Four men in a f lying machine
At 9.22am on September 11, 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew landed the Southern Cross at Wigram after an epic 14-hour flight from Sydney. Kingsford Smith’s was the first aircraft to cross the stormy Tasman Sea and the first international flight
On a clear, cool, September morning in 1928, a small speck appeared in the sky to the north of Christchurch. As the speck grew larger, a man shouted, ‘‘There he is’’, and 30,000 people burst into cheering.
The crowd, which represented nearly a third of the city’s population, had gathered at Wigram, the airfield in the west of the city, and had been waiting since daybreak for the arrival of Charles Kingsford Smith and the Southern Cross.
Four Bristol Fighters of the New Zealand Permanent Air Force had taken off 30 minutes beforehand to rendezvous up the coast and provide escort for the first international flight to arrive in the country. The air force aircraft and the Southern Cross appeared from the northeast and the crowd realised the historic flight would soon be over.
As the large, three-engined monoplane soared over the sea of waving arms and did a circuit of the airfield, hats were thrown in the air and the cheering of the crowd was so deafening it drowned the roar of the radial engines.
Some crowd members broke down the barriers and overwhelmed police as the aircraft taxied in. Men leapt on to the struts and tried to shake hands with the airmen before the plane stopped.
When the engines were shut down and order had been restored, the four airmen were welcomed by Captain J L Findlay and Sir Robert Heaton Rhodes. The mayor, Rev John Archer, was unable to get through the crowd to make the official welcome. People followed the crew as they were carried shoulder-high above the pressing mass.
Joining Kingsford Smith were his co-pilot and business partner, Charles Ulm, Harry Litchfield, the navigator, and radio operator Tom McWilliams, a New Zealander.
Kingsford Smith looked tired and strained after the flight, which had several times nearly resulted in disaster. During the speeches, he replied by saying: ‘‘Sorry I can’t hear you, I’m as deaf as a post because of the engines.’’
Long after the crew had been whisked away to their hotel, many of the crowd remained gazing in wonder at the large machine.
The Southern Cross, a Fokker FVIIb-3m, which had been built three years earlier and in which Kingsford Smith and crew had won worldwide celebrity for the first crossing of the Pacific Ocean earlier in the year, had a wingspan of 71 feet (21 metres). This dwarfed all other aircraft flying in New Zealand at the time.
The significance of the flight was enormous, possibly more so for New Zealand than for Australia.
The editorial in The Press newspaper on September 11, 1928, observed that the rejoicing in New Zealand would be even greater than that in Australia. Kiwis had yet to ‘‘see a plane arrive from another country except as freight’’, and their own countrymen’s bid to cross the Tasman earlier that year had failed.
That had been the attempt by New Zealand Air Force Reserve officers George Hood and John Moncrieff, which began from Sydney on January 10. Their intended landfall was the lower North Island but, following their last radio transmission at 5.22am, nothing more was ever heard from the fliers.
New Zealanders remained excited at the prospect of someone reaching their country by air for the first time, even if it meant their Australian neighbours won the plaudits. Kiwis could take some consolation from the fact that one of their countrymen was among the crew that made the journey.
Tom McWilliams, a teacher at the Union Steam Ship Company’s radio school in Wellington, joined the crew as a radio operator when Kingsford Smith and Ulm’s crewmates from their Pacific crossing returned to North America.
After McWilliams and the new navigator, Harry Litchfield, passed a test by making the first successful non-stop crossing of Australia in August, they were deemed ready for the Tasman crossing.
Kingsford Smith was the most famous and arguably the most popular Australian ever to visit New Zealand shores. His arrival signalled the end of isolation for New Zealand and the strengthening of ties between the two countries.
He returned in 1933 and 1934 for countrywide fundraising tours, during which he was responsible for not only giving hundreds of people their first flights in an aircraft but also for providing a catalyst for the development of aero clubs and an aviation industry in New Zealand.
The admiration of Smithy’s skills as an airman was matched by a recognition of his manliness, courage and resolve. Kingsford Smith had been at Gallipoli and flown over the Western Front, where he had been shot down.
According to Stanley Brogden in his 1960 book The History Of Australian Aviation, Kingsford Smith ‘‘typified the Australian character at its best, with all its great qualities, as well as some of its faults. No other Australian was ever so worshipped by the average man and boy’’.
Peter FitzSimons, in Charles Kingsford Smith And tThose Magnificent Men (2014), went on to say that Kingsford Smith was more than worshipped by many women on both sides of the Tasman, no doubt adding to his appeal.
Peter Hewson, head of media studies at Christ’s College in Christchurch, has spent four years building a large, radio-controlled scale model of the Southern Cross, which completed its test flight two weeks ago.