During the era in which Charles Lindbergh was eating up headlines for his achievements in aviation, there was a little known Aussie matching his feats. Bert Hinkler was the first man to fly solo from England to Australia and pioneered many advances in aviation. In 1933, he gave his life in the pursuit of flight over the Tuscan Mountains. Ironically, over 50 years later a piece of his legacy was also the only surviving witness to one of aviation’s biggest tragedies, the 1986 Challenger explosion.
Herbert John Louis Hinkler was born in Bundaberg, Queensland, the son of a Prussian-born stockman. As a boy, he studied the flight of ibises. Later, he tried to fly, unsuccessfully, by strapping wings to his back. At the age of 19, he successfully flew his homemade glider to a height of 33 feet. Like many boys of this era, his desire to fly totally consumed his life.
He became a mechanic and pilot with a showman and gave flying exhibitions in Australia and New Zealand. In 1913, Hinkler went to England where he worked for the Sopwith Aviation Company, which would mark the beginning of his career in aviation.
Hinkler with his wife and mother after his historic England to Australia flight.
During the First World War, Hinkler served with the Royal Naval Air Service as a gunner in Belgium and France, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. In 1918, he was posted to No. 28 Squadron RAF with which he served as a pilot in Italy. In addition to being a distinguished pilot, during his time in the RAF, Hinkler also invented a number of instruments which were used in RAF planes until the Second World War.
After the war, he worked as a test pilot for the aircraft manufacturer A.V. Roe in Southampton. He competed in numerous aviation events and set many records, among which was a non-stop flight from England to Latvia. He also competed in the prestigious British Schneider Cup seaplane.
The accomplishment that made Hinkler a star in his native Australia was his solo flight from England to Australia in 1928. He departed England in his Avro Avian on February 7th and arrived in Darwin, Australia on the 22nd. This reduced the England-Australia record from 28 days to just under 15½ days. One paper nicknamed the pilot, “Hustling Hinkler” for his heroics in the air.
Hinkler being honored by Australian Prime Minister Stanley Bruce in 1928.
In 1931, he bested his England-Australia flight when he flew his de Havilland Puss Moth from Canada to New York then non-stop to Jamaica and then to Venezuela, Guyana, Brazil, and then across the South Atlantic to Africa. The Brazil to Africa flight was done in nasty weather, with virtually no visibility due to rain and heavy clouds. But Hinkler made the flight without venturing more than a few thousand yards off course.
Once in Africa, he flew back to London and was awarded the Seagrave Trophy, the Johnston memorial prize, and the Britannia trophy for the most meritorious flying performance of the year. His was the first solo flight across the South Atlantic. He was only the second person to cross the Atlantic solo, after Charles Lindbergh.
On 7 January 1933, Hinkler left England in his Puss Moth in an attempt to break the flying record to Australia held by C.W.A. Scott of 8 days, 20 hours. Contact was lost with Hinkler over Italy and nothing more was heard of him until his body was discovered in the Tuscan Mountains. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Florence, with full military honors at the direction of Mussolini, who was well aware of his heroics as a pilot.
Scobee, with the other six members of the Challenger flight crew
Fast forward to the mid 1980s, when the Bundaberg, Australia council organized the Hinkler Memorial Lectures. These lectures brought together some of the top aviation minds in the world to discuss current issues. NASA astronaut Don Lind was invited to take part. In appreciation of his participation in the lectures, the council presented him with a small piece of wood, a relic from one Hinkler’s hand-made gliders. Lind was leaving NASA, and then presented the memento to Dick Scobee, who had been named the captain of the final Challenger mission. Scobee took the wood with him on board the Challenger and placed it in a small plastic bag that he placed in his locker. The Challenger suffered a violent boost failure during lift off on January 28, 1986, and Scobee and all six of his crew members were killed.
A few days later as recovery crews combed the waters for clues to the explosion, they recovered the original piece of wood from Hinkler’s glider that had been given to Scobee. It was one of the few personal artifacts that was found. It is now displayed in the Hinkler Hall of Aviation in Bundaberg.
Tags: Avro avian, Bert Hinkler, Challenger Explosion, Charles Lindbergh, Dick Scobee, Don Lind