MacRobertson Air Race

Aircraft had to carry three days' rations per crew member, floats (e.g. buoyancy aids or personal flotation devices), smoke signals, and efficient instruments.

First off the line, watched by a crowd of 60,000, were Jim Mollison and his wife Amy Johnson in the Comet Black Magic, and they were early leaders in the race until forced to retire at Allahabad with engine trouble.

This left the DH.88 Grosvenor House flown by Flight lieutenant C. W. A. Scott and Captain Tom Campbell Black well ahead of the rest of field, and they went on to win in a time of less than three days, despite flying the last stage with one engine throttled back because of an oil-pressure indicator giving a faulty low reading.

[6][7] Lyle Ferris, the chief electrical engineer of the post office, went to the power station and signalled "A-L-B-U-R-Y" to the aircraft in Morse code by turning the town street lights on and off.

[7] Later that year the DC-2, on a flight from The Netherlands to Batavia, crashed in the Syrian desert near Rutbah Wells in western Iraq, killing all seven on board; it is commemorated by a flying replica.

MacRobertson Air Race poster, 1934
Movietone newsreels coverage of the 1934 race, including Scott's speech.
G-ACSS Grosvenor House on display at the Farnborough Air Show in September 1988
Douglas DC-2 painted to represent the KLM DC-2 PH-AJU Uiver
Uiver being pulled out of the mud by Albury residents.
Roscoe Turner's Boeing 247D, the third-place winner, as exhibited today in United Air Lines markings at the National Air and Space Museum .
The MacRobertson Air Race Trophy.
Article in The Sydney Morning Herald , dated 24 January 1941 stating that the trophy was donated to the Red Cross to be melted down for the war effort.