William Lancaster (pilot)

William "Bill" Newton Lancaster (* 1898 in Birmingham ; † April 20, 1933 in the Sahara ) was a British pilot and adventurer.

Born in England, Lancaster went to Australia in his youth and joined the army there in 1916. He served with the Australian Army in the Middle East and France before beginning pilot training in the Australian Flying Corps .

After the end of World War I , Lancaster went back to England and joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot .

The successful amateur boxer and good rider was considered rebellious by his superiors, which was also expressed in the fact that he married at the age of 21, although an officer was only allowed to do so from the age of 25.

After serving in India , Lancaster ended his military career in late 1927 with the rank of captain.

The flight to Australia

Since it was difficult to find a job as a pilot at that time, Lancaster wanted to draw attention to itself with a spectacular action and decided to be the first person to fly from England to Australia.

He found support on the one hand in the British aircraft manufacturer Avro , who converted an Avro 594 Avian for him at a reasonable price for this project (the single piece was given the type designation Avro 600 and was known as the "Red Rose"), and on the other hand by the company Shell , who provided him with the fuel he needed free of charge.

Even so, his own private means were not yet sufficient to carry out the costly flight, and he had already decided to give up his plan when meeting the Australian Jessie "Chubbie" Miller at a party in London was not only his financial situation, but his other Life changed.

Miller, who lived separately from her husband in Australia in England, had for some time made it into her head that she would be the first woman in the world to fly the distance from England to Australia. When she found out about Lancaster's plan, she offered to pay him half of the missing funds, provided she was allowed to fly as a passenger.

So the two started on October 14, 1927 from Croydon towards Darwin.

The flight was interrupted when Lancaster had to make an emergency landing on a small island in Sumatra due to bad weather and mechanical problems, in which the machine was damaged. During the time of extensive repairs, they were overtaken by the Australian Bert Hinkler , who was also traveling from England to Darwin in his Avro 581 Avian to be the first person to fly this route alone.

Lancaster and Miller also later reached Australia and set a new world record: Jessie Miller was the woman who had made the longest flight in history.

The Lancaster criminal case

In the months that followed, the two traveled to the Australian continent. In June 1928 both were invited to the United States to star in a Hollywood film together; however, the film was never shot. Six months later, Lancaster flew across the United States to advertise British aircraft engines.

He then tried to get a divorce from his wife. Due to the intense press coverage, it was not hidden from him that the relationship between Lancaster and Jessie Miller had developed into a love affair in recent months, but she did not consent to a divorce.

In search of a job as a pilot in Mexico, Lancaster had to leave Jessie Miller, who has since become a well-known pilot and was known in the USA as "Australian Aviatrix", in the jointly rented house in Miami / Florida . During this time Miller met a young writer named Hayden Clarke, who was supposed to write her story as a ghostwriter . As it turned out later, Clarke had built a web of lies around Lancaster and won over the woman. The two were about to get married.

When Captain Bill Lancaster - he was known by this name - heard about it, he immediately flew back to Florida. Lancaster, Miller, and Clarke spent the evening of April 20, 1932 at the Miami house together. An ambulance was called to the house that night - Clarke was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the head and died a few hours later.

On the basis of the documents found by Clarke announcing his suicide, the police initially assumed a suicide , but a week later Lancaster was arrested on high suspicion of murder.

In a sensational process, however, his innocence was cleared; Last but not least, his diary could relieve him. After reading this diary, the judge declared: ".... I have never met a more honorable man than Captain Lancaster (... I have never met a more honorable man than Captain Lancaster)" .

Despite the acquittal, Lancaster was a broken man after the trial; most of his previous friends had turned away from him and Jessie Miller.

Through the Sahara

After they both returned to England, Lancaster looked for a chance to be positive again in public. Since in the early 1930s the record hunt on the England-Cape Town route was extremely competitive among British pilots and therefore also very publicity-prone, he decided to use the current record of Amy Mollison, the now married Amy Johnson , which was 4 days, 6 hours and 54 minutes was to be beaten.

Financially supported by his father, Lancaster bought an Avro 616 Avian V from Sir Charles Kingsford Smith , an Australian record pilot and aviation pioneer , one of two machines in a special long-range version that Sir Charles had built at Avro.

With this "Southern Cross Minor" machine, Kingsford Smith had already tried unsuccessfully to break the record set by Amy Johnson for the Australia-England route.

Although the aircraft was specially designed for long-haul operations and was therefore ideal for the 10,600-kilometer flight, it had a speed disadvantage of around 16 km / h compared to Amy Mollison's De Havilland DH.80 Puss Moth .

