KINGSFORD SMITH

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 December 1937, Page 2

KINGSFORD SMITH

CAUSE OF THE TRAGEDY. No trace has ever been found of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, who disappeared two years ago while on a record-breaking flight to Australia. His object had been to reach Melbourne in less than the 71 hours taken by Mr. C. AV. Scott and the late Captain Campbell Black. Flying Officer Beau Shiel, in"“Caesar of the Skies,’’ (recently published), hazards the explanation that the physical condition of the great pilot was rthe cause of his going down before he reached Singapore. Kingsford Smith, he relates, had been affected in health through nervous worry for some time before the flight, because of the criticisms to which he had been subjected through purchasing an American machine, and by long negotiations with the Air Ministry over official regulations. Then he caught a chill at Croydon, and suffered so much from it. that he abandoned the idea of flying to Melbourne, and booked his passage home by steamer. Financial difficulties over the shipment of the machine, however, were insuperable, and he decided., after all, to fly. He had been able to make records before when he was sick, and he could do it again! The chances are, states 'the author, that Kingsford Smith was not actually ill, but feeling “the tremendous strain of the most gruelling flight he had ever attempted,’’ when, after 30 hours' flying with only three stops, he went, on to another long stretch without, sleep. Haggard with fatigue, 38 years of age, and at an hour when vitality is at its lowest ebb, he found his iron will softened, and suddenly fell forward exhausted across the stick, thus sending the machine into a dive at 300 miles an hour. .Pethybridge, his companion, probably grasped the stick and tried to bring it back, notwithstanding the weight of Kingsford Smith, but Centfrtfugal force pressed him back into his seat. The effort was useless, and with a blinding shock the machine disappeared into the Bay of Bengal. Mr. Shiel tells in this book of the many thrilling achievements of a lionhearted man of tremendous efficiency and sunny personality, who as a pilot had no superior.