KINGSFORD-SMITH

Hokitika Guardian, 20 June 1928, Page 2

KINGSFORD-SMITH

A NOTABLE CAREER

TAUGHT IN A HARD SCHOOL. SYDNEY, June 7. Even Bert Hinkler’s flight failed to arouse the interest which has been created in Australia by the flight of Kingsford-Smith and his three companions. The fact that the aviators were able to report their progress by wireless seems to have gripped the popular imagination. If the aviators fail to achieve their object the flight will certainly, go down in history as a triumph for wireless as well as for aviation.

Kmgsford-Smith is a war-made pilot. He enlisted as a motor-cycle dispatch rider, and at the end of the war he was an experienced and daring unman. He saw service at Moascar, on the Suez Canal, and later in Franco where in October, 1918, ho was selected for commissions in the Royal Fl.ring Corps. He went to France with a Squadron and within three months got several enemy ’planes and an M.C. together with a badly shattered loft foot, caused by an explosive bullet, which got him when was tackling a two-seater enemy ’plane. '1 His ended his career as a. war pilot.

The M.C. was awarded for a particularly daring stunt. One morning about dawn he appeared over the town of Inglemmi-ster, in Belgium, then about twenty kilometres behind the German lines, and ho proceeded to “shoot up” a cavalry regiment which was quartered in the main square. Kingsford-Smith flew only a few feet above the ground, and swooped down upon the astonished Germans. He later was invalided hack to Australia on six months’ furlough, and then returned to England and instructed pupils in the art of flying till the end of the war.

At this time the possibility of flying to Australia was being discussed, and K ingjsford-Sm ith secured from the Blackburn Company a twin-engined Kangaroo, and immediately commenced load tests preparatory to the flight. His companions were to be Lieutenants Val Aendle and B. Williams. However, IC’ingsford-Smith wlas destined never to make the flight—a had attack of pneumonia, intervened, and the Smith Bros, got away in their Vickers-Vi my, and succeeded. Sir George Wilkins, the Australian, who recently flew across the Arctic sea, then assumed command of the Kangaroo, hut another aviator crashed the machine at an aerodrome in Crete, whore it still remains. All the Auswho joined the It.A.F. received a gratuity of £l5O for each year of service, and as Kingford-Smith was two years with the corps liefore l>eing being, demobilised he and another— Maddocks—sank their combined capital into a fleet of de Haviland sixes and !>ccanie the first post-war joy-riding firm in England. Success for a while attended their (scheme, hut later a series of crashes depleted the number of machines and the firm sold out. Kingsford-Smith thou went to America taking with him an Avro fitted with a HOh.p. I.c Mho no engine. For six months the Avro was flown up and down California, visiting small .town fails, and a landing was once made in the celebrated Death Valley. Kingwford-Smith’s last flying venture in California was to form a syndicate to free the rice fields along the Sacramento Valley from a plague of wild ducks, by using aeroplanes. With two planes they ranged up and down the valley, flying alxrut twenty feet above the ground. With a roar they would swoop down, and the ducks would he frightened away, though often they were cut by the whirling propellers and hung to the rigging of the ’planes. In 1921 Kingsford-Smith returned to Australia and was employed by the Diggers’ Aviation Company at Wellington (N.S.W.) to pilot one of the inreo Avros on a “barnstorming” tour round the country shows. His luck with this company was had, however, as lie crashed at Oberon, Dubbe, and Cbwrla, lmt later on lie joined Airways. Ltd., in Western Australia, where lie had a wonderful record for three years, flying up and down the coast from Perth to Broome, without as much as straining a wire. His latest exploits of flying round Australia in under ten days and his attacks on the world’s endurance records in California are still fresh in the minds of the people.