Anzac and Aviator

The story of extraordinary Australian, Ross Smith, who rode to war at Gallipoli on horseback and by the end of the war, was one of the most highly awarded fighter pilots.

In the smouldering aftermath of the First World War a young Australian pilot and his crew prepare to attempt the inconceivable: a flight, half way around the globe, from England to Australia. The 18,000 kilometre odyssey will take 28 days and test these men and their twin-engine biplane to the limit. It is a trans-continental feat that will change the world and bring the air age to Australia. It will also prove to be the culminating act in the extraordinary and tragically brief life of its commander, Captain Sir Ross Smith.

Raised on a remote South Australian sheep station in the dying days of Australia's colonial frontier, there was little in Ross Smith's childhood that suggested a future as one of Australia's great pioneering aviators. He went to war in 1914, serving with the light horse at Gallipoli and in the Sinai before volunteering for the fledgling Australian Flying Corps. In a new dimension of warfare, Ross Smith survived two gruelling years of aerial combat over Palestine to emerge as one of the most skilled and highly decorated Australian pilots of the war.

In 1919 he served as a pilot on the first ever mission to survey an air route from Cairo to the East Indies before gaining international fame as the winner of the Australian government's £10,000 prize for the first airman to fly from England to Australia. An attempt to exceed this by circumnavigating the world by air in 1922 would end in disaster and tragedy.

Drawing on the rich and extensive collection of Ross Smith's private papers, Anzac & Aviator tells, for the first time, the gripping story of a remarkable aviator, the extraordinary times in which he lived and the air race that changed the world.

About the Author

Michael Molkentin is a teacher and historian with a particular interest in aviation and air power. He has a PhD in History from the University of New South Wales and in 2014 the Australian War Memorial awarded his doctoral research the Bryan Gandevia Prize for Military-Medical History. Michael's first book, Fire in the Sky: The Australian Flying Corps in the First World War, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2010 and Highly Commended in the Fellowship of Australian Writers Sid Harta Literature Award for Non-fiction.

His second book, Flying the Southern Cross: Aviators Charles Ulm and Charles Kingsford Smith was published by the National Library of Australia in 2012. Oxford University Press published his third book, Australia and the War in the Air, in 2014 as part of its Centenary History of Australia and the Great War series.