The Lost Pilots Page 2

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  A NIMBLE LIFTOFF

  History surrounded Bill Lancaster and Jessie Keith-Miller as they sat within the elegant stone walls of the Authors’ Club at Whitehall Place, a stone’s throw from both the Thames River and Trafalgar Square. This was where Oscar Wilde had furiously condemned the censorship of his controversial play Salome; where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had for years reigned undefeated as billiards champion; where guest speakers like Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and Emile Zola had been honored; where Ford Madox Ford had gotten rip-roaring drunk on the night he returned from combat in France. In later years the building would serve as MI6’s secret headquarters, but for now its glittering chandeliers and elaborately tiled floors bespoke a snobbish yet accessible gentility.

  Jessie had hardly taken her seat before Lancaster launched into an animated spiel about his upcoming flight. The England-to-Australia route had been conquered twice before, but by so-called heavy airplanes. Lancaster intended to make his mark by flying the route in a light airplane—specifically, the eighty-five-horsepower ADC Cirrus engine-powered Avro Avian, designed and built only a few months earlier. The Avro Avian was set to transform modern light flying, Lancaster claimed, with its eighty-mile-an-hour cruising speed and nine-hundred-mile range.

  Jessie may have been an amateur when it came to aviation, but she exhibited a no-nonsense approach that cut through any bravado in Lancaster’s presentation. She pressed him for details: Could Lancaster actually get an Avro Avian?

  Here Lancaster’s confident manner began to falter. His father might help him, Lancaster said, but under Jessie’s continued questioning he admitted that his father had thus far refused to finance the trip. From what Jessie could garner, the only concrete elements of Lancaster’s plan were that he knew which airplane he preferred and which route he planned to take. But these meant nothing without the financial means to make them happen. Jessie pressed him further. Aside from the plane, how would fuel be paid for? What about food and equipment, not to mention visas, licenses, landing fees, service charges, and maps?

  Jessie may have been sensible and strong-minded, but she was also fun-loving and lively. Despite Lancaster’s lack of preparation, Jessie found him an appealing character, and not just because of his charm and looks. He was clearly an experienced pilot, and his eagerness for the journey was addictive in its way. Like her, he seemed ready for any adventure, keen to immerse himself in new worlds, yearning for escape from the constraining dailiness of his life. Most importantly, Lancaster’s money problems aligned perfectly with the idea that had spontaneously flowered in Jessie’s mind at the party the night before. After a few more questions, she came to the point.

  “You said the plane was a two-seater?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “If I can raise the money, say fifty percent of the total outlay, can I come with you?”

  A look of astonishment crossed Lancaster’s face, and he briefly scrambled for words. Whatever assistance he may have wanted from Jessie, this was clearly not it. Once Lancaster gathered his thoughts, he told Jessie that it would be impossible for her to join him on his journey. “In the first place there’s the extra weight,” he protested. “And you can’t imagine what the flight would be like—you’d have to rough it everywhere. Besides, it’s dangerous. I’m confident for myself but I couldn’t take on the responsibility of a woman passenger.”

  Jessie barely registered Lancaster’s words. As she sat in the Authors’ Club, the flight suddenly represented for Jessie everything she’d yearned for: thrills, exploration, a headlong voyage into unfamiliar landscapes. The planned route would be the longest flight ever made by a woman. It seemed that together, they could achieve something legendary. And Jessie’s argument was irrefutable: without her input, Lancaster was incapable of gathering the necessary money.

  A still-hesitant Lancaster offered another reason why Jessie couldn’t come on the flight—he confessed that, although he was currently living with his parents, he was married and had two daughters. He also claimed, truthfully or not, that he and his wife, Kiki, weren’t living together because of a scandal involving Kiki, but that he wasn’t seeking a divorce because of the sordid details that would be revealed in court, thereby damaging his children. Given the conservative moral tenor of the times, the fact of a married man and a married woman traveling together in such close circumstances for such a long period of time would complicate immensely the task of lining up sponsorship and support from businesses and the press, Lancaster argued. The hint of impropriety would be too great.

