The great air race to Melbourne

The 1934 MacRobertson Trophy

By Gert Jan Mentink1 September 2019

In the London to Melbourn Air Race of 1934, daring pilots exceeded the boundaries of contemporary aviation. In a world dominated by the Great Depression, the race formed a welcome distraction, closely followed by millions of people.

The race was held in October 1934 as part of the centenary celebrations of the city of Melbourne, with the goal of bring Australia and Europe – and in particular, of course, the motherland, Britain – closer together. The idea of the race was devised by the mayor of Melbourne, Harold Smith. A prize fund of AU$75,000 (£10.000, worth about £2 million today), was put up by Macpherson Robertson, a wealthy Australian confectionery manufacturer, on the conditions that the race be named after his MacRobertson company, and that it be organised in the safest way possible.

Organised by the Royal Aero Club in London, the race ran from RAF Mildenhall in East Anglia to the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, a distance of approximately 18,200 km (11,300 miles). There were five compulsory stops, at Baghdad, Allahabad, Singapore, Darwin and Charleville; otherwise competitors were free to choose their own routes. A further 22 airfields were provided with stocks of fuel and oil by Shell and Stanavo. The Royal Aero Club put some effort into persuading the countries along the route to improve facilities at the stopping points. Aircraft were required to carry three days' rations per crew member, floats, smoke signals and decent instruments.

There were prizes for the outright fastest aircraft, and for the best overall performance by any plane finishing within 16 days, calculated against a 'handicap speed' which considered, among other things, the payload carried and the rated power of the engines. The handicap speed formula can be found on the website A Fleeting Pace by Terry Mace who argues that the handicap classification was full of flaws.

In the weeks and days before the race, the field of 63 entries whittled down to 21. The aircraft which made it to the start included three purpose-built de Havilland DH.88 Comet racers, two of the new generation of American all-metal passenger transports, and an eclectic mix of older racers, light transports and old biplane bombers. Eventually only twenty aircraft took off at dawn on 20 October 1934, with Irishmen 'Fitz' Fitzmaurice and 'Jock' Bonar deciding to stay on the ground after an argument with the organisation on the weight of their purpose-built Bellanca 28‑70 racer Irish Swoop.

Day 1

First off the starting line, waved off by the mayor of London and a crowd of 60.000 people, were Jim and Amy Mollison in their DH.88 Comet G‑ACSP Black Magic. The starting sequence did not matter much, as the small time differences were to be nullified by regulated time on the ground in Singapore. Managing a non-stop flight, the Mollisons were also the first to arrive in Baghdad, where they took a bath and gave an interview to the press before taking off again. The scarlet Comet, G‑ACSS Grosvenor House, left Mildenhall as third, but pilots Scott and Campbell Black had to return to the airfield as one of the engines gave trouble. Having fixed the malfunction, they made good progress towards Baghdad but landed too far north in Krkuk. G‑ACSS was refuelled there and still arrived at Baghdad as second.

Most of the aircraft had limited range and made refuelling stops in Rome, Athens and Aleppo. The KLM DC‑2 PH‑AJU Uiver, carrying mail and a a couple of adventurous passengers, did this too but surprisingly the airliner still arrived in Baghdad in third place. The Boeing 247 flown by Roscoe Turner and Clyde Pangborn passed through Rome and also reached Bagdad by the end of the first day. The two almost lost their precious Boeing there as they experienced windshear during their landing approach.

They were followed by the second Dutch team, flying the sleek Pander S.4 PH‑OST Panderjager. Chosing a more northern route, its crew, Geysendorffer, Asjes, and Pronk, had been forced to make a precautionary landing at Halle, near Leipzig, as a piece of aircraft linen had detached. Quickly repaired, PH-OST flew to Athens and then straight to Baghdad. Next to arrive there was the third Comet, G-ACSR, flown by Cathcart Jones and Waller. They too had planned to fly non-stop to Baghdad, but had also missed their mark, landing at Dezful, some 200 km further south. After a quick refuel they still made it to Baghdad on the first day.

Others had bigger problems. Jaqueline Cochran and Wesley Smith Pratt made a stop in Bucharest where they damaged their Granville R‑6H, NX14307 Q.E.D. – the last of the Gee Bee racers – during landing. For them the race was over. Neville Stack and Sidney Lewis Turner ran into bad weather over France and put down their twin-engined Airspeed AS.8 Viceroy G‑ACMU in Paris. They eventually quit the race at Athens on the third day, blaming the manufacturer for the aircraft's brake problem.

Navigation proved to be difficult for some: Geoffrey Shaw managed to fly his British Aircraft Eagle G‑ACVU to Catalonia in Spain! The best performance among the slower contenders was by Malcom MacGregor and Wesley Walker, who reached Athens on the first day in their unmodified Miles Hawk, ZK‑ADJ.

