Wreckage of the Southern Cloud

Sir Charles Kingsford Smith in front of the “Southern Cloud” (photo from Ed Coates collection – used with permission)

Time Magazine, April 20, 1931:

Even as Col. Lindbergh joined the staff of T.A.T. and Pan American Airways… so did Wing-Commander Charles Kingsford-Smith return home from his famed flights to become managing director of Australian National Airways Ltd. One day last month …his company’s … Southern Cloud took off from Sydney for Melbourne, over 450 mi. distant… [and] was not again heard from. As did Lindbergh when the T.A.T. plane City of San Francisco vanished in New Mexico in 1929, Commander Kingsford-Smith flew to the search. Day after day planes criss-crossed the wilderness north of Melbourne. In such territory survivors might live for many days without reaching means of communication. Last week hope for plane and occupants was abandoned.

What happened to the Southern Cloud? Since I first heard about the plane 20 years ago, I’d wanted to find out the whole story. In January 2011, I finally did…

The Southern Cloud, VH-UMF, an Avro 618-Ten, also known as a Fokker F-VII (photo from the John Hopton Collection, via Ed Coates, used with permission)

The Southern Cloud’s crash was one of the first big aviation mysteries in Australia. Remember that in those days, planes flew low, and slow, and had no radio or modern navigation equipment. Pilots relied on the weather forecast in the morning newspaper. Once airborne, their fate and that of their passengers rested solely on their own luck and skill, and the reliability of their machine. A big storm could easily mean disaster and death.

Sir Charles Kingsford Smith inspires my grandfather and sets up an airline

After his epic record-setting world-first flight across the Pacific Ocean in 1928, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith made a world-first flight from Australia to New Zealand.

My grandfather grew up in New Zealand, and once told me of his clear memory of “going out to Wigram field to watch Smithy land”. His sister, my great aunt, remembers that day too. It was September 1928. My grandfather was six years old and from that moment he was hooked on the idea of learning to fly. At 21, Smithy had been a fighter pilot over France in World War I. At the same age, my grandfather signed up with the Royal Australian Air Force, inspired by Smithy 12 years before and driven by a sense of the need to “fight Hitler”. Before long, he was flying combat missions, not against the Nazis, but in the Pacific, against Japan. He survived the war after 62 combat operations in Catalina flying boats, losing many friends along the way. He passed away in 1995.

My grandfather at RAAF flight school in about 1942. The plane is a De Havilland Tiger Moth.

Smithy had died in 1935, but had gone on from his record-setting flights to establish Australian National Airways in 1929. This was one of Australia’s first early airlines. It had five identical Avro 618-Ten aircraft, very similar to the Southern Cross that Smithy and crew had flown across the Pacific and the Tasman. The airline offered daily services between Sydney and Brisbane, and a five hour daily trip between Sydney and Melbourne. The Sydney to Melbourne fare, which included “first class motor transportation to and from both aerodromes”, was £9/13 one way. That’s A$905.00 in 2019 money.

The Mystery of the Southern Cloud

On 21 March 1931 the Southern Cloud set off for Melbourne from Mascot Aerodrome in Sydney, which is now Sydney’s Kingsford Smith International Airport. The pilot, Travis “Shorty” Shortridge, had flown combat missions in World War I, just like Smithy. He had a co-pilot and six passengers.

Before they left, the pilots checked the weather forecast. It looked okay. But after they took off, the forecast changed, and a terrible storm was predicted over the Snowy Mountains, right in the Southern Cloud’s flight path. Because the plane didn’t carry a radio, there was no way to warn the pilot. He was on his own.

An Avro 618-Ten similar to the Southern Cloud (photo from the David Molesworth Collection, via Ed Coates, used with permission)

Boarding the Southern Cloud (image source unknown)

The Southern Cloud never arrived at Melbourne. What happened?

