Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Sir Ross Smith, Edited and Introduced by Peter Monteath, Wakefield Press, $29.95.
It’s a memoir and a classic adventure story about the epic world-first flight from England to Australia in 1919 – in the words of the pilot Sir Ross Smith.
In the introduction, historian Monteath points out that Smith was a “member of a generation characterised by a form of gallantry bordering on the casual. Yet in his case, it pushed him to achievements which marked him as a giant among his peers. Having survived more than four months in the hell of Gallipoli, Smith’s appetite for risk had seen him join a machine-gun battalion in the Light Horse”.
It also includes a foreword by Sir Angus Houston, former Chief of Air Force 2001-2005 and Chief of the Defence Force from 2005-2011.
This recent edition is richly illustrated with images from the State Library of South Australia’s Ross and Keith Smith Collection. The gripping victory in the 1919 Great Air Race, England to Australia, was published to coincide with the flight’s centenary.
During the race, Ross and his brother Keith (his co-pilot and navigator) wrote in their diaries daily, recording the journey of their four-man crew in their Vickers Vimy G-EAOU twin-engine plane, its open cockpit exposing them to snow, sleet, hail and unbearable heat. Originally published as 14,000 Miles Through the Air (1922), Ross Smith’s book recounts their danger-ridden, record-breaking journey – a mere 16 years after the Wright brothers first defied gravity for just a few seconds.
Monteath presents the details with well-informed context on the Vimy flight for general readers, giving backgrounds of its crew and their competitors and explaining the genesis of the race itself.