In retrospect, it is doubtful whether Lancaster would have been physically and mentally capable of carrying out such an undertaking.

He had spent three months in prison the previous year, during which the possible death penalty had been straining on his nerves. In addition, apart from a few hours with the "Southern Cross Minor" on the Avro company premises, he had not had any flight experience for a year. Now he had about 72 flight hours in a period of 4.5 days to set the record. And he could use the least amount of time on the ground to rest; The main priority was refueling and maintenance. Aware of the speed disadvantage of its aircraft, Lancaster had only planned short refueling and maintenance stops with a maximum of two hours of sleep per stopover. A challenge awaited him that would have pushed a physically and mentally stronger person than Lancaster to the limit.

To a reporter who, along with Lancaster's parents and Chubbie Miller, was the only one to watch the take-off from Lympne airfield in the early morning of April 11, 1933, Lancaster had told him that he bore the risk of his venture alone and that in the event of an accident he would not Expect search and rescue operations.

The first stage led to Oran, about 3,000 kilometers away . Due to unfavorable wind conditions, Lancaster was forced to make an unplanned refueling stop in Barcelona . He was already 6.5 hours behind schedule when he wanted to start in Oran. French officials in Oran tried to dissuade Lancaster from his plan; When they asked for a large amount of money as bail for a possible search operation, Lancaster replied angrily that he did not have the amount and would not expect such an operation.

The following night, a minor carelessness became a problem - the Southern Cross Minor had no cockpit or instrument lighting, so Lancaster was forced to periodically use a flashlight to illuminate the compass to check the course.

So he landed the next morning for an unplanned refueling stop in Adrar , around 160 kilometers from the planned landing site in Reggane . Just an hour later, he took off again and decided not to land in Reggane anymore and to fly over the Sahara without stopping again. Unfortunately, however, he took the wrong route, flew in a circle and flew over Adrar again four hours after take-off. So he was forced to land in Reggane to refuel. Since he had not slept for about 30 hours, airport staff warned him to rest. However, since he was about 10 hours behind his schedule, he did not respond to the advice and wanted to take advantage of the tiny chance he had left.

The head of a French company based in Reggane, who also unsuccessfully tried to dissuade Lancaster from his plan, promised to start a search operation if the plane did not reach the planned destination Gao within 24 hours of take-off . He asked Lancaster to make a fire in case he crashed so that he could be more easily found.

On April 12, 1933 at around 6:30 p.m., Lancaster took off from Reggane on the almost 1,300-kilometer leg across the Sahara. Eyewitnesses later reported that the launch went off strangely. On the one hand, the machine would have been slow to gain altitude and, on the other hand, Lancaster would have started in the wrong direction before turning around and disappearing south.

Lancaster had originally planned to orientate itself on the road that led through the Sahara towards Gao, but soon lost its track and from then on relied on the unlit compass with the help of the flashlight. At 8:30 p.m. a warning lamp reported an engine malfunction, five minutes later the engine was not running smoothly and the aircraft lost altitude noticeably. Lancaster failed to make an emergency landing on the Avro; there was a crash landing with the machine rolling over. Lancaster crawled out of the remains of his plane with facial injuries.

And so began the slow death of Captain Bill Lancaster, which he meticulously recorded in his diary. Although he had only ten liters of water, a pot of coffee, a bar of chocolate and old, now hard bread, Lancaster survived until the morning of April 20, 1933.

His mummified body, his airplane and his diary were only found 29 years later, on February 12, 1962, by a French military patrol.

The last entry in Lancaster's diary reads: "So the beginning of the eighth day has dawned. It is still cool. I have no water .... I am waiting patiently. Come soon please. Fever wracked me last night. Hope you get my full log. Bill "- (" The morning of the eighth day begins. It's still cold. I have no water ... and wait patiently. Please come quickly. Last night I had a fever. I hope you [that meant Chubbie Miller] you get my complete diary. Bill ")

It later turned out that the car promised in Reggane had actually set off to look for Lancaster. However, he was suspected to be near the road; the fires, which Lancaster had started at intervals, had therefore not been discovered.

The aerial search was also unsuccessful. Those responsible had suspected Lancaster further south, they had ruled out that something had happened to him on the first section of the route.

Lancaster's diary was given to Chubbie Miller, who had married a British pilot in 1936, in fulfillment of his last will. Miller later cleared it for publication.

The story of William Lancaster and Jessie "Chubbie" Miller was filmed in 1985 under the title "The Lancaster Miller Affair" in six one-hour episodes for Australian television.

literature

• Sylvain Estibal : Lost in the desert. Bill Lancaster's legendary Africa flight. Malik Verlag , Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-89029-282-3 .