Abstract
As a native South Australian, I feel particularly honoured to have been asked by the Adelaide Branch of the Royal Aeronautical Society to deliver this second lecture in the Memorial Series commemorating the historic flight of the Smith Brothers from the United Kingdom to Australia. Just a few months ago—on 10th December, 1959—we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the epic arrival of the Vickers Vimy at Darwin. One thing emerges clearly from our aviation record in the succeeding forty years, and it is simply that no single event has had such a profound effect on that record as the remarkable, trail-blazing flight of the Smith Brothers. If we came of age as a nation on the cold dawn beaches of Gallipoli on 25th April, 1915, then just as surely we won our wings as a nation on that hot summer afternoon of 10th December, 1919, when the Vickers Vimy touched down at Fanny Bay aerodrome, Darwin. We have, I think, continued to wear those wings with considerable distinction ever since.
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