{"id":19632582,"date":"2026-09-03T11:45:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T09:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/kingsford-smith-southern-cross-first-trans-pacific-flight-1928\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T08:41:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:41:41","slug":"kingsford-smith-southern-cross-first-trans-pacific-flight-1928","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/kingsford-smith-southern-cross-first-trans-pacific-flight-1928\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Kingsford Smith: The First Flight Across the Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n<!-- mfsh:top -->\n\n<style>\n.mfsh-trigger{display:inline-flex;align-items:center;gap:10px;height:44px;padding:0 18px;margin:0 0 26px;border:2px solid 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In 1928 nobody had flown across it, and the reason was arithmetic: the distances between usable landfalls were longer than any aircraft could reliably manage, and if you missed the island you were aiming at, there was no second island.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Charles Kingsford Smith did it in a second-hand Dutch airliner that had already been written off once in the Arctic.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px 22px;margin:24px 0;font-size:15px;line-height:1.8\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:600;font-size:17px\">Quick Facts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Aircraft:<\/strong> Fokker F.VIIb\/3m <em>Southern Cross<\/em>, three Wright Whirlwind engines<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Crew:<\/strong> Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm (Australian, pilots); Harry Lyon (American, navigator); James Warner (American, radio operator)<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Route:<\/strong> Oakland &ndash; Hawaii &ndash; Suva &ndash; Brisbane<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Dates:<\/strong> departed 31 May 1928, landed Brisbane 9 June 1928<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Distance:<\/strong> around 11,600 km<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Flying time:<\/strong> about 83 hours 38 minutes<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Longest leg:<\/strong> Kauai to Suva, 5,077 km, 34 and a half hours<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Preserved:<\/strong> in a glass memorial hangar at Brisbane Airport<\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">A salvaged aeroplane and other people&rsquo;s money<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The <em>Southern Cross<\/em> started life as the <em>Detroiter<\/em>, flown on a Detroit News Arctic expedition and crashed in Alaska in 1926. Sir Hubert Wilkins salvaged the airframe and sold it in San Francisco to Kingsford Smith and Ulm &mdash; without engines, and without instruments.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The three Wright Whirlwinds were paid for by the Melbourne businessman Sidney Myer. The airframe itself ended up owned by a Californian oilman, G. Allan Hancock, who bought it and lent it back to them. The whole enterprise was assembled out of goodwill, borrowed money and a wreck.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;[Charles] Ulm &hellip; had similar ideas to mine. He was ambitious; he wanted to do something which would make the world sit up &hellip; We began to talk of some Big Feat which would bring us what we wanted, fame, money, status.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Charles Kingsford Smith<\/strong> &mdash; Pilot and commander, writing in My Flying Life (1937), on how the plan began with Charles Ulm<\/div><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Navigating to a dot<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The hard part was never the flying. It was finding Hawaii, and then finding Fiji, using a sextant, a drift sight and dead reckoning, from an aircraft that vibrated continuously and had no autopilot.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Harry Lyon, the American navigator, had prepared by taking star sights from a moving car to simulate an unstable platform. This turned out to have complications.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;We got in quite a bit of practice at this but after the third arrest it became too expensive.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Harry Lyon<\/strong> &mdash; Navigator, on practising celestial navigation from a speeding car before the flight<\/div><\/div>\r\n<p>They left Oakland on 31 May 1928 and reached Wheeler Field in Hawaii after 27 hours and 25 minutes. The second leg, from Kauai to Suva, was the one that mattered: 5,077 kilometres, thirty-four and a half hours, through an equatorial lightning storm, to an island group no aircraft had ever landed on before.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;When the Southern Cross swung clear of the Farrallon Islands, twenty-three miles off the Golden Gate of California, and the accompanying planes turned back, the feeling to we four men was one of utter loneliness.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Harry Lyon<\/strong> &mdash; Navigator, from his unpublished memoir, on leaving the California coast<\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/harry-lyon-james-warner-southern-cross-1928.jpg\" alt=\"Harry Lyon and James Warner of the Southern Cross crew\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Harry Lyon, navigator, and James Warner, radio operator. Both were American, and both were largely written out of the Australian telling of the story. Photo: State Library of New South Wales, public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>The final leg from Suva to Brisbane brought the worst weather of the trip &mdash; Lyon called it exactly that &mdash; with a leaking windscreen soaking the pilots for hours. They crossed the Australian coast near Ballina and landed at Eagle Farm on 9 June, in front of a crowd counted somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five thousand.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/kingsford-smith-ulm-mascot-1928.jpg\" alt=\"Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm at Mascot, June 1928\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Kingsford Smith and Ulm on landing at Mascot, 10 June 1928, the day after reaching Brisbane. Photo: State Library of New South Wales, public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What came after<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>He did not stop. Later that year he made the first non-stop crossing of Australia and then the first flight across the Tasman Sea, Sydney to Christchurch, in 14 hours 25 minutes. In 1930 he flew the Atlantic east to west, from Ireland to Newfoundland, which meant the <em>Southern Cross<\/em> had now been round the world.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>On 8 November 1935, flying a Lockheed Altair called <em>Lady Southern Cross<\/em> with his co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge, he disappeared over the Andaman Sea on a night leg from Allahabad to Singapore. Another aviator reported seeing the aircraft low over the water in a storm. No bodies were ever found. Eighteen months later an undercarriage leg with its tyre still inflated washed ashore in Burma, and Lockheed confirmed it was his.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>He was 38.