State Library of South Australia

Thomas Kay and George Matthews in the England-Australia Air Race, Bandar Abbas [B 78170] • Photograph

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Summary

Thomas Kay and George Matthews with their Sopwith Wallaby G-EAKS, undergoing repairs at the repair camp on a beach 20 miles west of Bandar Abbas. They crash landed in sandstorm at this location on 3 February 1920. Repairs took 3 weeks. The man on the extreme right of the photo is an officer of the Italian Air Force who was awaiting the arrival of the aircraft of the Rome-Tokyo flight. Matthews and Kay left Bandar Abbas on 24 February 1920. The Sopwith Wallaby crew comprised Captain George Campbell Matthews as pilot and Sergeant Thomas D. Kay as mechanic. Departed Hounslow 21 October 1919, crashed at Grokgk, Bali 17 April 1920.

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Physical description

Electronic file
image
1 photograph : black and white, digital ; 796.1 KB

Dates / Publication details

24 February 1920

Photographer

MunGavin, George Alexander

Collection

Part of General Collection

Subject

Matthews, George Campbell, 1884-1958.
Sopwith airplanes.
England-Australia air race, 1919
Airmen -- Australia.
Bandar ʻAbbās (Iran)

Catalogue record

Return to catalogue

General notes

One of ten photographs of the 1919 England-Australia Air Race taken by George Alexander MunGavin, the British Consul at Bandar Abbas, on the southern coast of Iran on the, Persian Gulf, and in charge of the Indo-European Telegraph Department's telegraph station there. Do an ARCHIVAL NUMBER search on B 78162 to B 78171 to view other images.

Historical information

In 1919 Australian Prime Minister William Hughes offered a £10,000 prize on behalf of the Australian government for the first Australians to fly an aircraft from England to Australia, in under 30 consecutive days. Of the six teams that entered the race, the winning crew and first to arrive in Australia, flew in the Vickers Vimy G-EAOU bomber, departing London on 12 November 1919, and arriving in Darwin 27 days and 20 hours later, on 10 December 1919. The crew consisted of South Australian pilots and brothers Captain Ross MacPherson Smith and Lieutenant Keith Macpherson Smith, with mechanics Sergeants Walter Henry Shiers and James Mallett Bennett.

Digitisation information

Date

17/09/2020

Format

image/jpeg

Resolution

2,611 x 1,721 pixels (4.5 MP)

Size

815.18 K

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