Keith Macpherson Smith
Sir Keith Macpherson Smith KBE (born December 20, 1890 in Semaphore , South Australia , † December 19, 1955 in Sydney , Australia ) was an Australian aviation pioneer , who with his brother Ross Macpherson Smith and two other men in 1919 with a Vickers Vimy first flew from England to Australia in less than 30 days. His brother Ross was the pilot of this flight, Keith was in charge of the navigation. For this pioneering achievement they received a prize of £ 10,000 offered by the Australian government and were knighted.
His father Andrew Bell Smith emigrated from Scotland to Western Australia and was manager of the Mutooroo cattle station, where he married Jessie, a daughter of another Scottish settler. Her sons Keith and Ross went to Queen's School in Adelaide and then to Warriston School in Moffat , Scotland for two years .
Keith worked at Elder Smith & Co. in Adelaide before the outbreak of World War I and joined a medical department with the Australian Imperial Force . Since he wanted to join the Air Force, he went to England to the Royal Flying Corps , which accepted him in July 1917 as Officer Cadet Wing . He was on a bomber squadron in France in January 1918, but not on active duty. On April 1, he was promoted to lieutenant and trained soldiers until the end of the war. He was released from military service on November 5, 1919.
On 12 November 1919 launched Keith as co-pilot with his brother Ross Smith and two mechanics of Hounslow in London in England in a Vickers Vimy with two engines, each with 360 horsepower and a wingspan of about 21 meters to Darwin in Australia , where he at 10 December arrived. This flight took place in the form of a race in which six participants or teams took part, two of whom reached the finish and two were fatally injured. The later polar pilot Hubert Wilkins also remained on the route, albeit uninjured . The entire flight route was divided into four stations: from London via Cairo , Calcutta , Singapore and Darwin. There were more than 20 stopovers on the route.
He planned a world tour in 1922, which he gave up when his brother Ross was killed in an airplane accident while preparing for this sightseeing flight.
Smith then worked in Sydney as a representative for the Vickers airline , but with Vickers aircraft rarely bought, he became vice president of an airline, British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines , which was acquired by Qantas in 1954 . He later became director of Qantas Empire & Tasman Empire Airways Limited , an Imperial Airways company , the forerunner of British Airways .
In 1924 Smith married Anita Crawford in Adelaide, with whom he had no children. He died in Sydney on December 19, 1955 and was buried next to his brother Ross, father and mother in the North Road Anglican Cemetery in Adelaide.
Web links
- Information from Melbourne University
- Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith Civil Aviation Scholarships ( July 6, 2011 memento in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Keith Smith on Australian Dictionary of Biography . Retrieved June 12, 2010
- ^ Peter Burness: The 1919 Air Race , Australian War Memorial, accessed January 24, 2013
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Smith, Keith Macpherson |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Australian military pilot in World War I and aviation pioneer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 20, 1890 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Semaphore , Australia |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 19, 1955 |
| Place of death | Sydney , Australia |