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In 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm made the first trans-Pacific flight in the Southern Cross - an aircraft constructed largely of wood and fabric. They made the trip from Oakland, California, in nine days, during which they faced electrical storms, torrential rain, equipment failure, and fuel shortages. Navigational aids were primitive - contact with the outside world was by Morse code only - and safety measures were non-existent. After many close calls, they triumphantly landed in Brisbane, where a crowd of 15,000 welcomed them as heroes. Throughout this extraordinary journey, Ulm kept a logbook in which he recorded his raw impressions of the flight. Using Ulm's logbook, plus contemporary newspaper accounts and official documents, Flying the Southern Cross tells the gripping tale of this history-making flight, and the aviators who made it happen.
In the early twentieth century, the new technology of flight changed warfare irrevocably, not only on the battlefield, but also on the home front. As prophesied before 1914, Britain in the First World War was effectively no longer an island, with its cities attacked by Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers in one of the first strategic bombing campaigns. Drawing on prewar ideas about the fragility of modern industrial civilization, some writers now began to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was not invasion or blockade, but the possibility of a sudden and intense aerial bombardment of London and other cities, which would cause tremendous destruction and massive casualties. The nation would be shattered in a matter of days or weeks, before it could fully mobilize for war. Defeat, decline, and perhaps even extinction, would follow. This theory of the knock-out blow from the air solidified into a consensus during the 1920s and by the 1930s had largely become an orthodoxy, accepted by pacifists and militarists alike. But the devastation feared in 1938 during the Munich Crisis, when gas masks were distributed and hundreds of thousands fled London, was far in excess of the damage wrought by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941, as terrible as that was. The knock-out blow, then, was a myth. But it was a myth with consequences. For the first time, The Next War in the Air reconstructs the concept of the knock-out blow as it was articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so widely accepted by both experts and non-experts, and the way it shaped the responses of the British public to some of the great issues facing them in the 1930s, from pacifism to fascism. Drawing on both archival documents and fictional and non-fictional publications from the period between 1908, when aviation was first perceived as a threat to British security, and 1941, when the Blitz ended, and it became clear that no knock-out blow was coming, The Next War in the Air provides a fascinating insight into the origins and evolution of this important cultural and intellectual phenomenon, Britain's fear of the bomber.
During his brief 38 years of life, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (1897-1935) was one of the most celebrated public idols in history, becoming for a few years in the late 20s and early 30s a legend across the world for his brilliance as a pilot and his charismatic style among the pioneers of long-distance flying. The first person to fly an aircraft across the Pacific from America to Australia (in 1928) he broke many solo flying records, and this brought him a status greater than any modern astronaut - a crowd of 300,000 greeted him in Sydney. But the price of his heroism was high and the demands for celebrity and a messy private life ended in tragedy off the coast of Burma in 1935 in an attempt to fly from England to Australia. This biography explores his life and flying career.
Charles Ulm and Charles Kingsford Smith were two of the most important pioneers of Australian aviation. Together they succeeded in a number of record-breaking flights that made them instant celebrities around the world, notably the first ever trans-Pacific flight, then setting up Australian National Airways in late 1928. Smithy was the face of the airline, happier in the cockpit or in front of an audience than in the boardroom; Ulm was in his element as managing director. Smithy had the charisma and public acclaim, Ulm the tenacity and organisational skills. In 1932, Kingsford Smith received a knighthood for his services to flying; Ulm did not. Setbacks and tragedies followed, as Ulm tried to develop the embryonic Australian airline industry. ANA was at first successful, but a catastrophic crash and the increasing bite of the Great Depression forced it into bankruptcy in 1933. Desperate to drum up support for a new airline, Ulm's final flight was meant to demonstrate the potential for a regular trans-Pacific passenger service. Somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii his plane, Stella Australis, disappeared. No trace of the plane or crew was ever found. In the years since his death, attention has focused more and more on Smithy, leaving Ulm neglected and overshadowed. In this essential biography, Rick Searle shows that while Ulm lacked Smithy's prowess as an aviator, he was his superior as a visionary, and a driving force behind the growth of modern global air travel. His untimely death robbed Australia of a huge talent.
Explores the remarkable influence of the Myer family on the lives of Australians. This book tells Sidney Myer's classic 'rags to riches' story, which sets the foundation for four generations of Myer philanthropists. His generosity was epitomised by the legendary Christmas lunch he staged at the Melbourne Exhibition Building.
The first book in 90 years dedicated to the daring and courage of the airmen and mechanics of the Australian Flying Corps - a tale of a war fought thousands of feet above the trenches from which only one in two emerged unscathed.
This book is a chronological account of the establishment of Naval Reserve Aviation and its growth and development before World War II. It is a comprehensive history of Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Aviation - a documentation of the significant events in that history, together with many which would fall under the category of trivia. It is an attempt to illustrate what the Naval Aviation Reserve was all about, and to capture some of the flavor of the earlier days of aviation. The book, Volume I of a series on Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Aviation, may stir the memories of some of those people directly involved in these activities during the period covered. It should also prove interesting to others who might have an interest in the Naval Air Reserve and/or in early aviation.