Chilla's Chance Traditional Geocache

This cache has been archived.

inspicio: As there has been either no response from the cache owner, no cache to find or log to sign, or it has been a number of months since the last owner note I am archiving this cache to keep from continually showing up in search lists and to prevent it from blocking other cache placements.

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Hidden : 6/2/2006
Difficulty:
3 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:

This is an excuse by La Perouse (who was once a pilot) to write about his favourite aviation era. You don’t have to read the essay below on “Chilla”, although there are clues to the cache in the images attached. The container is a 250ml systema with room only for small TBs - not swaps. BYO pen. The place is easy to access by 263 bus, or the ferry to Neutral Bay wharf. Sats were not brilliant - only 4. It is not necessary to trespass on the Sydney Water Board property.

The late 1920s and early 1930s was an era when aviation suddenly shrunk the World. It could be compared to the way computers changed our lives from the 1960s onwards, or to the spin offs from the NASA space, shuttle, and satellite programs - from which we geocachers benefit so much to-day. Aircraft technology moved very rapidly from high drag canvas & wood biplanes to streamlined monoplanes, designed by clever young men who strove to make each creation go ever faster and farther. It was all very experimental, the era of the air race, the long distance flight, and intrepid pilots risking their lives to be first for fame and fortune. By 1934, honorary RAAF Air Commodore Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, Kt, M.C., A.F.C. (known to the public as “Smithy” but always to his close friends and family as “Chilla”) was a national hero – an aerial Don Bradman. A small pugnacious 37 year old with ever ready repartee, a beer & a cigarette in his hand, a prankster always with a pretty woman at his side, Smithy was said to offer his female groupies “a ride for a ride”. A proper larrikin, he lived life hard, fast and dangerously. In WW1 he survived Gallipoli as a signals dispatch rider, and then became an Royal Flying Corps fighter pilot and was wounded and shot down by Von Richthofen. After the War he was a Hollywood stunt pilot, a bush pilot, a performer in an aerial circus and founder of Western Australian Airways. Smithy was the first to cross the Pacific from America to Australia, the first around the world, the first across the Tasman, the fastest solo flight from England to Australia etc. Smithy held more long distance flying and speed records than anyone else on earth. Nancy Bird Walton, that national treasure of Australian aviation and founder of the Australian Women Pilots' Association, still lives in a house that overlooks the site of this cache. In 1933, at the age of 17, she was the youngest Australian woman to gain a pilot's licence, and one of the first pupils of the Kingsford Smith Flying School at Mascot. She has described Smithy’s flying technique as "one of beauty and precision, exactly timed, judged and balanced." In fact his exceptional flying abilities made him a less than perfect instructor and one often intolerant of a pupil’s lack of natural skill. He was also a mediocre businessman, and in spite of all his success, was always short of funds and getting entangled in dubious deals. But Smithy was unstintingly generous with his own money and with his most treasured possessions – his aircraft. The City of Melbourne wanted to put itself on the world map for its centenary in 1934 and devised a promotion: an Air Race from London to Melbourne, the route stretching over 18,250 Km, through 19 countries and over seven seas. They persuaded Sir Macpherson Robertson, a multi-millionaire confectionary manufacturer, to sponsor the race. Robertson wrote a cheque for A$1,500,000 (2006 values) and 63 of the world’s top aviators entered the “MacRobertson”, including Smithy, who accepted a A$200,000 loan from Robertson to enable him to acquire a suitable aircraft. Melbourne businessman Sidney Myer also underwrote A$20,000 of Smithy’s costs if six others gave Smithy the same amount. Take-off date was set at dawn (6:30 AM) on October 20, 1934, from RAF Mildenhall in England. Smithy chose the Lockheed “Altair” - the creation of those cutting edge designers from Burbank, California, John K. Northrop and Gerard Vultee. New, the aircraft would have cost him A$800,000. This one was “preowned” (actually “precrashed” and then factory rebuilt) and was described by another famous aviator of the period, P.G.Taylor, Smithy’s co-pilot for the Race and the West–East Pacific crossing, as “A real thoroughbred. Her tapered wings glistening below her blue streamlined fuselage: no complex contraption of wires and struts and gadgets hanging everywhere; just a wing, a body, and a tail of perfect form, like a beautiful blue bird poised ready for flight” This state of the art monocoque low wing monoplane had a tandem enclosed cockpit, retractable undercarriage, flaps, variable pitch propeller, and a performance far superior to any military aircraft of the time. The 14:1 supercharged engine was the 550 HP Pratt & Whitney 9 cylinder radial which evolved into the famous Wasp R-1340, in production until 1960, an engine that has powered a host of famous aircraft, including the North American AT-6/SNJ/ Harvard advanced trainer in which most Allied pilots in WW2 and afterwards learnt their trade. You can find some newly discovered photos (2008) of this beautiful 1930's aircraft at http://www.adastron.com/lockheed/updates.htm and of the previous owner, Captain George Hutchinson - who bought the Altair to emulate Lindbergh's crossing of the Atlantic, but crashed on take-off shortly after taking delivery! Note the shot showing the engine without its cowling - then you understand how huge the fuel tanks were, and why the pilot and navigator are located so far back. As the actress said to the bishop - it's all to do with the C of G, my dear :) Lockheed accepted Smithy’s order to modify the “Altair” for long distance flying on the basis of his