The ''Lady Southern Cross'' was a

Lockheed Altair The Lockheed Altair was a single-engined sport aircraft produced by Lockheed Aircraft Limited in the 1930s. It was a development of the Lockheed Sirius with a retractable undercarriage, and was the first Lockheed aircraft and one of the first air ...

monoplane A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing con ...

owned by Australian pioneer aviator Sir

Charles Kingsford Smith Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith (9 February 18978 November 1935), nicknamed Smithy, was an Australian aviation pioneer. He piloted the first transpacific flight and the first flight between Australia and New Zealand. Kingsford Smith was b ...

. In this aircraft, Kingsford Smith made the first eastward trans-

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

flight from Australia to the United States, in October and November of

1934 Events January–February * January 1 – The International Telecommunication Union, a specialist agency of the League of Nations, is established. * January 15 – The 8.0 Nepal–Bihar earthquake strikes Nepal and Bihar with a maxi ...

Delivery

In April 1934, Kingsford Smith ordered an aircraft from Lockheed for use in the

MacRobertson Air Race The MacRobertson Trophy Air Race (also known as the London to Melbourne Air Race) took place in October 1934 as part of the Melbourne Centenary celebrations. The race was devised by the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Sir Harold Gengoult Smith, and th ...

in October of that year. The aircraft was rebuilt from a Lockheed Sirius originally built for

George R. Hutchinson Colonel George R. Hutchinson (February 11, 1902 - August 21, 1989) was an American aviator and media personality of the 1930s. __TOC__ Early career George Hutchinson was working as a bank teller in Baltimore, Maryland when he married Blanche Delc ...

in 1930.VH-USB "Lady Southern Cross" (Part 1)
/ref> The aircraft was delivered by ship to Sydney, Australia in July 1934, bearing Kingsford Smith's requested blue livery and the name '

ANZAC The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) was a First World War army corps of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. It was formed in Egypt in December 1914, and operated during the Gallipoli campaign. General William Birdwood comm ...

'. However, before it could be flown in Australia, the Government objected to the commercial use of ANZAC (the use of which remains restricted in Australian law today), and Kingsford Smith was forced to remove it.VH-USB "Lady Southern Cross" (Part 2)
/ref> After finally getting the machine, now named ''Lady Southern Cross'', out of Customs, Kingsford Smith and copilot

Patrick Gordon Taylor Sir Patrick Gordon Taylor, (21 October 1896 – 15 December 1966), commonly known as Bill Taylor, was an Australian aviator and author. He was born at Mosman, Sydney, and died in Honolulu. Taylor attended The Armidale School in northern New S ...

set several speed records flying between Australian cities as they prepared to fly to England for the race. With all paperwork finally complete, they began the flight to England on 29 September 1934, with a first leg planned to end in Darwin. However, dust storms and stress failure of the engine cowling turned them back to Sydney, and they were forced to withdraw from the race.VH-USB "Lady Southern Cross" (Part 3)
/ref> The race was subsequently won, and a new speed record set, by a British de Havilland DH.88 racing aircraft.

Trans-Pacific flight

Now in financial trouble, and with the ''Lady Southern Cross'' facing withdrawal of its airworthiness certificate if it did not leave Australia, Kingsford Smith decided to attempt the first eastward crossing of the Pacific Ocean by aircraft, from Australia to the United States. Kingsford Smith and Taylor departed

Archerfield Airport Archerfield can refer to: *Archerfield, Queensland Archerfield is a mixed-use southern suburb in the City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. In the , Archerfield had a population of 544 people. Geography Archerfield is bounded by Oxley Cree ...

on 21 October 1934, for the reverse journey from that the ''

Southern Cross Crux () is a constellation of the southern sky that is centred on four bright stars in a cross-shaped asterism commonly known as the Southern Cross. It lies on the southern end of the Milky Way's visible band. The name ''Crux'' is Latin for ...

'' had made in 1928;

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

- Fiji-

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state ...

- Oakland. Bad weather in Fiji and the need for extensive repairs to the fuel and oil systems in Hawaii meant the flight took considerably longer than the 1928 flight - 15 days vs 9 - despite the Altair being a much faster aircraft than the Fokker. After arriving safely in Oakland on 4 November 1934, the ''Lady Southern Cross'' was left in the care of Lockheed at Burbank, California for repair, overhaul and storage.

England-Australia

With the ''Lady Southern Cross'' substantially repaired and rebuilt in Burbank, Kingsford Smith flew cross-country to New York in September 1935 and had the ''Lady Southern Cross'' put on a ship to England. After obtaining a British airworthiness certificate, and having been turned back once by a hailstorm over Italy, Kingsford Smith and co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge left Croydon Airport in London on 6 November 1935 in an attempt to break the England to Australia speed record set during the MacRobertson Air Race.VH-USB "Lady Southern Cross" (Part 4)
/ref>

Disappearance

Kingsford Smith and Pethybridge were flying the ''Lady Southern Cross'' overnight from Allahabad, India, to

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

(c.2200 mi.), while attempting to break the England-Australia speed record, when they

disappeared An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organi ...

over the Andaman Sea in the early hours of 8 November 1935. Aviator C.J. Melrose claimed to have seen the ''Lady Southern Cross'' fighting a storm 150 miles from shore and 200 feet over the sea with fire coming from its exhaust. Eighteen months later, Burmese fishermen found an undercarriage leg and wheel (with its tyre still inflated) which had been washed ashore at Aye Island in the Gulf of Martaban, off the southeast coastline of Burma, some south of

Mottama Mottama ( my, မုတ္တမမြို့, ; Muttama mnw, မုဟ်တၟံ, ; formerly Martaban) is a town in the Thaton District of Mon State, Myanmar. Located on the west bank of the Thanlwin river (Salween), on the opposite side ...

(formerly known as Martaban). Lockheed confirmed the undercarriage leg to be from the ''Lady Southern Cross''. Botanists who examined the weeds clinging to the undercarriage leg estimated that the aircraft itself lies not far from the island at a depth of approximately . The undercarriage leg is now on public display at the

Powerhouse Museum The Powerhouse Museum is the major branch of the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (MAAS) in Sydney, the others being the historic Sydney Observatory at Observatory Hill, and the newer Museums Discovery Centre at Castle Hill. Although often de ...

in Sydney, Australia. In 2009 a Sydney film crew claimed they were 100% certain they found the ''Lady Southern Cross''. The location of the claimed find was widely mis-reported as "in the

Bay of Bengal The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean, bounded on the west and northwest by India, on the north by Bangladesh, and on the east by Myanmar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. Its southern limit is a line betwee ...

" - the 2009 search was at the same location where the landing gear had been found in 1937, at Aye Island, in the Andaman Sea. However, this claim was treated with scepticism by well-known businessman and pilot, Dick Smith, while Kingsford Smith's biographer, Ian Mackersey, described it as "complete nonsense".

References

External links