Trans-Pacific Flight
On 31 May 1928, the crew—Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, and Americans Harry Lyon (navigator) and James Warner (radio operator)—took off from Oakland, California, United States. The Southern Cross first stopped for rest and refuelling in Hawaii before setting off for Fiji. This leg of the journey took 34 and a half hours of flight across open seas before gliding past the Grand Pacific Hotel in Suva, where a large and enthusiastic crowd saw the first aircraft to land in Fiji touch down at Albert Park. The Southern Cross landed at Eagle Farm Airport in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, on 9 June, where a crowd of 25,000 people were waiting to greet the Southern Cross on its arrival at the airport. The Southern Cross flew on to Sydney the following day (10 June).
Read more about this topic: Southern Cross (aircraft)
Famous quotes containing the word flight:
“Its shrill scream seems yet to linger in its throat, and the roar of the sea in its wings. There is the tyranny of Jove in its claws, and his wrath in the erectile feathers of the head and neck. It reminds me of the Argonautic expedition, and would inspire the dullest to take flight over Parnassus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)