fame (and their hope that a little would rub off on Lockheed if he won the Race!) The mods resulted in an aircraft with a maximum take off weight 34% higher than the design was certificated by the US airworthiness authorities, so it could not obtain a US C of A. And the rules of the MacRobertson Race said that all aircraft must possess an airworthiness certificate from a country which was a signatory to the International Air Convention. The USA was not a signatory but Australia was. To add to Smithy’s woes, the Australian government forbade the importation of aircraft from any country that had not signed the ICAN. So Smithy did not have – nor could he obtain – overt permission to import the “Altair” or to fly it in the Race without first getting an Australian airworthiness certificate. He had known this all along, but gambled that if he could just get his “Altair” onto Australia soil, he could use the press and public opinion to bend the rules for him and have “ANZAC” (as he now named the plane) certified here. From Los Angeles, he shipped “ANZAC” to Sydney on the sports deck of the SS ”Mariposa”, and directly she docked at Woolloomooloo, Smithy paid the floating crane “Titan” A$3,000 to swing her onto a barge. On 17 July, 1934, in Neutral Bay, “ANZAC” was manhandled off the barge and pushed some 250 metres up to the northwest end of Anderson Park. Fuelled with only 10 gallons (about 17 minutes endurance), she was run up, turned into the wind and Smithy took her off in 155 metres for the 12 Km flight to Mascot. When he arrived there, Customs immediately impounded “ANZAC”, disabled her engine by confiscating the plug leads and locked her up in a sealed hangar! [To see good quality newsreel of the above events, download the 5 Mb file from http://www.adastron.com/lockheed/altair/video/video.htm You get 1:24 mins of pure gold aviation history. I am indebted to that website (and to many others including the State Library of NSW) for the info and images in “Chilla’s Chance”] Postscript: The “ANZAC” was renamed “Lady Southern Cross” following a campaign by the Returned Soldiers’ League to stop Smithy’s commercial use of the name ANZAC. She eventually got her Australian airworthiness certificate as VH-USB - Smithy was right about public opinion! But she was scratched from the Race due to mechanical problems; time ran out and she would have had to break the Australia to England record just to reach the starting line. Subsequently, Smithy took her to USA to sell so he could pay Robertson’s loan back. Fitted with extra fuel tanks by the Australian designer Lawrence Wackett, she now had a still air range of 4,090 miles (6,600 Km) at a maximum take off weight nearly 40% above her certificated MTOW and this provided Smithy some interesting challenges as it doubled the take-off distance required. The flight was another record, another triumph, the first trans Pacific flight from Australia to USA. In Burbank, whilst Lockheed refurbished “Lady Southern Cross”, Smithy made plans to take her to England. He became embroiled in another bureaucratic nightmare: no US airworthiness certificate meant no export permit from USA, which meant no import licence into UK! In the end, common sense prevailed and she was admitted to UK on a limited “racing only” C of A registered as G-ADUS. However Smithy was running out of funds, and was soon left with no options but to fly “Lady Southern Cross” home to Australia. He and his copilot/mechanic Tommy Pethybridge left on 6 November 1935 via Athens, Baghdad, Allahabad (NW India), Singapore and Darwin in an attempt to break the England to Australia speed record. Smithy was in poor health, burnt out after living on adrenaline for 20 years, and deeply worried about his financial situation. What should have been another glorious adventure was now just a business enterprise to raise enough money to survive. “Lady Southern Cross” was last seen at around 2.16 AM on 8 November, 1935, south of Rangoon, Burma, when the glow from her exhausts was visible as she overtook the only other aircraft in the area, Jimmy Melrose in his Percival Gull, also bound for Singapore. The weather was typhoonal and the visibility bad. On 1 May, 1937, a section of her undercarriage including a wheel and tyre (still inflated) washed ashore on Aye Island in the Gulf of Martarban. Modern forensics have since shown that it had been immersed for about 17 months in less than 15 fathoms (27 metres) of salt water. This relic is now in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. The expedition that investigated this find in 1937 also noted that the tallest tree on the very top of jungle covered Aye Island (about 150 metres above sea level) had had its top sliced off, and a dozen trees leading from there down towards the sea were similarly damaged. They found some small pieces of metal from the “Altair” on the beach, and concluded that Smithy had crashed into the sea just off the Island. It was a tragic ending to an amazing career, but not unexpected. Amy Johnson, CBE, the great British long distance solo pilot and contemporary of Smithy, always said “I know I shall end up in the drink one day” and she did, and was never found. And Amelia Earhart, DFC, another contemporary, an American and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, said "Flying may not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price." She left Lae, New Guinea, for Howland Island 4,000 km away, on 2 July, 1937, on the penultimate leg of her attempt to be the first woman to fly around the world – and was never seen again. Pioneer fliers used up their luck pretty quickly. As the saying goes “There are old pilots and bold pilots – but there are no old, bold pilots…” In 1936, in Smithy’s honour, Mascot Airport was renamed “Kingsford Smith Airport” – international abbreviation KSA.
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I(Akkatracker) Have now adopted this cache from Geomatica.
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Additional Hints (Decrypt)

214 iregvpny havgf ol zl pevgrevn LZZQ

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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