  While Lancaster had a point, Jessie also felt he was employing this reason, and the story about Kiki, as an excuse to put off making a decision. As she would eventually come to learn, Lancaster had a habit of telling what Jessie called “little white lies,” lies that usually had their basis in truth but which he spun to portray himself in the most flattering light. “I don’t know whether he was capable of any big deceit,” Jessie once said, but “I could never quite make out which was absolutely the truth and what was said on the spur of the moment.”

  When they reconvened a few days after their Authors’ Club meeting, Jessie pressed her advantage. “Look, Bill, you’ve been talking about this flight for months, or so everyone tells me, and what have you got?” Her manner was unyielding. “The truth is that you haven’t a hope of getting started without money. I’ve got Australian contacts who’ll help with money, and I’m a woman, which will help with publicity. It seems to me it’s a case of either you take me or you don’t go at all.”

  After thinking things over, Lancaster had come to the reluctant conclusion that Jessie was right: without her help, the journey would not happen. Thus decided, he agreed to form a business partnership with Jessie. The two later insisted that the decision was purely professional—because they each had spouses, they joined together for aviation purposes only. But they were kindred free-flying spirits, young and in bloom, dismissive of convention, with large, immensely appealing personalities. The attraction, even unstated, must have been immediate.

  To kick off their affiliation, the two met the next day at Stanfords, the world’s finest map store, in Covent Garden. Situated in a charmingly refurbished Victorian home, Stanfords’ multiple floors were filled to bursting with travel guides, gorgeously crafted handmade globes, intricately detailed atlases, and stirring narratives of heroic expeditions. In the shop, an RAF officer helped Lancaster and Jessie plan the route of their flight, which would proceed in stages, with RAF airfields making up the bulk of their landing fields. Stanfords would convert these plans into strip maps that folded up into a book.

  Seeing an opportunity to shore up her deal with Lancaster, Jessie forked over the money for the maps on the spot. Barely a week before, Jessie had been an innocent adrift in a thrillingly intimidating new city. Now her life possessed an exhilarating purpose, a concrete goal on which to focus her energies. She, along with Lancaster, had a sudden future to plan for.

  Bill Lancaster’s path to his partnership with Jessie had been winding, but his flying skills were well established. Born William Newton Lancaster on February 14, 1898, in the industrial city of Birmingham, he had been raised in South London by his father, Edward, and his mother, Maud, a first cousin of Edward’s. The family was upper middle-class. Edward was one of England’s top civil engineers, with several leading technical books on engineering to his name, while Maud was the author of a best-selling guidebook for housewives, and an active follower of the Spiritualist movement. Maud devoted most of her time to volunteering with a local Christian charity organization called Mission of Flowers, where she was known as “Sister Red Rose.” The neighbors considered her an unconventional but loving mother.

  When he was a teenager, Lancaster headed off for Australia with his brother, Jack, as junior members of a royal commission. The year was 1914; by the time Lancaster and Jack reached Australia, the commission had been canceled due to the outbreak of World War I. After working a series of od
d jobs, Lancaster joined the Australian military’s Light Horse infantry, after which he was transferred back to England as a mechanical specialist.

  The trenches in which Lancaster soon found himself were fetid, blood-soaked pits, and he gazed with longing at the fighter pilots zipping overhead, who appeared exempted from the human misery below. Never before had aviation been used so heavily in war—indeed, the extraordinary advances made by aviation in World War I still form the core of today’s military and civilian flight—and Lancaster, like countless numbers of his fellow soldiers, was awed and inspired by the tough new breed of flying jockeys. Within a matter of weeks, he put in for a transfer to the Flying Corps. He gained his wish in July 1917, and spent the rest of that summer receiving pilot training. But soon after beginning his new position that fall, he crashed in a snowstorm. Shortly before the war ended in 1918, Lancaster’s military contract was canceled for medical reasons.

