KINGSFORD-SMITH TELLS STORY OF THE FLIGHT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19108, 28 June 1930, Page 1

KINGSFORD-SMITH TELLS STORY OF THE FLIGHT.

IT IS A DREAM, LONG DREAMED, COME TRUE,

NEW YORK, June 26. Kingsford-Smith’s own story of the flight begins as follows: “In the first place I want to say to everyone how glad we are to get here and how sorry we are that we were delayed on the way. It is a dream long dreamed and finally realised: but let us go on to the flight itself. I will try to tell you as best I can how I felt when I opened up the motors on the beach at Port Marnock. Seven and a Half Ton Load. “Beside me, perched in front of the Fokker, was Van Dyk. Directly behind us were four tons of petrol, and behind that Saul and Stannage. I opened up the engine and we started with our seven and a half ton load very, very slowly In split seconds the ship picked up speed, and at the end of 3500 feet we were in the air. “We went straight out to sea to the south, climbing slowly in a 'Sweeping left hand turn that must have been five miles across. At twelve hundred feet we had to come round into the west, and we were at last on our course for America. “It took an hour and a half to cross Ireland. We saw very little of the Emerald Isle, but I was not paying much attention to the scenery. It was bumpy flying, and I was busy enough keeping on the course and conserving every bit of petrol by flying as economically as possible. We were out to sea before we knew it. A hundred miles out we saw’ fishing boats and trawlers tossing on white capped waves. Praise for Stannage. “I referred before to Stannage and expect to refer to him again many times before this story is told His steady radio bearings were all that kept us on the course. It seemed funny to Van Dyk and me to be taking orders from men we couldn’t see or talk to, save by messages. We had just got over the ocean when I turned over to Van Dyk. I took a bit ol" a rest and wrote some of the log and personal

messages. We stuck them on a stick with a paper clip at the end of it and shoved them back over the tanks and Stannage did the rest. Now and then he sent us a message the same way. We had to push a button, which lit a red lamp in each compartment, to attract each other’s attention. “ Faithful Old Machine." “We knew before we started that the engines would stay with us and they did. We knew that we would get head winds and we got them, but we did not anticipate the delay in getting our bearings on North America that prevented us setting the wheels of the faithful old machine on the soil of the United States without an intervening landing. That ’plane has carried me with the same motors close on 80,000 miles. Since I left Oakland two years ago it has flown all the oceans but the Polar oceans. It has carried me safety over the deserts of Australia and America, the jungles of India and Burmah, and the towns and cities of Europe, and it still has a lot of flying left.” “There are many things which I want to write and shall write about before this story is done, but to-night, so soon after getting here, they are pretty well mixed up in my mind. Those long hours of darkness, with the dark ocean reaching up at us through the mist in the night and the dim horizon line that kept climbing away from us, are all passing kaleidoscopically before my eyes. After a bit of a wash, a shave and some sleep. I'll try to straighten some of these things out and write them down.

BREMEN ALSO HAD TROUBLE WITH COMPASS.

NEW YORK, June 26. Commenting. on the difficulty the Southern Cross had in getting bearings, which was the reason for the landing in Newfoundland. Colonel Fitzmaurice, who was one of the crew of the German aeroplane Bremen, which crossed the Atlantic, stated: “We had the same experience round Labrador. It is a local condition prevalent there as well as at Newfoundland. It is due to the fact that the isogonic lines all converge towards Newfoundland, with the result that you get big changes in the magnetic variation in short distances, making it impossible to make proper corrections for the difference between true north and magnetic north. '