The Snowy Mountains were a formidable obstacle in the late 1920s, when aeroplanes, especially loaded with passengers, luggage and cargo, flew slow and low. The range lies exactly between Sydney and Melbourne. There are several peaks reaching over 2,000 meters, and the area is well known for its unpredictable and intense storms. Yon and I were there on New Year’s Eve in 1999 – the middle of the Australian summer – and after a beautiful, blue sky day, we ended up having to camp out in extremely strong winds, hail and snow. The next morning, there were wind-blown icicles on the ropes. In August that year, in the middle of winter, four snowboarders had hiked out onto the main range with an early forecast of a “fine day with no chance of snow and a minimum temperature of -6 [degrees centigrade]“. By noon that day, they were battling strong winds up to 100 km/h, snow, and a wind-chill of -20C. Stuck in a four-day storm, they died in their snow cave and weren’t found until the spring. If the storm on 21 March 1929 was anything like those two 70 years later, then the Southern Cloud was probably doomed.

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After the Southern Cloud disappeared, it was concluded that the plane had not been able to get through the storm. The plane’s top speed was only 160km/h, so with winds up to 150km/h it is possible the plane made no headway at all. There was some speculation it may have even been hurled backwards. It would have been tossed and thrown about in the turbulent air, and the pilot may have flown lower to try to get under the clouds. Because of the powerful winds, though, he may not have realised how slowly he was flying, and may not have known he was still over the high peaks of the Snowy Mountains. Perhaps he’d taken his machine down, thinking he was close to Melbourne’s lower terrain instead of still high up in the Snowies’ rugged heights.

Mt Jagungal

Not far from Mt Jagungal, over 2,000 meters high, the Southern Cloud flew straight into the side of a steep mountain ridge.

It would not be found until 1958.

The Crash Site

On 26 October 1958, a worker on the Snowy Hydro-electric Scheme named Tom Sonter was bushwalking on his day off. Near the little dam at Deep Creek, he came across the twisted wreck of a plane, and found some skeletons too. The mystery was finally solved.

The pilots and passengers of the Southern Cloud.

Reaching the crash site is quite difficult. I did it in January 2011, not too long after huge bushfires ripped through these mountains. It may look different today.

It’s an easy walk in from the head of a fire trail on the Tooma Road, which runs from the tiny town of Cabramurra across the mountains to Khancoban. But the last 300 meters of the walk is exceptionally difficult. It runs along the contour from a small water catchment on Shortridge Creek (named for the pilot).

The general area of the crash site is a west-facing slope, heavily wooded, with an open area that was burned out in recent bushfires (probably the disastrous fires of 2003). The area is extremely rugged, quite remote, and aptly named the “Worlds End”.

Worlds End and Shortridge Creek hide the wreck of the Southern Cloud at 35° 59.967 S, 148° 19.775 E

Getting from that small water catchment (which directs Shortridge Creek into an underground aquaduct) calls for a bit of strenuous bush-bashing. We hauled ourselves over wet, charcoal-caked tree trunks that had fallen haphazardly through the undergrowth, and squeezed between lush, green new-growth eucalypts and native shrubs. It was hard work, wet work, and hot work.

My route notes said we should strike out from the water catchment, along the same contour, and after two or three hundred meters we’d hit the wreck. We did this, and really struggled, but eventually we hit the path. It was only marginally easier walking along that path, but I was very glad we found it, because when we suddenly arrived at the crash site, it was clear we would have missed it completely unless we’d smacked right into it.

It was a quiet little place, miles from anywhere. Hopefully everyone died quickly in the crash, because in 1931 this really was the World’s End. Until the Snowy hydro scheme in the 1950s, the nearest road would have been many, many days’ difficult hiking. Without food, with little water, and with injuries from a crash, it would have been impossible to find help.

Smithy and many other pilots flew back and forth across the mountains searching for their lost plane, but to no avail. Sadly for Smithy, Australian National Airways lost another plane that year in Malaya, and the airline closed down.

But two strong recommendations from the crash inquiry were implemented, leading to a dramatic increase in aviation safety in Australia. All planes were required to carry radios, and weather forecasting was improved.

In the small country town of Cooma, the main commercial centre of the Snowy Mountains region, we stopped at the memorial to the Southern Cloud.

A typical 1960s country-Australia design, the memorial contains recovered engines and parts from the plane, and a neat press-button audio commentary.

One of the Southern Cloud’s three Armstrong Siddely Lynx engines

Two weeks before we did this trip, I stopped in at Cooma’s cemetery. A group grave lies there with the remains of all the people who died in the crash. A quiet grave under big trees, blowing in the breeze, not unlike the grave of their aeroplane, the little Southern Cloud, which will slowly rust away at the World’s End.