommendations to establish airfields at Bima and Timor had been carried out. They had. The Australians, worn-out from the nearly non-stop flying, set off on December 7 for Surabaya in Eastern Java. When they landed, however, the Vimy began to sink below the surface. They were bogged down, and could not get out! Thousands of Indonesians pushed and pulled the Vimy to try and free it, and it was so mauled there were serious fears for its safety if it flew again.

By nightfall they had been trying for nine hours to free the Vimy. Morale dropped to its lowest point on the whole flight. Then Keith Smith suggested borrowing bamboo mats and making a runway of them. All night the word went out, and thousands of natives turned up with mats out of their houses. They spent the morning laying the "runway". At the first attempt, hundreds of mats blew away in the slipstream and the Vimy failed to get off. The mats were nailed to the ground, making a path 300 yards long. Ross had another attempt at takeoff, and shortly before noon on December 8, pulled the aircraft into the air. They flew on without incident to Bima, 350 miles away, and landed between the two mountains that characterise that island.

The flight from Bima to Timor was without incident. Ross landed at Atamboea, now part of East Timor, and they spent the rest of the day preparing for what came to be called "The White Knuckle Route", across the sea to Darwin.

On December 10, there was a dense haze covering the sea at sun-rise. They were tense, but reassured themselves ..."after all," said Ross, "Alcock and Brown flew 2,000 miles in a Vimy, so why should we worry about 500?" But they did. It was Darwin, or the Timor Sea and all its sharks. There was a faint chance they would land by HMAS Sydney, a cruiser on patrol halfway across, stationed there to rescue those in the Great Race. But it was a risky flight, the more so in that winds between Timor and Australia are notoriously unpredictable and can blow through 360 degrees in one day.

As usual in all the airfields south of India, there was a difficult takeoff in Atamboea, another brush with tree-tops. A flight like theirs needed luck, and they had it. (Howell and Fraser, who had died only hours earlier back in the Mediterranean, did not.)

Ross Smith set off across the islandless sea to follow a compass course for 500 miles. On time, on course, they came across HMAS Sydney, and flew low over the decks while the sailors cheered. Several hours later, Ross sighted Bathhurst, and they were able to see from 20 miles out the white marker on the Darwin aerodrome. It was called Fanny Bay, opposite the local prison. At 3.40 pm local time, 27 days and 20 hours after leaving London, they touched down, their fuel tanks dry.

"We almost fell into Darwin," said Wally Shiers later.

They won the œ10,000 for the Darwin flight, but all their accumulated luck ran out when they flew on to Sydney. They broke a propeller in the Outback, and blew up an engine at Charlesville in Queensland, causing a delay of 6 weeks. Their aircraft became known as "The Flying Chicken Coop" from all the wire binding it together. They took 96 days to fly London to Sydney, compared with 28 days London to Darwin. But they were feted wherever they went.

Ross and Keith were knighted for their exploits. Shiers and Bennett were given commissions, and Air Force Crosses. Sir Keith Smith died in 1955, full of honours, after a career working for Vickers. Wally Shiers lived until 1968, and there is a sound recording of his experiences.

Ross, however, died young, as did Bennett. On April 13, 1922, not yet 30 years of age, Sir Ross Smith was due to test fly a Vickers Viking amphibian aircraft, in which he planned to make the first Round-the-World flight. His mechanic was Jim Bennett. It was foggy in London, which delayed the train carrying Sir Keith Smith to the Brooklands aerodrome where the flight was planned. Keith arrived in time to see his brother and his friend take off. The Viking climbed to 1,000 feet, went into a spin, half recovered, and then crashed. Ross was killed instantly. Bennett died of terrible injuries.

The Enquiry blamed Ross for lack of experience on amphibians, and exonerated the aircraft.

The other great Vimy pioneer, Sir John Alcock, was also killed test-flying a Vickers Viking.

This information was adapted from a chapter in Brian Milton 'The Dalgety Flyer' to find out more please visit www.brian-milton.com