  Returning to London, Lancaster briefly flirted with dental school, but he abandoned these plans after the Royal Air Force (RAF) granted him a new appointment as second lieutenant. The RAF, the world’s first independent air force, had come into existence only a few months earlier, on April 1, 1918, but it now provided the lifeline that Lancaster had been seeking. Lancaster had a ground’s-eye view as the RAF rapidly transformed itself into the largest air force in the world.

  That same year, Lancaster met a woman named Annie Maud Mervyn-Colomb, whose husband had died in battle three years earlier. Lancaster was two years younger than the woman he nicknamed “Kiki,” and he was, in many ways, profoundly immature. But he nonetheless recognized Kiki’s polished bearing, her innate morality, and her thoughtful, generous nature. Lancaster was a twenty-one-year-old bundle of unfocused energy, and Kiki’s composed manner helped settle him, however temporarily. The two were married in April 1919.

  With Kiki in tow, Lancaster headed to India two years later for a posting with the highly regarded 31 Squadron. The pilots of the 31 were as dedicated and professional as any fliers in the world, and they were fiercely proud of their good name. Next to them, Lancaster seemed out of his depth, even if he himself failed to recognize this. He possessed a youthful foolhardiness, a sort of innocent arrogance, which was coupled with a fun-loving, easygoing manner. To the reserved, self-consciously modest squadron officers, these qualities represented a marked breach of social conduct.

  Lancaster was an outcast in another way, as well: he was married and living off base, which meant his social interaction with his fellow fliers was minimal. This, again, was considered a breach of conduct. When Kiki gave birth to a daughter, Patricia, in early 1922, the family’s already thin finances were stretched to the point that Lancaster frequently went into arrears on monthly bills. To the squadron, this was yet another mark against him.

  The following summer Lancaster was assigned to RAF Halton in England, which proved a more welcoming environment than India. While Lancaster was still regarded as an oddity, his behavior elicited bemused acceptance rather than social rebuke. He remained boastful, and his hijinks were frequently juvenile, but Halton lacked the buttoned-up atmosphere that had made these qualities so damning in India.

  Lancaster’s most memorable incident during this period occurred when International Rodeo rolled into Wembley Stadium in London. As part of the event, cowboys from America, Canada, and Australia competed in displays of riding, roping, and steer wrestling, while select audience members participated in a bucking bronco challenge. In practice, few spectators actually embraced this latter challenge, and none of them, no matter how seasoned, lasted long on the bronco. But when Lancaster was informed of the challenge, he announced, in his typically cocksure way, that he could win it. His fellow officers at Halton thought he was deluded, but they were eager to encourage his attempt. His failure, they thought, might curb his braggadocio.

  Thus Lancaster had a full car of passengers as he drove to the rodeo, with several more RAF associates making the journey to Wembley by rail. Later that night, as his compatriots looked on, secretly rooting for his failure, Lancaster stunned the crowd by winning the challenge—and the ten-pound reward. That he had performed the feat wearing a pin-striped suit and bowler hat only added to his triumph. Lancaster’s victory did little to temper his conceit, but it caused the men at Halton to treat him with a newfound respect.

  In the fall of 1924, Lancaster’s duties were shifted to RAF Manston, where the crew soon discovered that Lancaster was an intrepid and capricious risk-taker. When their boxing team faced Uxbridge in a championship series that winter, the team’s lack of a welterweight threatened to doom their chances at victory. Though Lancaster had little experience—and though he was ill equipped against his powerful opponent—he agreed to step into the ring. The Uxbridge challenger’s large, strong frame dwarfed his own; in less than a round the knockout blow had been delivered. But Lancaster received a point just for joining the match, which ultimately propelled Manston into the championship seat.

  The beating Lancaster received in the ring didn’t affect his penchant for athletic stunts. When Manston held a swimming competition soon after the boxing match, Lancaster engaged in a Houdini-like performance. He was sewn into a large sack and lifted onto the high diving board. Stepping from the board, Lancaster plunged under the water for a full thirty seconds before bobbing up to raucous applause from the crowd. In fact, he had secretly placed a knife in the sack, which he used to cut himself out. But to his Manston comrades, the incident was emblematic of Lancaster’s freewheeling persona.

