TASMAN FLIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 54, 12 September 1928, Page 13

TASMAN FLIGHT

gineers to GalHpoli. Ho was three months on the Peninsula, and was present at the evacuation. A few months later, in France, there was a call for Australian volunteers for the Air Force. Out of 200 who offered 20 wero chosen, and young Kingsford Smith was one of them. That was his introduction to aviation. By 1916, : Kingsford Smith, was through his training, and was in Franco again with his pilot's certificate. He soon became known as a clever and daring airman, and many a Gorman aviator fell victim to his mastory of the air. Then, one day, over Belgium, far beyond the Allied line, Kingsford Smith became mixed up in a "dogfight" (as the airmen call it) with four German machines. He was giving a good account of himself when, from behind a cloud; there camo two other enemy machines. The Australian, before ho could dodge, was the targot of a shower of bullets. A foot was smashed, and ho lost consciousness, and fell. "When he recovered he was still falling. He instinctively regained command of his machine when it was within a few yards of the ground. When the Germans saw him flying again they came after him, but somewhow he escaped them and got back behind the Allied lines. He went to hospital, and, as he describod it in a letter home, "they cut off two toes and a bit of meat." Out of his machine thoy picked no fewer than 82 bullets. Captain Kingsford Smith came out of it with a limp and a Military Cross, awarded for "exceptional bravery when engaged with enemy aviators." Ho was invalided to Australia on six months' furlough, and was not accepted again for active sorvico, but i.'i 1918 he was back in England, training flying officers at Eastbourne. As soon as the end of the war came, Kingsford Smith tried to organise a flight to Australia, but was unnuccessful. He went to America, where for two. years he earned a precarioua livelihood as an aviator. One of his engagements waß to chase the ducks off the rice fields in one of tho Southern States, being provided for this purpose with an ancient airplane. On another occasion, he was a "stunt flyer" for a circus, and had to climb out o» the wing of his machine. Then ho went down with scarlet fever, and presently arrived iii San Francisco, where his sister was living. Returning to Australia, for three years Captain Kingsford Smith was senior pilot for Westralian Airways, in West Australia, and then lie went into the carrying business there, with a line of motor-trucks. Last year he returned to Sydney, and he and Mr. C. P. T. Ulm organised the "Bound Australia Flight." Then they went off to America to organise the recent successful Pacific flight, the preparations for which took nearly a year. "ANZAC" VIM. "Anzac" "Ulm, hard-doer and gentleman, is the definition given to Mr. C. T. P. Ulm by many of his former j comrades in arms at tho landing on Gallipoli, when Mr. Ulm was only between 17 and 18 years old. Unfortunately for him he was wounded on the first day and was invalided back to Australia as unfit, for further service as a soldier. Not satisfied, however,

and anxious to rejoin his comrades at the Front, he re-enlisted under another name, and eventually got to France, where he was present with the First Australian Battalion when the hostilities ended. Mr. Ulm has been confident for quite a number of years that he was going to play a prominent part in aviation, and in 1920 he tried to form a company to manufacture airplanes in Australia. Though not successful in carrying out this idea, he took a prominent part in many airplane "deals," and to-day ho is . considered to be the business brain of Captain Kingsford Smith's undertakings. Only thirty years old, Mr. Ulm is dark-haired, sallow-eomplexioned, thin, and fairly tall. During the war ho saw great possibilities for aviation, and after some years in a stockbroker's office on his return he managed to organise a company to take people for nights from Mascot aerodrome. Prior to going to America to help organise tho Pacific flight, which was preliminary to the present successful journey across the Tasmau Sea, Mr. Ulm was an officer of the Comomnwcalth Repatriation Department for tho vocational training section, and ho threw up this position in order to try for something "really big," as ho termed it at the time.

"Post" photo.