Without doubt one of Australia’s greatest aviators, Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith was also the most flamboyant.
With movie-star looks and a wicked smile, he thrilled the huge crowds that flocked to see him and his crew wherever they went. When Smithy, as he was known, and fellow Australian Charles Ulm and two American crew completed the first trans-Pacific flight in 1928, more than 300,000 people poured into the now Sydney Airport, which bears his name, to see their heroes.
Born in Brisbane in 1897, Smithy enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in 1915 and served in Gallipoli. He was transferred to the Flying Corps where he shot down four enemy fighters and was awarded the Military Cross “for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty”.
Read: Chasing the Double Sunrise
Smithy was barred from taking part in the famous 1919 England to Australia air race because of supposedly inadequate navigational experience.
After a stint doing joy flights in England, he went to the US where he tried, unsuccessfully, to attract sponsors for a trans-Pacific flight.
Back in Australia in January 1921, Smithy was hired by Norman Brearley’s Western Australian Airways Ltd and flew the air route from Geraldton to Derby.
He was based in Port Hedland and on June 6, 1923, at Marble Bar, married Thelma Corboy.
In 1924, Smithy formed a partnership with fellow pilot Keith Anderson to buy two Bristol Tourer biplanes by operating a trucking business the Gascoyne Transport Co based in Carnarvon.
In 1927, they went to Sydney to team with Ulm to form Interstate Flying Services but failed to win a tender for the Adelaide to Perth mail service. Not deterred, the team put on demonstration flights to convince the public and government about the future of aviation.
In June 1927, Smithy and Ulm completed a round-Australia flight in just 10 days, an extraordinary achievement with virtually no navigational aids.
After that feat, Smithy received support for the trans-Pacific flight — $18,000 from the NSW government and backing from Sidney Myer and Californian oil magnate Allan Hancock.
In a three-engined Fokker, the Southern Cross, with Ulm as co-pilot, Harry Lyon engineer and Jim Warner as navigator, Smithy took off from Oakland on May 31, 1928 and flew via Hawaii and Suva to Brisbane.
The crossing took 83 hours, 38 minutes flying time, which included a leg of 34 hours and 30 minutes between Hawaii and Fiji, the furthest nonstop ocean flight hat at the time.
The Southern Cross touched down in Brisbane on June 9 and was greeted by a crowd of 15,000.
And the next day more than 300,000 people flocked to Sydney Airport to see them. In August, Smithy and Ulm flew the Lady Southern Cross nonstop from Melbourne to Perth and from Sydney to Christchurch.
In 1929, he started Australian National Airways with five planes. One, the Southern Cloud, was lost in the Australian Alps in March 1931 with eight passengers and crew aboard.
The wreckage was not found until October 26, 1958, when a Snowy Mountain Scheme worker stumbled across it.
Another crash, a few months later in Malaya and the deepening depression spelled the end of the airline.
Smithy was knighted in 1932 and kept up an almost frantic flying life.
In 1935, he and his co-pilot disappeared in the Lady Southern Cross, in an attempt to break the record for the England-to-Australia flight.