  As a pilot, Lancaster was adroit, if reckless. What set him apart was not his skills, but his radical self-assurance. This partially stemmed from his mastery of engineering: he knew he could fix any mechanical problems his aircraft encountered. Lancaster’s fellow pilots viewed this ability with envy, but he was too well liked, despite his irresponsibility, for them to resent him. He may not have been career officer material, but no one at Manston doubted that high adventure lay in Lancaster’s future.

  As the humid London summer labored its stifling way to fall, and Lancaster and Jessie worked tirelessly to plan their record-attempting flight, Jessie fretted that Lancaster’s wife, Kiki, would be disturbed by the idea of her husband traveling with another woman. In a change of story, Lancaster had told Jessie that he and Kiki were living apart due to financial constraints—Kiki was living on the south coast, the only place that she could find a job. Meanwhile, his parents were taking care of his daughter Pat and a second daughter, Nina Ann, who had been born earlier that year. Whatever attraction Lancaster and Jessie felt for each other was submerged and private, with no intention to act, and Jessie’s concern for Kiki’s feelings was genuine. So, at her insistence, she and Lancaster headed south to meet with Kiki in person. Happily, Jessie’s apprehensions proved unfounded.

  “My dear, I couldn’t care less who he flies with or what he does, as long as he sends me some money,” Kiki promised Jessie.

  Lancaster’s parents, however, were scandalized at the thought of him joining forces with a woman to whom he wasn’t married. But when they met Jessie, they found themselves pleasingly surprised by her frankness and sincerity. Her willingness to pay for the journey’s maps further indicated that she was serious about the endeavor.

  Following the meeting at their house, Maud Lancaster made Jessie accompany her on a visit to her favorite spirit medium to determine whether the spirits thought Jessie was the right person for the flight. The medium went into a deep trance, after which he confirmed that the spirits believed Jessie would make an excellent flying partner for Lancaster. When Maud looked away, the medium caught Jessie’s eye and gave her a big wink. Reassured, and always eager to help out their son, Edward and Maud Lancaster agreed to help finance a plane, on the condition that the aviators distribute pamphlets for Maud’s beloved Mission of Flowers charity at every stop along their route.

  There were other expenses, as well. Lancaster and Jessie needed to provide a deposit for the cables they would se
nd during their trip, while passports and flying kits were an additional expenditure. The luxury fashion house Burberry made up their flight kits and, in a show of support for their journey, gave them a 50 percent discount in the process. Putting her saleswoman skills to work, Jessie proved a natural at seeking out potential funders for their journey. She wrote letters to the London offices of Australian firms asking for their sponsorship, and she gained the support of the Australian high commissioner to the UK, Sir Granville Ryrie. She also secured pledges from Shell and British Petroleum to provide the necessary gasoline, which would be stored at regular stops along the flight path, and from Wakefield & Co. to provide the oil. These services were provided free of charge; the promoters knew that a triumphant journey would generate positive exposure for their companies.

  Help also came from several London-based Australians. The cattle baron Sir Sidney Kidman, one of Jessie’s contacts, donated money for the trip. The rugged Kidman owned the largest cattle operation on the planet, his empire covering an astonishing 3 percent of the Australian landmass. Jessie obtained additional financial help from Baron Clive Baillieu, an Australian-British businessman and former champion rower, and James Nevin Tait, an Australian film producer and concert promoter. When Jessie visited the Pickfords moving company to arrange for her trunks to be delivered to Australia—she would pick them up at journey’s end—the firm agreed to pay for the service at the urging of trailblazing Australian masseuse Lizzie Armstrong.

  Not everyone was so enthusiastic. When Lancaster described his and Jessie’s plans to Sir Keith Smith, a former military pilot who in 1919 had flown from England to Australia in a record-setting twenty-seven days, Smith replied, “Oh, well it is a very good way in which to commit suicide.” But apparently not wishing Lancaster and Jessie to suffer such a fate, Smith provided them with all the assistance he could.