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STATE LIBRARY OF SA

The State Library of South Australia has digitised its collection of Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith’s personal papers and other material relating to the brothers and the Great Air Race. The collection includes a number of significant primary source items including:

• A 1921 edition of The National Geographic Magazine featuring ‘a personal narrative of the first aerial voyage half around the world’, by Ross Smith;
• A hand-written diary of Keith Smith covering the England-Australia flight;
• Logbooks for the Vickers Vimy and the Rolls Royce Engine;
• The journals of Ross Smith’s friend and ally Biffy Borton;
• The First Aeroplane Voyage from England to Australia by Ross Smith; and
• 55 letters written by the aviator to his mother in WWI (transcribed).

As part of its 2019 Heroes of the Skies exhibition, the library also commissioned a mini podcast series called In the words of Ross Smith.

 

14,000 MILES THROUGH THE AIR

Sir Ross Smith’s first-hand account of the 1919 Great Air Race and the epic flight from England to Australia. First published just after the aviator’s death in 1922, the book was reprinted in 2019 as Flight to Fame by Wakefield Press, introduced and edited by South Australian historian Peter Monteath.

 

WALLY SHIERS INTERVIEW

Wally Shiers spoke at length about his life and the Great Air Race during a interview with oral historian Hazel de Berg in 1966. You can hear the entire recording online via the National Library of Australia’s Trove website.

 

THE VICKERS VIMY: COLLECTIONS

The Vickers Vimy, with its twin 360hp Rolls Royce Eagle VIII engines, was always going to be the aircraft to beat in the Great Air Race. Check out our collection of articles, images and drawings to learn how the Vimy was designed and built in 1918. Click here.

 

RECOMMENDED READING

For a comprehensive list of recommended reading materials, please click here.

 

TROVE

You’ll find hundreds of documents, photographs and original digitised 1919 newspaper clippings relating to the Great Air Race, the Smith crew and the epic flight on trove.nla.gov.au – Australia’s national online library database hosted by the National Library of Australia.

 

FLIGHT MAGAZINE

Flight magazine was one of the leading British aviation periodicals at the time of the Great Air Race. Their archives have been digitised in PDF format and are free to explore online. You’ll find fascinating articles on the Great Air Race, the competitors and their aircraft – all in the context of the developing aviation industry immediately after WWI. (To search the archive database, simply enter a search term such as “Vickers Vimy” from 1919 to 1919 and you’ll find all references to the Vickers Vimy, including design drawings.)

 

NATIONAL FILM AND SOUND ARCHIVE

Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive holds extensive archival footage relating to the epic flight and the 1919 Air Race. You’ll also find historic footage on international sites such as British Pathé, including vision of Ross Smith and Jim Bennett in Weybridge in 1922 and the crash in which they died.

 

THE GREATEST AIR RACE DOCUMENTARY

The Greatest Air Race is the first documentary to relive the trials, tragedies and triumphs of the forgotten heroes who braved unflown skies. NASA astronaut Andy Thomas explores the story of Ross Smith’s record-breaking flight using little-seen footage and expert interviews. And inside the hangar of the surviving Vickers Vimy, he makes a stunning discovery: the aircraft is as significant as the Apollo moon lander. Sir Ross Smith was the Neil Armstrong of his day. View the trailer.

 

ATOM (AUSTRALIAN TEACHERS OF MEDIA)

To coincide with the release of The Greatest Air Race documentary, Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) released a comprehensive study guide on the Air Race and the winning Vickers Vimy crew. Written by academic Robert Lewis, the 29-page resource is engaging and lively, and is ideal for students of History, English, Media Studies and Geography. The guide is available to download for free from www.theeducationshop.com.au.

 

INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS AND THE PHYSICS OF FLIGHT

Did you know Indigenous Australians have have been using the physics of flight to their advantage for tens of thousands of years? Click here to read an article on the Australian Museum website about the physics of boomerang flight. South Australian inventor and Ngarrindjeri man David Unaipon (immortalised on Australia’s $50 note) used the concept of a boomerang flying through the air to come up with a basic helicopter design in 1914, two decades before the first helicopter flight.

 

OTHER USEFUL LINKS

The Advertiser’s 34-minute ‘Heaps Good History’ podcast on the first flight from England to Australia.

Australian Dictionary of Biography: Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith. Walter Henry Shiers. James Mallett Bennett.

Australian War Memorial, for articles and photographs on all Australian competitors in the Great Air Race: awm.gov.au

Lainie Anderson’s 2017 Churchill Fellowship Reporton the significance of the 1919 epic flight and Vickers Vimy aircraft at Adelaide Airport.

National Archives of Australia RecordSearch, for WWI service records: naa.gov.au

National Library of Australia: Album of Walter (Wally) Shiers memorabilia relating to the 1919 Ross Smith flight, 1919-1986 [NLA MS 8627]

National Library of Australia: Papers of Ernest and Virtie Crome, 1784-2005, relating to Ross Smith and Wally Shiers [MS 1925, MS Acc11.005]

Northern Territory Library: The Great Air Race.

The University of Adelaide Rare Books & Special Collections: Sir Keith Smith and Sir Ross Smith certificates, pamphlets, photographs and miscellanea 1916-1956 [MSS 92 S653]

State Library of New South Wales: Vickers Vimy collection.

The Aviation Ancestry Database of British Aviation Advertisements 1909 – 1990.