Harry Lyon – Navigator of the Southern Star
Australian pilots, Charles Kingsford-Smith and Charles Ulm, challenged extreme danger and took unprecedented risks on the historic trans-Pacific flight, with the “Southern Cross” Two Americans were on board that amazing old Fokker F VII b-3 tri-motor monoplane, James Warner from Kansas, the radioman and Harry Lyon from Maine, the navigator.
Harry brought a diverse background to this daring crew. He spent time as a ship broker, captain of a tramp steamer, a gun runner during the Mexican Revolution, he set a record at Annapolis Naval Academy for having the highest score in navigation and went on to serve his country as a Naval Commander in WW l.
When Smith and Ulm engaged the services of Lyon as navigator, he had never been in a plane. Harry’s first flight was in the Southern Star. Being an accomplished and skilled marine navigator proved invaluable. They would be flying “blind” most of the way. They had to trust the few instruments they had on board ¾a bank-and-turn indicator, a rate-of-climb meter, an earth-indicator compass and three magnetic compasses.
Harry’s navigation skills were crucial, his tools ¾a speed-and-drift meter, a pelorus drift-indicator, smoke bombs for day use, water lights to gauge drift at night, and a sextant for celestial navigation. “Dead-reckoning” would be the navigational form, requiring the crew to follow a compass course, making corrections for compass errors and drifts, crucial to the safety and success of the perilous flight of over 7,000 miles to Brisbane, Australia.
The long distances between each leg of the flight would require the Southern Cross to carry large quantities of fuel, and fuel consumption would be a major concern. The plane carried 1300 gallons of fuel in 4 wing tanks. A series of test flights were made to the ability of the plane to carry the necessary load.
¾ Oakland California to Honolulu, Hawaii ¾ 2400 miles
May 31, 1928 at 8:54 am, the Southern Cross took off from Oakland, California, bound for Hawaii with four adventurous souls on board.There was no turning back now as the 4 men watched the Farallon Islands disappear from view. It would be 27 hours and 25 minutes before they saw land again. The noise from the engines and the wind reduced their communication to writing notes back and forth. This first leg of the flight went as planned and at 12:17 pm on June 1st they landed at Wheeler Field on the island of Oahu.
¾ Barking Sands, Kaoui to Suva, Fiji Islands ¾ 3200 miles
The second leg of the trip would be the longest and most harrowing. After spending the night at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel as guests of the manager, they spent most of the next day going over the plane, checking and re-checking engines, radios, navigational equipment, compasses and all the safety and other preparations needed for this next segment. It was about 5:00 that evening when they headed off to the air strip at Barking Sands on the island of Kaoui. They filled their tanks with another 1300 gallons and got some sleep. Up at 3:00 am and ready to depart at 5:22 am, the intrepid crew headed for Suva, 3100 miles, southwest.
They hit wind and rain only an hour after their radio had gone out. For several hours they battled the wind and rain, seeking some refuge at higher altitudes, but returning to 600 feet, said Smith, ¾“if we went higher we would burn more gasoline.” He described it vividly, ¾“Rainstorms came sweeping up at us endlessly, lashing the plane, beating a lively tattoo on the windshield, and making us fly through a dark, soaked sky-world that seemed to have no boundaries.”
Water came through the windshield covering their legs and feet necessitating a change in altitude. They climbed to 5000 feet, hitting one wet cloud bank after another, then slowly circled to 8000 feet where they broke through the weather to a clear canopy. Harry set a new course for Suva and for several hours all was well, but by 6:00 am they were once again in the midst of rain, wind gusts and lightning. ¾“More clouds. More bumps, lashing rain, chopping gusts!” Smith wrote. They flew high and they flew low ¾as low as 400 feet.
When they hand-pumped the remaining fuel from the main tank to the wing tanks, they discovered they had seven more hours of fuel. Harry describes it, ¾“Then, after three uneventful hours, came the dramatic sighting of the Fiji
Islands and the proudest moments of our lives. Ulm was at the controls.
Smith was dozing. Ulm was not expecting land at that moment, when suddenly,
far ahead on the starboard bow, a small brown dome sprung up from the
sea. Ulm swung the plane for it. The oscillation woke Smith. He thought
Ulm had fallen asleep at the controls. His language was forcible and
full of color. Two minutes later the sea sprouted land on every side—purple
and green islands girt by ribbons of surf.”
The landing field at Suva was only 1200 feet long and there was no room for error as the road alongside the field dropped off almost 12 feet. Kingsford-Smith brought it in at 65 miles an hour. Celebration and speeches were followed by much needed sleep and a day for the crew to prepare for the final leg.
¾ Suva, Fiji to Brisbane, Australia ¾ 1800 miles
The afternoon of June 8th began the final and shortest portion of the flight with treacherous storms and winds, ¾“One after another, rainstorms charged at us. Their battering on the windshields increased. There was no lull. We flew in a black void. Raking winds jolted the plane. It lurched and plunged and dropped and slid. But always it drove steadily ahead. It was the supreme test of engines and skill in blind flying. Again we had lost the world in the thick murk of storm.”
After midnight the storms let up a little but still they were climbing and dropping trying to find a safe level for both the plane and the crew. Sometimes they flew just above the water. By morning all had cleared and mid morning, ¾“a great gray shadow began to unroll along the horizon far ahead It grew solid
rapidly and turned to distant violet hills and brown cliffs.” A little over 83 hours after leaving Oakland, they arrived in Australia, completing the first trans-Pacific flight.
¾“We were sitting in the Australian Army Airdome when somebody asked us if we wanted to look over the plane,” Harry later recalled. “When we did, I was astonished to see that one section was held together with bamboo and bailing wire. When I asked the pilot about it he said, ‘Oh, yes. I was going to tell you about it after we completed the trip. Do you want to fly it back?” Harry Lyon found out that the Southern Cross had years earlier crashed in Alaska and had been severely damaged before it was acquired and fixed up for the Pacific flight. Harry chose, then and there, to come back to San Francisco aboard a steamer!
Harry returned to “Lyons Den”, his home on Paris Hill, in Maine. On May 31, 1963 when Harry was 78, he passed away, 35 years to the day the “Southern Cross” left Oakland for Hawaii.
