First flight from Australia to San Francisco - across the Pacific, 1934

PIONEERING aviator, Charles Kingsford Smith and innovative navigator/pilot Patrick Gordon 'PG' Taylor took off from Archerfield on October 21, 1934, for the first successful west-to-east crossing of the Pacific Ocean.

He and trailblazing aerial navigator, PG Taylor made this incredible flying feat aboard the single-engine Lockheed Altair  named Lady Southern Cross.

Sadly, Kingsford Smith and navigator Tommy Pethybridge disappeared in that same aircraft on November 8, 1935, flying across the Andaman Sea near Burma, while attempting to break the London-Sydney air speed record. The only wreckage discovered from the aircraft, a landing gear leg, is today on display in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, and Americans Harry Lyon and James Warner accomplished the first aerial crossing of the Pacific in the Fokker VIIb/3m Tri-Motor Southern Cross in 1928.

That very aircraft is today housed in its own special glass hangar at Brisbane Airport, Eagle Farm, opposite the Brisbane International terminal.

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Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and his Lockheed Altair ‘Lady