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Australian newsreel of the arrival at Eagle Farm and Mascot:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7Z_vyFomnnE\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p>A recording of Kingsford Smith and Ulm speaking, made in June 1928, days after they landed:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ssf1SqVb4cU\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p>And the aircraft itself, still at Brisbane Airport:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iSGnScffbLM\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\n\n\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>Who was Charles Kingsford Smith?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">An Australian aviator, born in Brisbane in 1897, who made the first flight across the Pacific Ocean in 1928 and the first crossing of the Tasman Sea later the same year. He was knighted in 1932 and disappeared over the Andaman Sea in 1935.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What was the Southern Cross?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">A Fokker F.VIIb\/3m trimotor. It began life as the Detroiter on a Detroit News Arctic expedition, crashed in Alaska in 1926, and was salvaged by Sir Hubert Wilkins, who sold the airframe to Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm without engines or instruments.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Who was in the crew of the first trans-Pacific flight?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Four men: Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm, both Australian, as pilots; and two Americans, Harry Lyon as navigator and James Warner as radio operator. The American pair were largely written out of the Australian telling of the story.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How long did the Pacific crossing take?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">They left Oakland on 31 May 1928 and landed at Brisbane on 9 June, with about 83 hours 38 minutes in the air over roughly 11,600 km. The longest leg, Kauai to Suva, was 5,077 km and took thirty-four and a half hours.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why was the Pacific crossing so difficult?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Navigation. The distances between usable landfalls were longer than any aircraft could comfortably manage, and if you missed the island you were aiming at there was no second island. Harry Lyon worked with a sextant and dead reckoning from a vibrating aircraft with no autopilot.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How did Kingsford Smith die?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">He disappeared on 8 November 1935 with co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge, flying a Lockheed Altair called Lady Southern Cross on a night leg from Allahabad to Singapore. No bodies were found. Eighteen months later an undercarriage leg washed ashore in Burma and Lockheed confirmed it was his.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Where is the Southern Cross today?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">On display in a glass memorial hangar at Brisbane Airport. Kingsford Smith sold it to the Commonwealth in 1935.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\n\n\n\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Who was Charles Kingsford Smith?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"An Australian aviator, born in Brisbane in 1897, who made the first flight across the Pacific Ocean in 1928 and the first crossing of the Tasman Sea later the same year. He was knighted in 1932 and disappeared over the Andaman Sea in 1935.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What was the Southern Cross?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"A Fokker F.VIIb\/3m trimotor. It began life as the Detroiter on a Detroit News Arctic expedition, crashed in Alaska in 1926, and was salvaged by Sir Hubert Wilkins, who sold the airframe to Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm without engines or instruments.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Who was in the crew of the first trans-Pacific flight?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Four men: Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm, both Australian, as pilots; and two Americans, Harry Lyon as navigator and James Warner as radio operator. The American pair were largely written out of the Australian telling of the story.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How long did the Pacific crossing take?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"They left Oakland on 31 May 1928 and landed at Brisbane on 9 June, with about 83 hours 38 minutes in the air over roughly 11,600 km. The longest leg, Kauai to Suva, was 5,077 km and took thirty-four and a half hours.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why was the Pacific crossing so difficult?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Navigation. The distances between usable landfalls were longer than any aircraft could comfortably manage, and if you missed the island you were aiming at there was no second island. Harry Lyon worked with a sextant and dead reckoning from a vibrating aircraft with no autopilot.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How did Kingsford Smith die?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"He disappeared on 8 November 1935 with co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge, flying a Lockheed Altair called Lady Southern Cross on a night leg from Allahabad to Singapore. No bodies were found. Eighteen months later an undercarriage leg washed ashore in Burma and Lockheed confirmed it was his.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Where is the Southern Cross today?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"On display in a glass memorial hangar at Brisbane Airport. Kingsford Smith sold it to the Commonwealth in 1935.\"}}]}<\/script><p><em>Sources: Australian Dictionary of Biography; State Library of New South Wales; State Library of Queensland; National Museum of Australia; Maine Historical Society on Harry Lyon.<\/em><\/p>\n<!-- mfsh:bottom -->\n\n<button type=\"button\" class=\"mfsh-trigger mfsh-bottom\" data-mfsh-placement=\"bottom\" aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"><svg><use href=\"#mfsh-i-share\"\/><\/svg>Share this story<\/button>\n\n<!-- \/mfsh:bottom -->\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/amy-johnson-solo-england-australia-1930-jason\/\">Amy Johnson: The First Woman to Fly Solo to Australia<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wiley-post-solo-round-the-world-winnie-mae-pressure-suit\/\">Wiley Post: The One-Eyed Pilot Who Flew Around the World Alone<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/airship-italia-amundsen-last-flight\/\">Airship Italia and Amundsen&rsquo;s Last Flight<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1928 four men crossed the Pacific in a salvaged Fokker, navigating to Hawaii and Fiji by sextant. Charles Kingsford Smith disappeared over the Andaman Sea seven years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":19632199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[665,666],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19632582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aviation-world","category-history-and-legends"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Kingsford Smith: First Flight Across the Pacific | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In 1928 four men crossed the Pacific in a salvaged Fokker, navigating to Hawaii and Fiji by sextant. 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