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 a ...

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 wings. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing con ...

owned by Australian pioneer

aviator An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators because they a ...

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 ...

. 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 the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

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 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake, Nepal–Bihar earthquake strik ...

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 in aviation, 1934 as part of the 1934 Centenary of Melbourne, Melbourne Centenary celebrations. The race was devised by the Lord Mayor o ...

in October of that year. The aircraft was rebuilt from a

Lockheed Sirius The Lockheed Model 8 Sirius is a single-engined, propeller-driven monoplane designed and built by Jack Northrop and Gerard Vultee while they were engineers at Lockheed in 1929, at the request of Charles Lindbergh. Two versions of the same basic d ...

originally built for George R. Hutchinson in 1930.VH-USB "Lady Southern Cross" (Part 1)
/ref> The aircraft was delivered by ship to

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

, Australia in July 1934, bearing Kingsford Smith's requested blue livery and the name '

ANZAC The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) was originally a First World War army corps of the British Empire under the command of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. It was formed in Egypt in December 1914, and operated during the ...

'. 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 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 Airport is a leased federal airport located in Archerfield, Queensland, Archerfield, to the south of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. For some time, it was the primary airport in Brisbane, but it is now the secondary airport. During ...

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

Southern Cross CRUX is a lightweight x86-64 Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users and delivered by a tar.gz-based package system with BSD-style initscripts. It is not based on any other Linux distribution. It also utilizes a ports system to ...

'' had made in 1928;

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

Fiji Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

. 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 Burbank is a city in the southeastern end of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located northwest of downtown Los Angeles, Burbank had a Census-estimated population of 102,755 as of 2023. The city was ...

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 Croydon Airport was the UK's only international airport during the interwar period. It opened in 1920, located near Croydon, then part of Surrey. Built in a Neoclassical architecture, Neoclassical style, it was developed as Britain's main airp ...

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 Prayagraj (, ; ISO 15919, ISO: ), formerly and colloquially known as Allahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi, Varanasi (Benar ...

, India, to

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

(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 with the support or acquiescence of a state followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate or whereabouts with the intent of placing ...

over the

Andaman Sea The Andaman Sea (historically also known as the Burma Sea) is a marginal sea of the northeastern Indian Ocean bounded by the coastlines of Myanmar and Thailand along the Gulf of Martaban and the west side of the Malay Peninsula, and separated f ...

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 (, ; Muttama , ; 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 of Mawlamyaing, Mottama was the capital of the Martaban Kingdo ...

(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, formerly known as the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (MAAS), is a collection of 4 museums in Sydney, owned by the Government of New South Wales. Powerhouse is a contemporary museum of applied arts and sciences, explori ...

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. Geographically it is positioned between the Indian subcontinent and the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese peninsula, located below the Bengal region. Many South Asian and Southe ...

" - the 2009 search was at the same location where the landing gear had been found in 1937, at Aye Island, in the

. 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