The Australian Government announces a £10,000 prize for the first Australians to fly from Britain to Australia. It is the brainchild of then Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who experienced the wonders of flight for the first time while travelling between London and Paris for the peace talks. He aims to…Read More
Timeline
The Royal Aero Club of the United Kingdom announces the official rules for the Great Air Race from Britain to Australia. The many rules included: The flight – in an aeroplane or seaplane – must be made within 720 consecutive hours (30 days). It must be completed before midnight, 31…Read More
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a group of young Australian aviators are set to leave England for a pioneering flight home – and they include Charles Kingsford Smith. Kingsford Smith never did take part in the Great Air Race, though. Why? Well, according to These Are Facts, the autobiography…Read More
Australia’s acting Prime Minister William Watt tells parliament it’s understood that eight entries have been received in the Great Air Race from Britain to Australia. Those entries include Capt. Cedric Howell (SA) in a Martinsyde machine; Capt. George Matthews (SA) in a Sopwith machine; Capt. G.H. (later Sir Hubert) Wilkins…Read More
South Australian brothers Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith, with mechanics Wally Shiers (SA) and Jim Bennett (Vic), departed Hounslow aerodrome in the Vickers Vimy at 9.05am. The official weather report said “totally unfit for all flying”. But Ross took off anyway, fearing the onset of the European winter and…Read More
After six hours and 20 minutes of flying in freezing temperatures, the Vimy finally touched down in Lyon (pictured circa 1919). Ross Smith wrote: “Never felt so cold and miserable.”
The day started with a frustrating few hours for the Vimy crew as they tried to source fuel and hot water for the radiators at the snow-covered aerodrome in Lyon. They eventually took off and flew over the Alps (pictured below in a photo taken aboard the Vimy – most…Read More
At first light, Ross Smith arrived at the water-logged Pisa aerodrome to find the Vimy still hopelessly bogged. So he came up with a cunning plan – he’d get mechanic Jim Bennett to run alongside the plane near the tail wing, holding his weight against the back of the Vimy…Read More
Ross Smith and the Vickers Vimy crew left Rome in poor weather and set a course for Taranto, 260 miles away in southern Italy. In 14,000 Miles Through The Air, Ross writes that “at times the machine was literally tossed about like a leaf, and for three-quarters of an hour…Read More
The Vimy crew almost crashed into cliffs off the coast of Greece as Ross Smith battled driving rain and dense mist on the fifth leg of the Epic Flight, from Taranto over the Mediterranean to Crete. “The flight was miserable. The driving rain cut our faces and obscured all distant…Read More
Ross Smith and his Vickers Vimy crew had a highly-eventful, 650-mile flight across the Mediterranean from Crete to Cairo, on the sixth leg of their epic journey from England to Australia. First they had a hairy crossing from north to south over the craggy island of Crete, clearing a pass…Read More
Ross Smith flew from Cairo to Damascus on the seventh, 450-mile leg of the epic flight. The Vimy crew was now a quarter of the way to their destination in Darwin, and flew over many of the sites where Ross and his mechanics Wally Shiers and Jim Bennett had served…Read More
Grease was lathered over the Vimy’s wheels to enable Ross Smith to take off from the muddy aerodrome in Damascus despite heavy overnight rains. The eighth leg of the England-Australia flight took the Vimy crew over 420 miles of desert sand to the WWI airstrip at Ramadie, where the 10th…Read More
The Smith crew repaired the Vimy’s ailerons and wires after the night’s raging sandstorm before setting off at 1.15pm on a 350-mile flight to Basra. Maintenance facilities were pretty fair at the local RAF base, so Ross Smith decided they’d stay put on 22 November to allow Wally Shiers and…Read More
Ross Smith and the Vickers Vimy crew flew 630 miles from Basra to Bandar Abbas to complete the 10th leg of their epic journey in an incident-free seven hours and 20 minutes.
