From National Geographic
Peter McMillan
(from reprint in Readers Digest - April 1997)

All of Sumatra appeared to be on fire. From one end of the island to the other, farmers were burning fields to plant. We could hardly see toe fround 2000 feet below for the smoke as we desperately sought a place to land. Our Vickers Vimy bomber was going down.

"Mayday, Mayday, Vimmy 1, Vimmy1. We've had an engine failure," co-pilot Lang Kidby radioed. "We're making an emergency landing."

The three-metre starboard propeller windmilled to a stop. Without both engines, I could do little to slow the descent of the big, awkward biplane.

"See any place to land?" I yelled.

"What-a-bout there?" Kidby said, pointing to a dirt lane cutting through a rice paddy. Fighting to bring the Vimy's nose around, I noticed three-metre-deep ditches on either side of the narrow road. Worse, a tip truck blocked our path.

Our photographer Jim Stanfield popped up with a camera from his seat in the nose, blocking my view. "Jim, not now!" I yelled. "We've about to crash!" He disappeared.

At less than 50 feet, I revved the engine, spun the plane to the right and pancaked down into a revently burned field. Our landing gear slammed hard, the big tyres hitting a 60-cetimetre-high earthen wall.

"Hit the brakes!" Kidby shouted.

We bounced more than 90 metres, shearing the tops off three more walls, wings sweeping through waist-high grass, before rolling to a stop within spitting distance of a field full of tree stumps and smouldering fire.

"You OK?" yelled engineer Dan Nelson, scrambling out of the rear cockpit. "What happened?"

"The engine quit," I said. Removing my helmet and goggles, I was amazed to see a crowd gathering.

"Why have you come here?" a man called out.

I looked at him. How could I explain what had driven Kidby, a former Australian Army Pilot, and me, San Francisco investment broker, to quit our jobs, spend every penny we had and even risk our lives?

Seventy-five years earlier in 1919, Australia's Prime Minister William (Billy) Hughes had offered a 10,000 Pound prize to the first Australians to make the 17,700-kilometer-long journey from England to Australia in 30 days or less. One of Australia's most decorated World War I pilots, Ross Smith, his navigator brother, Keith, and two ace mechanics flew a Vickers Vimy to finish first - an astounding feat for that time.

The idea that took hold of Kidby and me was to remind the world about those courageous men and their daring achievement. For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the flight, we would build a brand-new Vimy and fly it from England to Australia.

Ross Smith had got his Vimy direct from the manufacturer. Thirteen meters long and with a 20-metre wingspan, the twin-engine biplane was a state-of-the-art heavy bomber.

We wanted to duplicate the original as closely as possible, from the hand-sewn cotton fabric on her wings to the steel bracing wires, so our Vimy was painstakingly re-created from the original plans. But we could not avoid a few changes. In place of the Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII engines, which have not been made for 70 years, we installed two Chevrolet V8 racing-car engines. To deal with air-traffic controllers, who didn't exist 75 years ago, we added radios and navigational equipment. It took two years and 20,000 man-hours to finish.

We began our flight on September 11, 1994, at the Farnborough International Air Show south of London. As a Quantas 747 did a low-level flyby, I pushed the throttles forward and accelerated down the runway.

"One small step for a 747, and a giant leap for a Vimy," the tower radioed. "Have a safe journey."

Our route would follow the original flight southeast across France, Italy and Greece to Egypt. Then we'd go east across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, man and Pakistan to India before turning south through Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore to Indonesia, then east again to Australia.

Taking off on November 12, 1919, with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a toothbrush apiece, Ross Smith and his crew headed towards France. There ther ran into a miserable mix of sleet and snow. "This sort of flying is a rotten game," Ross wrote in his diary. "I am a silly ass for having even embarked on the flight."

We also ran into stormy weather flying over France, getting thoroughly soaked in the Vimy's open cockpits. Fighting a strong head wind, we could make only 80 kilometers per hour. Then the big plane's nose began to dip and rise like a yacht in high seas. The wheel was practically snatched from Kidby's hands. The sky darkened to an evil brown, lightning flashed all around us, and the rain slashed down.

