Tuesday 24 June 2014

Slash and Burn

I am currently editing a manuscript on Lores Bonney, an Australian pilot of the 1930s. I am a tad over the word limit so I am seriously slashing and burning everything that does not specifically relate to Lores. Here is one little segment I am quite fond of . I hate to consign it to the literary equivalent of the cutting room floor so (hopefully) enjoy.    


(Lores Bonney and Charles Kingsford Smith at Archerfield aerodrome, August 1932)
‘Sensation at Archerfield’
Lores Bonney was at Archerfield overseeing My Little Ship’s final maintenance, which was been carried out by two Qantas ground engineers, on 13 August 1932, two days before her departure on her round Australia flight. She checked her tool box, tested the spare cylinder head and replenished the liquid in the fire extinguisher. This was a task long overdue: it had not been changed since Flight Lieutenant Hill (from whom she had purchased her Gipsy Moth, My Little Ship, filled it before he left England. The magnetic compass, which was oriented to the earth’s magnetic field, and also influenced by any metal objects stowed on board, was ‘swung’ to determine and record any variations. It had to be checked in this way every time a new metal object was brought on board, such as the spare cylinder head or any other iron or steel items which might be stashed in a well-stocked tool kit. Swinging the compass involved first positioning the aircraft away from excess magnetic interference, like metal structure buildings and machinery, then pointing the aircraft at each of the main compass points while still on the ground. Standing some distance from the aircraft, a mechanic orientated a landing compass along a centre line from each compass point and called out the reading to the person sitting in the aircraft. He or she would note the discrepancy on a ‘compass card’. Thus, during flights, Lores would be able to check her bearings against the compass deviation card and allow for any degrees of difference.

Lores also helped repair a broken windscreen. She did not reveal how it had been damaged but it is possible it was one of the casualties in a madcap escapade, where ‘Famous Pilot Figures in Chase’, that had caused a ‘Sensation at Archerfield’ the day before.[iii] According to the Brisbane Courier, ‘a powerful roadster motor car, driven at breakneck speed ... heralded a melodrama that for thrills and incidents outshone any motion picture’. The Chrysler Imperial, which had been brazenly stolen from the showrooms at Ward Motors Ltd, careered into the aerodrome. Recently knighted Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was based at Archerfield during the Brisbane leg of his barnstorming tour of Queensland (which coincided with Exhibition Week).[iv] He was standing near Southern Cross, the Fokker F.V11b/3 trimotor monoplane in which he Charles Ulm and Americans Jim Warner and Harry Lyon had made their 1928 trans-Pacific flight. Smithy saw the Chrysler racing towards him and, realising the driver intended to damage his aircraft, grabbed from the cabin the two rifles he always carried with him. He handed one to his mechanic and the two of them took up armed defence of the Fokker. The driver headed straight for them but, then apparently deterred by the Smithy’s impromptu armed guard, swerved. The roadster crashed into the tail of the Southern Cross Midget, which had been acting as tender to the Southern Cross during the flying circus’s Queensland tour, then slammed into the tail of a Gipsy Moth. But that didn’t stop it.

It was mayhem. Smithy later commented that he had ‘never seen the ‘drome clear so quickly’.[v] As the Chrysler raced along the tarmac, W.E. Gardner, the Queensland Aero Club’s chief instructor, grabbed a control stick from one of the club’s Moths and hurled it at the driver. He swerved, narrowly missing five of the club’s Moths and continued towards the club house, through its fence and onto the western boundary fence, through a neighbouring property and another fence before hightailing it down the Ipswich Road to Oxley.

Meanwhile, Smithy, Charles Matheson (who had taught Lores to fly) and some other onlookers had commandeered an innocent bystander and his car to set out in hot pursuit. (It all seemed so Keystone Cops.) Still with rifle in hand, Smith took aim and fired at the fleeing roadster which rolled to a stop. The driver was pulled from the car with Smith’s rifle firmly in his back. Elder was later charged as a person suspected of being of unsound mind.[vi] Excitement over, Smithy resumed his ‘short air tours in the famous Southern Cross[vii] and Lores continued her preparations.




 
[iii] The Brisbane Courier, 13 August 1932
[iv] The Brisbane Courier, 2 August 1932; Mackersey, Smithy. The Life of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, Little, Brown and Company, London, 1998, p. 272–274
[v] The Brisbane Courier, 13 August 1932
[vi] The Brisbane Courier, 13 August 1932
[vii] Advertisement, The Brisbane Courier, 6 August 1932

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