On This Day in History: The 1st Flight Between the United States and Australia

On June 9th, 1928, Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith, co-pilot Charles Ulm, navigator Harry Lyon, and radio operator James Warren participated in the first Transpacific flight between the United States and Australia. The entire flight from Oakland to Brisbane via Wheeler Airfield and Suva, Fiji took 10 days using a Fokker F.VIIb/3m registered NC1985 (later G-AUSU and VH-USU).

Kingsford Smith flew the aircraft on other historic missions before eventually donating it to Australian government. Today, VH-USU rests in the Kingsford Smith Memorial at Brisbane Airport.

Read more here:

https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/

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Interesting that the first flight was from Oakland, would’ve expected a major city like Los Angeles or Seattle. Shows how far air travel has come, now that planes can make the flight nonstop

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I guess I never really looked into how Sydney’s airport got its name. Now I know!


Very interesting. It is crazy to see how far aviation has come!

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Well, I mean, Oakland is basically just a suburb of San Francisco, which is a huge city.

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