We were already behind schedule by the third day when we reached Pisa, Italy. When we tried to depart the next morning, we again hit devere headwinds.

At one point our ground speed was down to 30 kilometers per hour. As we flew above a road, we noticed a small red car pass us, then stop at a kerbside stand, where the driver hopped out to make a purchase. I saw him return to his car, get in and drive off again - and we still hadn't caught up. "We'll never get anywhere at this rate," Kidby said, so we returned to the airport.

The sky brightened before we finally left Italy, and when Kidby took the wheel for a 320-kilometer crossing from mainland Greece to Crete, we were given a spectacular sun-drenched view of the Greek archipelago, with its azure waters and sculptured bays.

As we made our descent into Cairo the next day, I was looking forward to see the Pyramids from the cockpit of the Vimy. But a misunderstanding almost got us shot down over Gize during a dawn tour of the ancient monuments.

'You really stired up a hornet's nest," an Australian embassy official said after Vimy 1 had landed.

"What do you mean?" we asked.

"Air Defence Command had anti-aircraft weapons trained and ready to fire."

"You're joking. We had permission to make that flight."

"Maybe so, but nobody told the officer commanding the restricted military area beside the Pyramids. He was furious. He even asked his superiors for permission to shoot."

With help from the Australian embassy, we eventually defused the situation. Feelings were still tender about our brazen flyby for the next two days, however, during which fog and red tape kept us on the ground.

Although I had flown many old aircraft over the years, it took a while to get used to Vimy's stubborn ways. Like an old cart horse, she wouldn't do anything in a hurry.

Kidby and I alternated days in the pilot's seat, during which time we had to keep both feet on the rudders for as long as ten hours at a stretch. Because of the cramped cockpit, my back would ache and my feet would fall asleep.

To make matters worse, Kidby and I couldn't hear each other over the deafening roar of the two engines and the whine of the propellers. Once to remind him about our low fuel level, I had to write him a note.

In Bahrain the Civil Aviation Affairs Department and Gulf Air threw us a big welcome party, complete with Bedouin tents and horsemen draped in white robes with ammunition belts across their chests. A 15,000-strong crowd surrounded the desert runway. Kidby put us down smoothly despite the crosswind.

When it was time to leave, though, I become worried. The area on which we'd landed was less than half the length of a small-town runway - and we'd be taking off over the crowd.

"I'm not sure about this," I told Kidby. "If yu don't think we're going to make it, you need to tell me to chop the throttles. I don't want to turn this into an ugly incident."

I rolled the Vimy forward and accelerated down the gentle hill with as much confidence as I could muster. The plane started moving faster and faster, and the crowd of people got closer and closer. To see over the nose from the deep cockpit, I loosened my seat belt and stood up. Then we lifted off the desert floor, clearing the crowd, tents, banners and flagpoles by less than 75 feet.

"Now that wasn't so difficult, was it, mate?" Kidby said.

Lumbering east across the Gulf of Oman three days later, we skirted the coast of Iran and crossed into Pakistan. At Karachi we learned that the flight plan approved months before by the authorities was no longer possible.

Because of tensions along the border with India, where the Pakistani Army was conducting manoeuvres, air-traffic control now required us to cruise at 21,000 feet to avoid trigger-happy soldiers.

That was more than five times the altitude the Vimy could reach with a full load. The authorities were studying a new route, but they had to co-ordinate everything with their Indian counterparts.

"Why can't we just get on with it?" said Kidby. "They didn't have to put up with this in 1919."

When Ross Smith and his team made the journey, their route had traced the outlines of the British Empire, from Egypt to India to Australia. Our trip, by contrast, took us to 19 independent nations, each with its own security demands. We spent as much time in airport offices as we did in the air.

Following some nine hours of discussions, we eventually obtained approval to take a route to Delhi that avoided the military exercises. Shortly after sunrise the next day, we were back in the sky.

