Search on for winner of 1969 air race

By JANETTA DOUGLAS
AUSTRALIA Post tells the story of the first delivery of mail by aircraft from London to Australia on its recent issue of stamps commemorating the event.
This story tells the effect that this 1919 flight by Keith and Ross Smith had on Australia’s colony of Papua and New Guinea and how in 1969, a Papua New Guinea aircraft would go on to win the 50-year re-enactment of the race from London to the Smith brother’s home town of Adelaide.
The Keith and Ross Smith aircraft is on display at the Adelaide Airport.   The hunt is now on to track down the remains of the winner of the 1969 race which crashed near the Kokoda Track in 1988.
Today it is all too easy for any of us, if we have the money, to ring up Qantas and book ourselves a seat on a flight to London secure in the knowledge that in the hold beneath our feet, our luggage will be stacked amid Piles of cargo and bags of parcels and mail destined for Europe.
It therefore seems incredible that  it is less than 100 years since an aircraft even flew from London to Australia and that was only because in 1919 the then Prime Minister of Australia “Billy” Hughes,  offered a £10,000 prize for the first aircraft to carry a bag of mail between the two countries in less than 30 days.

17,800km flight into unknowns
At that time it seemed like an impossible dream.   It was only 16 years since the Wright Brothers had first bunny hopped their ‘Kitty Hawk’ aircraft up into the air in 1903 for the world’s first ever powered flight and although aircraft design had improved greatly during the First World War of 1914 and 1918, a 17,800 km flight from London to Australia seemed out of the question.
Where would the pilots land? Where would they buy the special BP (British Petroleum) fuel for their engines? How could they find their way over such vast oceans and continents without the aid of radios or navigational aids that were still to be invented and what if they developed engine failure?
The problems seemed overwhelming but the response was immediate. Six aircraft entered the race all to be flown by ex-Airforce pilots and all of them taking off from Hounslow Airport near London on Nov 12, 1919, heading for Darwin.
News of their progress was sketchy. Nobody really knew what was actually happening to them until 28 days later a ‘Vicky Vimy’ aircraft piloted by two brothers from Adelaide, South Australia, Ross and Keith Smith and crewed  by their two engineers Jim Bennett and Wally Shiers,  limped onto an airstrip at Fannie Bay near Darwin and were able to hand over their mail bags to Lieutenant Hudson Fish, hero of Australia’s 1915-18 Middle Eastern Campaign…and soon to be a co-founder of Qantas Airways (Queensland and Northern Territory Air Services) based in Longreach.

Future uses of planes endless
Newspapers trumpeted their triumph although only two aircraft had completed the race. The world seemed to have suddenly become a smaller place. If mail could be flown half way around the world in just four weeks instead of taking the normal three months by sea, the future uses of aircraft seemed endless.
And nowhere was this more apparent than in a country of 230,000km with its impenetrable jungles and endless swamps called ‘The Territory of Papua and New Guinea’.  This air race had proved that aircraft were not just a fair ground attraction or an instrument of war.  Aircraft seemed set to become the ‘work horses’ of the future and Sir Hubert Murray who was the Lieutenant Governor of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea between 1908 until his death in 1940, was quick to take note.
By 1919 his kiaps’ (administration officers) had established patrol posts throughout the former British colony of Papua and Murray was encouraging them all to think seriously about getting their villagers to hand-build airstrips adjacent to their patrol posts and the nearby Christian missions.
In the same year, the League of Nations had given Australia the responsibility of administering the affairs of the former German colony of New Guinea and Sir Hubert began administrating that too. Airstrips began being built everywhere.

Lifeblood for growth and
exploration
Aviation quickly became not only an instrument of pacification of the 700 warring linguistic nations of TPNG but the life blood of its economic development and exploration.
By 1927 for instance, an Airline called ‘Guinea Gold’ had established itself in Lae to help develop gold mines in Bulolo and Wau.   Their job was to carry every nut, bolt and spar needed to build eight huge dredges needed for the job and this including the 7000 pound weight of “tumblers” needed to crush the rock onto the riffle tables.
By 1928, ‘Guinea Gold Airways’ and their fleet of six, mostly German built “Junker” aircraft, one of which is now on display on Independence Hill in Port Moresby, was carrying more freight by weight than the rest of the world combined.   An absolutely incredible achievement
And then came World War 2 and American Marines began building massive cement or Marsden matting covered airstrips for their heavy bombers and fighter aircraft from Manus island to Milne Bay and all ports in between. By 1954, Qantas was using them for their weekly flights between Australia and Port Moresby and Lae and these flights had connections in Sydney with their ‘Viscount’ aircraft bound for London.
Meanwhile in PNG a rag tail fleet of timber and wire ex-Airforce aircraft and gung-ho ex Airforce pilots were carrying passengers, freight, mail and coffee out of every isolated mission and patrol post and into the main TPNG towns.   Sir Hubert’s dream had become reality but the mortality rate was equally impressive.
It was time for the TPNG Department of Civil Aviation to flex its muscles.