When Ross Smith left Bandar Abbas bound for Karachi 730 miles away, he carried a small hand-written note from the British Consul (pictured) requesting safe passage for the Vimy crew lest they be forced to land among “murderous” desert tribes. “Fortune favoured us once more with a following breeze and…Read More
Ross Smith made a 7.40am start from Karachi, circling above the desert aerodrome before turning the Vickers Vimy east towards Delhi, “heading straight into the golden sun that was just rising above the horizon”. The nine-hour, 720-mile flight was the equal longest of the epic journey to Australia, with Ross…Read More
Ross Smith departed Delhi at 10.20am, feeling “the keenness of the chase” to overtake French aviator and rogue air race competitor Etienne Poulet. After briefly touching the Vickers Vimy down in Muttra to check on a faulty oil guage, Smith set course for Agra and the Taj Mahal. “Of all…Read More
Ross Smith landed in Calcutta at 1.30pm after a relatively easy five-hour flight from Allahabad, only to learn that “the elusive Poulet” had left the Indian city that same morning. Thousands of Calcutta citizens crowded onto the racecourse to see the Vimy crew, and were kept behind barriers by police. With…Read More
The Vickers Vimy crew almost met with disaster on takeoff from Calcutta (modern-day Kolkata) on 29 November 1919, when two kite hawks struck the wing and port propeller. “It was a breathless, not to say a terrifying moment, for we fully expected to hear the crash of broken propeller blades,”…Read More
On the afternoon of 30 November 1919, excited citizens in the Burmese city of Rangoon (modern day Yangon, Myanmar) were treated to an incredible spectacle. Most people had never seen a plane before, yet within an hour two aircraft appeared out of the sky from half a world away in…Read More
The Vimy crew landed at Bangkok’s Don Muang airport at 12.55pm after a hair-raising, six-hour flight at 11,000ft over an uncharted mountain range. Ross Smith and Etienne Poulet had again planned on setting off together from Rangoon, but the Frenchman had engine woes so the Vimy set off alone. (In…Read More
The Vimy crew was escorted out of Bangkok by four Siamese aircraft, before encountering shocking monsoonal rains on the six-hour flight south to Singora. Flying just off the coast, Ross Smith saw dark clouds ahead and dreaded what was to come. “The rain came down literally like a sheet of…Read More
Ross Smith spent his 27th birthday flying over paddy fields, scattered villages and coastline from Singora to Singapore. The 480-mile flight ended with an innovative landing… “I had been dreading the landing and take-off at Singapore, as the improvised aerodrome, the racecourse, was altogether too small for our large machine,”…Read More
Ross Smith and the Vimy crew had some “breathless moments” as they just cleared the rails on takeoff from the very short racecourse in Singapore. The 20th leg of the Epic Flight presented localised lightning storms and bumpy conditions on the nine-hour journey down to Sumatra and Java, with the men…Read More
Ross Smith made the 350-mile flight from Kalidjati to Surabaya in a relatively easy four hours and 20 minutes. Then the trouble started… “Heading the Vimy down, we made a low circle above the town, to the infinite amazement of the teeming native population that swarmed out into the streets,…Read More
Keith Smith came up with a clever idea to get the Vickers Vimy out of a Surabaya bog. “Why not construct a roadway of mats to stop our wheels sinking into the mud, then run along it and so get back into the air!” “Natives were streaming in from every…Read More
Ross Smith and his Vickers Vimy crew were now just a day’s flight from Darwin, after making a 440-mile journey over thick haze from Bima to Atamboea (Timor). They had a large quantity of coconuts on board, gifted by Bima locals (as Ross noted, “evidently they thought the Vimy a…Read More
South Australian brothers Ross and Keith Smith, with their mechanics Wally Shiers and Jim Bennett, enter the history books as the first men to fly from England to Australia. The final leg of their epic 28-day journey began at 8.35am in Atamboea (Timor), with gum trees scraping along the bottom…Read More
Mechanical troubles began not long after the Vickers Vimy set out on its long journey south from Port Darwin. After about four hours of “very uncomfortable flying”, Ross Smith was forced to land on a dried-up swamp in the middle of nowhere. Mechanic Wally Shiers soon had his starboard engine…Read More
Mosquitos kept the Vimy crew awake until after sun-up, so take-off from Warlock Ponds was delayed until 10am. Disaster struck within a few hours, with Ross Smith startled by a loud crack from the propeller and “horrified to see that one blade had split from the tip to the boss”.…Read More
At 6pm, the exhausted Vimy crew departed Cobb’s Creek for a 15-minute flight to the Anthony’s Lagoon station homestead, which had been Ross Smith’s intended destination when he left Darwin five days earlier.