A steam train crawled along a narrow-guage railway told us we had reached india.

To be ready for a dawn flight over the Taj Mahal, we had to make a short flight the next day to Agra, 190 kilometers to the southeast. However, I was delayed until almost dusk by a press conference. By the time I got back, Vimy was taxiing out to the runway in a race against the setting sun. The plane had no instruments for night flying. I sprinted past the prop blast, hopped onto the back of the wing and slid into my seat, looking out for the propellers.

At first light we took off from Agra over the Yamuna River, one of the tributries of the Ganges, and followed it to the Taj Mahal. As we circled the elegant structure, I saw an iridescent pearl in the first rays of sunlight, recalling Smith's description of "a matchless white jewel reclining in a setting of Nature's emeralds."

Trouble with the starboard engine started almost a week before our forced landing on Sumatra. When we took off on the twenty-fourth day, the motor sounded as if it was missing on a cylinder. As we were leaving Bangkok, the engine was so sluggish I wasn't sure we'd make it over the city centre's buildings.

That afternoon, after dodging thunderstorms in the Gulf of Thailand, we made an unscheduled landing on the island of Langkawi in Malaysia because the engine was vibrating badly. Replacing a spark plug got us as far as Singapore, but two days later Vimy broke down over Lampung Provinve in Sumatra, and we belly-flopped into the rice field 225 kilometres short of Jakarta.

By October 15, six days after our crash landing, a steady stream of villagers in holiday mood flowed in and out of the trampled paddy. The noisy chatter of the crowd was punctuated by the honk, honk of bicycle horns from fravoured-ice vendors doing a brisk business in the stifling heat.

With little sleep, eyes stinging from the smoky air and only the most basic of hand tools to work with, we were filthy, weary and desperate to escape. But first we had to repair the landing gear, straighten the collapsed tail wheel strut, replace the starboard engine - and build an airstrip. A spare V8 was shipped from Australia.

After eight hours of manhandling the new engine into place, it was time to say goodbye. Our tyres sank into softspots as we bounced down the runway, and we lifted into the air.

"We made it!" Kidby shouted.

I didn't share his jubilation. Though I was just as relieved that we had escaped, I wasn't sure the aircraft could reach Jakarta, let alone Australia, 2700 kilometers away. Flying would now be an exercise in suspense.

The new engine ran smoothly, however, on the flight to Jakarta. Then we headed east across Indonesia, hopping between islands - Bali, Sumbawa, Timor. We hardly spoke during these long flights, which told me that Kidby was worried too. I found myself unconciously tightening my seat belt.

As we left the coast of Timor behind, I kept looking over my shoulder, watching the last bit of green disappear on the horizon. I was not looking forward to flying over the Timor Sea. Our engines were running adequately, but each time we hit a bit of turbulence, their note changed, making my pulse raced.

Three hours later I spotted a few yachts and marked their location in case we had to ditch. We were still more than three hours from land. If an engine failed now, the aircraft would sink without a trace.

"Over there," I said at last, pointing to a thin white line in the haze. "That's Bathurst Island, right?"

"Yep," Kidby said. "Welcome to Australia."

We made landfall over Darwin, and I looked down on Fannie Bay, site of the original journey's landing.

"Vimy 1, cleared to land," the control tower told us. "Welcome back to Darwin after all these years."

Our wheels touched down on Australian soil at 3:09 p.m., October 22. We had taken two weeks longer than Ross Smith and his crew in 1919, but we didn't care.

As we stood in the long shadow of our plane, I saw the names and greetings in Arabic, Hindi, Malay and other languages traced in the dust that clung to the wings, and I recalled a thousand faces from our 17,700-kilometre flight. I understood then what Smith had written about his moment of glory: "Hardships and perils were forgotten in the excitement of the present. We shook hands with one another, our hearts swelling with those emotions invoked by achievement and the glamour of the moment. The flight was, and will be, the supreme hour of our lives.