Aviation Mystery Was Unsolved for 27Years

Aviation mystery was unsolved for 27years TROY LENNON accomplish more aviation feats, HISTORY EDITOR leaving other pilots to take over his route. So it was that on March 21, t was a wet and windy Saturday 1931, Shortridge and Dunnell were at morning at Mascot airport, the kind the controls of Kingsford Smith's that gave pilots second thoughts Southern Cloud. about climbing into a cockpit. But Passengers included accountant ITravis "Shorty" Shortridge and his Bill O'Reilly, businessman Hubert co-pilot Charlie Dunne11 were Farrall, engineer Julian Margules, artist experienced aviators. Clare Stokes, local woman Ellie May While this was Dunnell's first Glasgow, and American theatrical commercial flight he had plenty of hours producer Clyde Hood. in the air and knew the plane's The pilots' fatal error had been to rely capabilities. Shortridge was a former air on an outdated newspaper weather force pilot who had also notched up a lot report. By the time they were in the air of time in the aircraft he would be flying the weather had turned foul. — the Avro X. Powerful winds were bringing down It was March 21,1931, and both men trees and powerlines, and snow was had checked weather reports, which forecast in the mountains. predicted strong headwinds. Takeoff was Southern Cloud had no radio so there at 8.10am but the weather bureau didn't was no way to warn the pilots. When the open until 9am, which meant that aircraft failed to arrive in Melbourne at Shortridge and Dunnell were relying on its scheduled time, people feared the a weather report from the previous day. worst. On Sunday morning a search got Shortridge hated clouds and had under way, but no wreckage was found. remarked to his wife before he left that it The plane seemed to have vanished was a "dirty day" but as someone who from the face of the earth. had flown under the unfinished Sydney In the wake of the disaster there were Harbour Bridge, he was not deterred by recommendations that all aircraft be bad weather. But by the time the aircraft equipped with radio, so pilots could be was in the air — with six passengers — updated on weather conditions. the conditions had deteriorated The loss of the Southern Cloud was a considerably. The plane was the blow to Kingsford Smith's airline. By Southern Cloud, one of five Avro X January 1932, the company was in aircraft operated by Australian National serious financial trouble and Smithy Airways (ANA), the airline appealed to the government to subsidise founded by pioneer aviators his airline, threatening to go overseas Charles Kingsford Smith and saying, "If my country does not want me Charles Ulm. I will take the hint and fly away". The flight to ANA went into voluntary liquidation Melbourne should have in July 1933. Shortly after its founders been routine, helping to had their own aviation mysteries — Ulm establish the airline's disappeared on a flight over the Pacific reputation for reliability. in 1934 and Kingsford Smith over the But instead the Southern when they failed to The airline was nearly doomed from Andaman Sea in 1935. Cloud would make secure a contract to the start when Kingsford Smith was The mystery of the Southern Cloud history by being deliver the mail they reported missing in the outback in 1929 was solved in October 1958 when Australia's first commercial turned instead to giving while flying to London to order planes 26-year-old Tom Sonter, a construction airline disaster. The exhibition flights. for his new airline. Smithy and his crew worker on the Snowy Mountains Hydro wreckage would only be In June 1927 they flew were found, but not before two pilots Scheme, stumbled across the twisted discovered decades later. around Australia in 10 days. crashed and died while searching wreckage in remote dense forest west of The incident would also have a They topped that feat when they for them. the Kosciuszko National Park. devastating effect not only on the completed the first trans-Pacific flight ANA officially started operations in In the days before black box flight families of those who died but also for from Oakland, California, to Brisbane in January 1930 with Smithy at the controls recorders investigators had little Kingsford Smith's fledgling airline. 83 hours in the Southern Cross between of the Southern Cloud on the Sydney to information to go on, but the conclusion Ulm and Smith had started their first May 31 and June 9, 1928. Trading on Melbourne route. But Kingsford Smith was that Shortridge's plane had hit bad airline, Interstate Flying Services, in 1927 their fame they established ANA in was not ready to spend the rest of his life weather, been blown off course and with two Bristol Tourer aircraft, but December 1928. as a domestic airline pilot and went off to crashed into a mountain. .

Load more