On this day in aviation history, 98 years ago (June 9, 1928), the first flight to cross the Pacific Ocean was successfully completed. Charles Kingsford Smith was at the controls for the flight, along with a crew of four other men – Charles Ulm, James Warner, and Harry Lyon. This daring flight departed on May 31, 1928, at 8:54 a.m. from Oakland, California. The target destination was Eagle Farm Airport in Brisbane, Australia. The aircraft flown for this mission was a Fokker F.VII/3m named Southern Cross, which had been purchased from Australian polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins. Between Oakland and Brisbane, Smith and crew made stops in Hawaii, Fiji, and Ballina. The leg between Hawaii and Fiji was the longest, at 3,155 miles. This segment took 34 hours and 30 minutes to complete, while averaging just over 91 mph. A significant lightning storm encountered at the equator only made this leg more enduring. On June 9, 1928, at 10:50 a.m., the crew of the Southern Cross landed in Brisbane to a crowd of 26,000 people at Eagle Farm Airport. Here, they received a very warm “hero’s welcome.”
Charles Kingsford Smith would go on to complete another historic flight in the same year, the Trans-Tasman journey. In August of 1928, Smith flew Southern Cross across Australia from Point Cook (near Melbourne) to Perth, in Western Australia. An attempted flight to London in April of 1929 would result in Smith and crew running out of fuel and requiring rescue. The crew of five was ultimately found, but two search crew pilots were lost in the process. Smith died in 1935 after disappearing on an overnight flight in the Lady Southern Cross from India to Singapore. The Fokker F.VII/3m Southern Cross was a high-wing monoplane that was powered by three Wright J-6 Whirlwind 9-cylinder radial engines. This tri-motor had a crew of two and a capacity for eight passengers. In cruise, the F.WII/3m would fly along at 111 mph, while maximum airspeed was attained at 130 mph. Southern Cross had a range of 650 nmi, a service ceiling of 14,400 ft, and could take off and land with 739 ft of runway.