Day 2

Still in the lead, the Mollisons in the black Comet made a fuel stop at Karachi on the second day of the race. But from there their luck seemed to have vaporised. Once again airborne after a rather slow refuel, the undercarriage did not seem to retract completely and they returned to the airfieId. When they took off again, the isse still seemed to persist. It turned out to be a matter of a loose wire! When this was finally fixed, they lost their way over India in thick fog and eventually landed at Jabalpur. Unfortunately only low octane fuel was available there. This had a detrimental effect on the performance of the Comet's engines, and one of the Gipsy Sixes even quit on the way into Allahabad. Repairs on the engine here took so much time that the Mollisons had to give up.

Meanwhile Grosvenor House managed a dircect flight from Baghdad to Allahabad, taking the lead in the race. The scarlet Comet even reached Singapore that day. The KLM crew made fuel stops at Jask in Persia and Karachi before reaching Allahabad as second. In the heat of the race, a passenger was left behind when they took off again, and they had to turn back, loosing precious time. From Allahabad they flew to Calcutta and from there to Alor Star, Malaya. By the end of the second day, the DC‑2 Uiver was on its way to Singapore.

When the Pander Postjager PH-OST landed at Karachi, it turned out that the Dutch pilots had overtaken Roscoe Turner's Boeing 247. But their fortune did not last. When they approached Allahabad, the Pander's left mainwheel failed to come down, and two of the propellers sustained damage. Although practically out of the race, the crew did not give up. Captain Geysendorffer went to Calcutta twice to have the damaged parts repaired – traveling 2,000 miles by train! When the Postjager finally departed late at night on 26 October, it struck an unlit tractor on the runway. A fuel tank was ripped open and the aircraft burnt to ashes. Fortunately, the crew and the tractor driver escaped unhurt.

Meanwhile on the second day the Boeing 247 was considered missing as there was no longer any radio contact. But then, by the end of the day, the aircraft suddenly showed up in Allahabad and, with two of its rivals grounded, it was now in the number three position. The green Comet, flown by Cathcart Jones and Waller, landed soon thereafter. They had stopped at Karachi to fix a malfunction after which Allahabad was reached without further delay.

In the back of the field, a fatal accident took out the Fairex Fox biplane, G‑ACXX. Harold Gilman and James Campbell Baines had reached Marseilles on day one, and had flown to Rome on the second day. Continuing their journey eastwards they crashed near the town of Palazzo San Gervasio, 70km southeast of Foggia, and Gilman and Baines were both killed in the crash. They were the only casualties of the race. Lockheed Vega G‑ABGK Puck overturned on landing at Aleppo on this second day of the race, but Australian pilots Jimmy Woods and Don Bennett walked away from the wreck.

The leading scarlet Comet developed trouble in one of its engines while heading for Darwin. Scott and Campbell Black managed to reach the Australian coast on one engine, and the engine was repaired at Darwin. They then took off again for Charleville, where another repair was performed. Despite flying the last stage with one engine throttled back because of an oil-pressure indicator giving a faulty low reading, Scott and Campbell Black were the first to reach Melbourne after 71 hours of flying in Grosvenor House. They were the outright winners of the race.

Meanwhile the Dutch DC‑2 arrived in Australia from Batavia (now Jakarta), the terminus of the KLM line from Europe. One of the most dramatic events in the race was when Uiver crew got lost in a thunderstorm after its take-off from Charleville at night. The townsfolk of Albury in New South Wales responded magnificently to an aircraft in distress. Lyle Ferris, an engineer of the post office, went to the power station and signalled 'A-L-B-U-R-Y' in morse code by turning the town lights on and off. And Arthur Newnham, the announcer on the local radio station, appealed on car owners to drive to the racecourse and illuminate a runway for the plane. The DC‑2 landed safely.

The next morning, the KLM airliner was pulled out of the mud by the helpful locals. But Captain Parmentier was reluctant to take off from the short, muddy racecourse. So he decided to leave two of his crew members and the passengers behind, although this was considered to be against the regulations, and meant a lower handicap rating. Flown by Parmentier and second pilot Moll, Uiver managed to take off from the racecourse and arrived at Melbourne almost 20 hours behind the scarlet Comet.

They were in still second place! Roscoe Turner's Boeing 247 was suffering oil leakage and, trailing smoke during the final stage of the race, landed at Flemington a few hours behind its Douglas rival. The green Comet needed 15 hours longer still.

Aftermath

The number five, the humble Miles Hawk ZK‑ADJ, took a full week to arrive, and only nine aircraft completed the race in the required 16 days. It is interesting to note that the scarlet Comet came first in both the speed and handicap classifications. Since each participant could claim only one prize according to the rules, the KLM crew got the handicap prize and is thus widely believed to have won the race on handicap.

Of course the victory of the Comet was proof of what a dedicated racing plane was capable of. But perhaps more significant in the development of long-distance air travel were the second and third places taken by airliners. The KLM DC‑2, which even carried a couple of passengers, gained a narrow advantage over Roscoe Turner's Boeing 247, and both finished less than one day behind the winner.

The finishing order, the aircraft and their fate

The original article was published in Scramble Magazine. It was revised and updated for AirHistory.net.