On Christmas Day 1919, the Vimy suffered almost catastrophic engine failure as Ross Smith attempted to depart Charleville in Queensland. Ever-determined to paint a rosy picture for Vickers Aviation and Rolls Royce, Ross was at pains in his memoir 14,000 Miles through the Air to understate the incident. He wrote:…Read More
After a 52-day delay caused by major engine woes, the Vimy crew finally took off for Bourke on 12 February 1920. Ross and Keith took off initially at 8am for a 30-minute “thank you” flight with Harry Coyne MLC, the Queensland Minister for Lands, and two of the Point Cook…Read More
The Vimy crew landed to a heroes’ welcome at Sydney’s Mascot airfield at 11.12am. Ross had agreed to drop leaflets advertising the post-war charity “Blind Soldiers Tea Company” along the way from Narromine, and they had shown off the Vimy by circling overhead the crowds at towns along the route.…Read More
Vimy mechanic Wally Shiers and his sweetheart Helena Alford were married at a swish garden party in Sydney on the morning of 17 February, before heading to the Blue Mountains for a short honeymoon. Helena had been waiting in Narrandera, NSW, for almost five years for Wally to finish with…Read More
The Vimy crew, with cameraman Frank Hurley in the front cockpit, left Henty at 6am bound for Point Cook. Aircraft spare parts and their personal kit had been offloaded to lighten the Vimy for a one-engine cruise due to an oil pressure problem with the starboard engine. They arrived at Point…Read More
After nearly a month in Melbourne, the Vimy left on the last leg to Adelaide. All four crew were aboard, plus Frank Hurley in the nose gunner’s cockpit. Only a small group was on hand at Point Cook to see them off, including Jim’s father and sisters Muriel and Brenda. …Read More
On Easter Monday 1920 the Vickers Vimy made its final flight, from Adelaide back to Point Cook in Melbourne. Sir Ross Smith had originally planned to leave on 31 March, but that didn’t happen due to a problematic starboard engine. As Ross described in a later letter to Vickers: “After…Read More
The Australian Air Corps – a temporary Army unit raised 15 months earlier – was disbanded in 1921 and replaced by the Australian Air Force (AAF) as a separate service. Although the Australian Flying Corps was disbanded after World War I, Australia was committed to retaining a military air service.…Read More
Sir Ross Smith and his loyal friend and mechanic Jim Bennett were killed while test flying a Vickers Viking amphibious aircraft at Weybridge in England, ahead of a planned attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Sir Keith Smith was due to join the men for the test flight, but was late…Read More
More than 100,000 people (one fifth of the state’s population) reportedly lined the streets of Adelaide to honour Sir Ross Smith’s funeral cortege on 15 June 1922. The procession of more than 100 vehicles, headed by a guard of airmen with the casket borne on an aeroplane trailer, was watched…Read More
Sir Keith Smith married Lady Anita on 3 June 1924 at the District of Kensington Register Office in London. Anita Crawford (nee Schmidt) had previously been married to England cricketer Jack Crawford. In Flick of the Fingers, Crawford biographer Michael Burns describes the “talented and glamorous” Anita as a prominent…Read More
A Shilling Fund was established in the wake of Sir Ross Smith’s tragic death in 1922 for the creation of a monument to commemorate South Australia’s “most famous son” and his pioneering flight from England to Australia. British sculptor Frederick Brook Hitch won a competition to design the statue –…Read More
After a brief battle with cancer, Sir Keith Smith died at the St Vincent Private Hospital in Sydney on 19 December 1955. He was laid to rest with his family, including his brother Sir Ross Smith, at the North Road Cemetery in Adelaide.
The Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith War Memorial was officially unveiled at Adelaide Airport on 27 April 1958 by the man often referred to as the “father of the RAAF”, Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams (who’d also been Ross Smith’s Commanding Officer in the Australian Flying Corps during WWI).…Read More
Wally Shiers died of heart failure in his brother’s home in the Adelaide suburb of Hilton on 2 June 1968. He was 79. His death was reported on the front page of The Advertiser the following day, with a small photograph and seven paragraphs under the headline “Last Flier In…Read More
Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith were among giants of the Australian aviation industry to be named as inaugural inductees into the Australian Aviation Hall of Fame. Bert Hinkler and Charles Kingsford Smith were also among those recognised for their outstanding contribution to aviation. Both men tried and failed to…Read More
Ahead of Australia’s 2019 federal election it was announced that a new state-of-the-art facility would be built for Sir Ross Smith’s Vickers Vimy aircraft at Adelaide Airport. Announcing a $2m funding commitment by the federal Morrison Government, SA Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham said it was a major win for South…Read More
Ross Smith’s mechanics Jim Bennett and Wally Shiers were inducted into the Australian Aviation Hall of Fame at a ceremony at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. In a media release announcing the decision, Hall of Fame chairman Steve Padgett OAM said: “2019 is the 100th anniversary of the establishment…Read More