About this record

This is a black-and-white photograph showing (second from right) Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (pilot), John Warner (radio operator), Charles Ulm (copilot) and Captain Harry Lyon (navigator) after their triumphant crossing of the Pacific Ocean on 8 June 1928. It was the first time an aircraft had completed this journey.

Educational value

• Shows Kingsford Smith's joint Australian and US crew after their landing in Brisbane on 8 June – they flew for 83 hours on the monoplane Southern Cross; Kingsford Smith (1897–1935) is the most famous aviator in Australian history, and his many achievements include this first air crossing from the USA to Australia over the Pacific Ocean; his crew was Charles Ulm, an Australian pilot, and John Warner and Harry Lyon who were both American; a huge crowd of people met the plane when it landed at Eagle Farm Airport to celebrate the achievement.
• Is a record of one of Kingsford Smith's many achievements – a decorated pilot in World War I, Kingsford Smith was the first pilot to fly nonstop across Australia on 8 August 1928 and the first pilot to make a successful flight from London to New York across the North Atlantic Ocean in 1930; it was during another groundbreaking flight from England to Australia in 1935 that Kingsford Smith and his copilot, John Pethybridge, on the Lady Southern Cross, disappeared en route to Singapore; while wreckage from the plane was later discovered their bodies have never been found.