Drama Over The Tasman
pp. 41-42 · Read in the full issue
How Taylor Saved Kingsford Smith
ONE day in May, 1935, all Sydney and most of Australia hung around the radio, listening tensely while an extra ordinary air drama was played out over the stormy Tasman Sea.
Kingsford Smith, accompanied by P. G.
Taylor and J. S. W. Stannage, was flying his old “Southern Cross” to New Zealand with mail, when an accident put the star board engine out of action. “Smithy” then tried to fly back to Australia, over 500 miles, on two engines. Half-way home, the port engine ran out of oil. For the rest of the journey Taylor kept the port engine going by climbing out onto the dead starboard engine, getting oil from there, and then climbing out onto the port engine and pouring the oil in. It was one of the most courageous things ever done in aviation.
Stannage, radio-ing every little while, described their progress—how “Smithy” was fighting to keep the unbalanced machine in the air; how the oil-pressure kept falling; and how Taylor made yet another trip out onto the wings. The public relief, when the old aeroplane eventually crept in over the sea and landed at Mascot, was enormous.
This extraordinary story is told graphi cally by P. G. (“Bill”) Taylor in “Call to the Winds”, just published by Angus and Robertson, Sydney, at 8/6. There are a dozen other accounts of outstanding in cidents in an airman’s life —not so grip ping, perhaps, yet told dramatically, and modestly. Taylor loves Australia, and he has a notable mastery of colourful prose: so that it is a sheer delight to sit with him in his speedy “Gull”, and ride over the plains, and the mountains and the friendly clouds, while he travels north, west or south on his airman’s jobs. His adventures with aviation enemy No. 1 — namely, cyclonic storms from the sea— are really thrilling; and his descriptions of Australia’s natural beauty as seen from the air, will live, as literature.
It was fitting that this book should come onto the Australian market while Captain P. G. Taylor was away out over the Indian Ocean, with the “Guba”, sur veying a new airmail route to Africa and Europe. This for years has been his pet plan, and he refers to it three or four times, in his book.
On September 6 a new issue of Papuan air mail stamps will make its appearance, the denominations being the same as those of the present issue—-2d.. 3d., sd„ Bd. and 1/-.
A set of four stamps—ld., Ud., 2'id., and 7d.—will be issued on August 29 to commemorate the 25 years of New Zea land’s control of the Mandated Territory of Western Samoa. Designs will comprise;
Id., a typical Samoan coastal village; Ud.. map of the Group; 2id., Samoan dancing party, with native fales (houses) in the background: 7d., portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson, the famous Scottish author who spent the last years of his life In Samoa.
The ketch “Hispaniola” returned to Sydney on July 5, after her fifth unsuc cessful attempt to reach Lord Howe Is.