Transport: Back-Track

Few hours after the start of the Milden-hall-to-Melbourne Air Race three weeks ago Air Commodore Sir Charles Edward Kingsford-Smith, Australia’s No. 1 airman, took off from Brisbane for California. Had he finished the flight the day Britons Scott & Black reached Melbourne, he would have shared their world headlines. As it was, he and his Lockheed Altair, Lady Southern Cross, did not reach their destination until last week.

Critics charged Kingsford-Smith with trying to set up a “counter-attraction” to the main show. Replied he: “In this flight, more difficult than the England-to-Australia race, I will show that l am no squib.”*

With Captain P. G. (“Bill”) Taylor as navigator, Kingsford-Smith flew unerringly 1,700 mi. over the Pacific towards his first stop—Suva, Fiji Islands. There he was delayed a week by storms ahead. On the 3,200-mi. water jump to Honolulu Kingsford-Smith, fumbling in the cockpit during a rainstorm, accidentally knocked down the wing flaps. The plane whipped into a stall, spun down 8.000 ft. into the swirling blackness before he could bring it out. Unnerved but undiscouraged. the aviators swooped into Pearl Harbor to complete in 25 hours the second leg of the world’s most hazardous over-water air course.

Last week, after another week’s delay caused by storms, the two flyers left Honolulu, sped swiftly to the U. S. on the wings of a brisk tailwind. They reached Oakland in less than 15 hours, two hours ahead of schedule. Kingsford-Smith poked his grease-smudged face out of the cockpit and grinned: “I’m sorry to be so early. . . . I’ve got the best airplane in the world.”

In three hops they had flown 7,530 miles in less than 52 hours flying time. Only man to fly the long Pacific Route to and from “Down Under,” Kingsford-Smith was last week hailed as a flyer second only to one-eyed Wiley Post.

Sir Charles’ motor was hardly cold last week before one Tom Catton slapped the plane under attachment, claiming $1,750 and interest for services allegedly rendered at the time of the West-East flight in 1928.

* A defective firecracker.