Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (1897-1935) was the Australian pilot who made the first flight across the Pacific from the United States to Australia and the first flight the reverse way. He has often been described as the greatest of all the pioneer long-distance aviators who laid the foundations of modern trans-oceanic air transport before World War II.

Kingsford Smith was born near Brisbane on February 9, 1897, the son of a bank manager who took the family to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for four years. The boy went to St. Andrew's Cathedral School in Sydney before studying electrical engineering at Sydney Technical College. At 16 he became an engineering apprentice with the Colonial Sugar Refining Company. After two years he enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force to serve on Gallipoli as a dispatch rider in World War I.

Like many young Australian soldiers, Kingsford Smith transferred to the Royal Flying...