Bert Hinkler
(1892-1933)
Herbert John Louis (Bert) Hinkler was born on 8 December 1892 at Bundaberg, Queensland, the son of John William Hinkler, a German-born stockman, and his wife Frances Atkins (née Bonney). Educated at North Bundaberg State School in 1898-1906, he found work with a photographer at Gympie and soon became interested in aviation. He worked in sugar-mills and the foundry at Bundaberg; then briefly visited Brisbane seeking other aviation enthusiasts. There he joined the Queensland Aero Club of 1910 and the Aerial League of Australia. Learning mechanics by correspondence in 1911, he built two gliders in 1911-12; the second design was based on his own observation and analysis, including photographs, of ibises in flight. In 1912 he launched one of his gliders on Mon Repos Beach and flew 33 ft above the sand dunes. An application to join the new aviation section of the Australian army was rejected. When the American airman Arthur Burr Stone brought his Bleriot monoplane to Bundaberg in 1912, Hinkler became his mechanic on a tour of southern Australia and New Zealand. Coping with the numerous mishaps to Stone's plane confirmed Hinkler's grasp of construction fundamentals.
Hinkler sailed for England at the end of 1913 and found work in the Sopwith aircraft factory. On 7 September 1914 he enlisted in the Royal Naval Air Service as a Mechanic/Erector. After training at the Central Flying School, Upavon, he was posted to Newcastle-upon-Tyne and, early in 1915, to Whitley Bay, Northumberland. By August 1915 he had been promoted to Petty Officer Mechanic.
During 1915 he invented an improved dual-control system which enabled the gunner to relieve a disabled pilot. An accident late in 1915 nearly saw Hinkler transferred to the Army, but, being an excellent rifle-shot, he was posted to an aerial gun layer's course in 1916, then was posted to No.3 Wing, RNAS, escorting bombers in Sopwith '1½ Strutters' from Luxeuil and Ochey near Nancy, France. When the wing was disbanded in June 1917 the crews went to other units and for several months Hinkler flew on night raids in Handley Page bombers. Flying in D.H.4s on day bombings for No.5 Squadron, R.N.A.S., Canadian pilot Charles B. Sproatt gave him his first chance to fly a plane. Awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, he was promoted to warrant rank and recommended for a commission and pilot training. As a gunner, Hinkler privately claimed destruction of six enemy planes. On 30 December he began training at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, moving later to Eastbourne and to No.2 Fighting School at Marske, Yorkshire. After graduation in July 1918 as a 2nd Lieutenant, he was posted to No.28 Squadron in the newly formed Royal Air Force, stationed in Italy, flying Sopwith Camels. There he was repelled by one of his duties, the work of 'ground strafing' Austrian troops.
During his time with the RNAS and RAF, Hinkler made a lot of aviation instruments which were in use up until the Second World War, including a gadget to correct drift as airplanes fly a little bit on their side, not straight ahead, and a machine gun adaptor for air gunners. Back then, when the biplanes were flying upside down in combat, the hot, ejected shells would fall and burn the chest of the gunners as they fired. Hinkler's invention had the ejected shells all flying off to one side instead.
Hinkler was transferred to the unemployed list in August 1919. Failing in his application to fly a Sopwith Dove in the 1919 air race to Australia, Hinkler undertook rehabilitation training with A. V. Roe and Co. at Hamble, near Southampton. He bought a 35 h.p. Avro Baby and, on 31 May 1920, flew from Croydon to Turin, Italy, over the Alps in 9½ hours. Because of mechanical problems he abandoned the idea of flying on to Australia when he reached Rome, but the flight won him the Britannia Trophy. Shipping the plane to Australia in 1921, he made a series of flights including one from Sydney to Bundaberg, non-stop. After an emergency landing due to bad weather on the return flight, strong winds overturned the plane. Hinkler returned to England via Canada and until 1926 was chief test pilot for the Avro Company at Hamble. In December 1922 he tested the Avro Aldershot, and won the light aircraft trials at Lympne in 1923 in a monoplane motor-glider and in 1924 the Grosvenor Challenge Cup. In 1925 he was reserve pilot for the British Schneider Trophy team at Baltimore, United States of America, and in 1927 he flew his Avro Avian G-EBOV non-stop from London to Riga, Latvia, receiving a Latvian decoration along with the Oswald Watt Gold Medal for 1927. He also tested autogiros for the Spanish designer, Juan de La Cierva, in 1927 and, to secure funds for a flight to Australia, made an unsuccessful attempt with R. McIntosh on the London to India air record.
Hinkler flew the first solo flight between England and Australia, departing England on 7 February 1928 and arriving in Darwin on 22 February, and back in his home town of Bundaberg a few days later on 27 February. This reduced the England-Australia record from 28 days to just under 15½ days. The aircraft used was an Avro Avian with the registration G-EBOV. The flight was little noticed before Hinkler reached India but then media interest intensified. One paper nicknamed the flyer "Hustling Hinkler" and he was the subject of the Tin Pan Alley song Hustling Hinkler Up in the Sky. For the flights in 1920 and 1928 Hinkler had already won two Britannia trophies and the gold medal of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Also awarded the 1928 Oswald Watt Gold Medal, Hinkler's flight proved an unexpected financial success when the Australian government gave him £2000. He was made an honorary squadron leader in the Royal Australian Air Force Reserve and was awarded the Air Force Cross.
Returning to England by sea in October, he began building an amphibian aircraft of his own design called the 'Ibis'. On 11 January 1930 he and an Avro engineer, Rowland Bound, registered the Ibis Aircraft Co. The prototype, G-AAIS, was successfully flown but the potential market vanished in the Depression. Hinkler went to Canada in September 1930 to survey American prospects and in April 1931 he acquired a Puss Moth, CF-APK. Hinkler flew the Puss Moth from Canada to New York then non-stop to Jamaica, a distance of 1,500 miles, then to Venezuela, Guyana, Brazil, and then across the South Atlantic to Africa; this part of the journey was done in extremely bad weather, but despite a tearing gale and practically no visibility for part of the way because of low and heavy clouds, he drifted a comparatively small distance off his course. From West Africa he flew to London. For this he was awarded the Royal Aero Club Gold Medal, the Segrave Trophy, the Johnston Memorial Prize, and the Britannia Trophy for the most meritorious flying performance of the year. He was also awarded his third and fourth Oswald Watt Gold Medals. This was the first solo flight across the South Atlantic and Hinkler was only the second person to cross the Atlantic solo, after Charles Lindbergh in 1927.
Failing to secure aerial employment in Britain, Hinkler returned to America early in 1932 contemplating a global circumnavigation by light plane. He went back to England and prepared for another flight to Australia, intending later to cross the Pacific to Canada. He began the flight from Heathrow on 7 January 1933 in his Puss Moth and disappeared. The crashed plane and Hinkler's body were found on the northern slopes of Pratomagno in the Apennines between Florence and Arezzo, Italy, on 27 April. He had survived the crash and died outside the wreckage. On Mussolini's orders he was buried in the Cimitero degli Allori in Florence with full military honours. A monument in his memory was erected at Prato Alle Vacche in the Pratomagno mountain by the Aretino Aero Club.