Government control
In 1967 the department chose three of the more responsible air charter operators of “STOL” (short take-off and landing) aircraft  namely ‘Territory Airways’ (later called ‘Talair’ operating in the Highlands of PNG), ‘ Crowley Airways’ operating out of Lae and Rabaul and the third, ‘Aerial Tours Ltd’ (later called ‘Douglas Airways’) operating in Papua and the Sepik).  The department gave them exclusive rights to  operate scheduled, ticketed air services out of the main TPNG towns while flying “milk runs” in their tiny planes carrying less than 10 passengers out into the hundreds of tiny grass and mud strips that surrounded them.
The stipulation was that pilot training and first class maintenance facilities were a condition of keeping their licences and their owners responded appropriately. The fatality statistics plummeted and any pilot who could claim to have flown 90 hours a month in such tortuous conditions, could get a job flying anywhere in the world.
More importantly, any ailing PNG villager knew that if he/she could get to an airstrip they could be in a hospital in a main town within minutes…not days/weeks of agonising walking or paddling and all at the Department of Health’s expense. Aviation had truly revolutionised life on outstations as well as the development of PNG’s economy.

Search for aircraft and the race
Finding suitable aircraft for the job was always difficult but the owner of Aerial Tours, Denis Douglas got lucky when he spotted an article in an aviation magazine about an experimental twin engine, 10-passenger aircraft with STOL capabilities being built on the Isle of Wight in England by a company called Britton Norman Islander. He was so impressed he went to England with his accountant and chief engineer Ray Shaw to take a look and they ordered 10 of them.
This new fleet for Aerial Tours was in the process of being built and ferried to PNG when in 1969 BP and the Australian Government offered prizes and trophies to the value of almost $100,000 for the winners of what they called “The Last Great Air race” to commemorate the 50th anniversary of that first mail delivery from London to the hometown of Keith and Ross Smith’s in Adelaide, with an additional leg from Adelaide to Sydney to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Captain Cook’s first landing in Australia in 1769.
Denis Douglas immediately entered two of his new aircraft in the race planning to fly one of them himself with the other being ferried out by his regular ferry operator.
Around 80 other aircraft entered the race, ranging in size from a tiny Tiger Moth to much larger jet aircraft.  It was to be a handicapped start with all aircraft expected to arrive at the various finishing lines within minutes of each other. Unfortunately the aircraft that Denis had chosen to fly hadn’t been finished by the time the race started but ferry flight pilots, Keith Buxton and Bill Bright took off in the other one from London and after a flight time of only 71 hours and 50 minutes arrived in Adelaide to be declared the winner of the London-Adelaide section of the race with trophies being presented by the elderly twin sisters of Keith and Ross Smith.
The PNG plane then went on to win the bicentennial race to Sydney and was declared the overall winner of the race.
In the following days, Denis and Keith and the two jubilant designers of the aircraft, Des Norman and John Britton flew back to Moresby in the plane to be met by a huge crowd at the Aerial Tours hanger with the PNG Police Band under Inspector Shacklady, belting out the tune of Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machine.

Alpha Tango Zulu
Within days she had been stripped of her ferry gear and had been registered for flying in PNG as Alpha Tango Zulu (ATZ) and put to work.
For nearly 20 years she continued to service her country well until on Aug 8, 1988 she tragically crashed at Kwainj in the Kokoda Track area, killing one passenger and injuring two others.
Denis was devastated.  His company had been renamed Douglas Airways Ltd at Independence in 1975 and held a record of nearly 10 years without a fatal accident and Denis was immensely proud of his pilots and engineers and the safely record that they had established. The DCA finding that pilot error had caused the fatal crash didn’t improve his mood.
For a year or more this gallant little airplane lay dead where she had fallen being used as accommodation by the opportunistic owners of the garden she had destroyed.
Meanwhile the winner of the 1919 Air race had been put on display at the Adelaide Airport.  A rescue mission was mounted by PNG Aviation enthusiasts.  A helicopter was engaged: ropes were attached; she was lifted out of her mud bath; she was free again; she was up in the air again and in her excitement she proudly tried to fly off by herself; the helicopter was in danger; the ropes had to be cut and off she went flying straight and level on her next big adventure.
Where did she go? Where did she land?
A prize is now being offered by her admirers for information and photographs leading to the recovery of all or part of this Britton Norman Islander registered ATZ painted in her distinctive blue, black and white livery.
This year marks the centenary anniversary of the Keith and Ross Smith flight.   There is no better time to begin the search.