Charles Kingsford Smith - Disappearance and Death

Disappearance and Death

Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge were flying the Lady Southern Cross overnight from Allahabad, India, to Singapore, as part of their attempt to break the England-Australia speed record held by C. W. A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black, when they disappeared over the Andaman Sea in the early hours of 8 November 1935. Their bodies were never recovered.

Eighteen months later, Burmese fishermen found an undercarriage leg and wheel (with its tyre still inflated) which had been washed ashore at Aye Island in the Gulf of Martaban, 3 km (2 mi) off the southeast coastline of Burma, some 137 km (85 mi) south of Mottama (formerly known as Martaban). Lockheed confirmed the undercarriage leg to be from the Lady Southern Cross. Botanists who examined the weeds clinging to the undercarriage leg estimated that the aircraft itself lies not far from the island at a depth of approximately 15 fathoms (90 ft; 27 m). The undercarriage leg is now on public display at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia.

In 2009 a Sydney film crew claimed they were certain they had found the Lady Southern Cross. The location of the claimed find was widely mis-reported as "in the Bay of Bengal" – the 2009 search was at the same location where the landing gear had been found in 1937, at Aye Island, in the Andaman Sea.

Kingsford Smith was survived by his wife, Mary Kingsford Smith and their three year old son Charles Jnr. His autobiography, My Flying Life, was published posthumously in 1937 and became a best seller.