The MacRobertson Air Race of Nineteen Thirty-Four, the de Havilland DH Eighty-Eight Comet, and the Night the People of Albury Lit the Field

The MacRobertson Air Race of October 1934 covered 11,000 miles from Mildenhall, England to Melbourne, Australia - and produced two of the most consequential stories in aviation history. A purpose-built wooden racer won the speed category in under 71 hours. A stock commercial airliner carrying paying passengers nearly matched it, then made an emergency landing in a rural Australian paddock guided by townspeople’s car headlights.

Why Melbourne Staged the Greatest Air Race of the 1930s

Melbourne was celebrating its centenary. Sir Macpherson Robertson, a local confectionery manufacturer, wanted to mark the occasion in a way that would put the city on every front page in the world. His solution was an air race from England to Australia with a prize structure designed to attract the finest crews and aircraft on the planet.

The speed category prize was £10,000 - roughly $900,000 in today’s money. The handicap category offered an additional £2,000. Sixty aircraft registered. Twenty made it to the start line at Mildenhall aerodrome on October 20, 1934.

The Route: Five Compulsory Stops Across 11,000 Miles

Every crew flew the same course: Mildenhall → Baghdad → Allahabad → Singapore → Darwin → Charleville → Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne. There was no global communications network, no satellite weather, no radar coverage over the Timor Sea or the Australian interior. Navigation meant dead reckoning, a compass, and whatever radio aids existed along the route.

Getting lost over the outback at night was a genuine possibility. Every crew accepted that when they lined up at Mildenhall.

De Havilland Built a Race Winner in Nine Months

Early in 1934, the de Havilland company committed to building a purpose-designed aircraft specifically for the MacRobertson. Geoffrey de Havilland’s engineering team had nine months from concept to completion.

The result was the DH.88 Comet: twin Gipsy Six engines producing approximately 230 horsepower each, retractable undercarriage, and variable-pitch propellers - still relatively new technology that gave the Comet a meaningful edge over fixed-pitch competitors. The wooden fuselage was faired and finished so precisely that drag figures came in below what the wind tunnel had predicted.

Cruise speed: over 200 mph. The average commercial airliner of 1934 managed roughly half that.

De Havilland built three Comets for the race:

G-ACSP (“Black Magic,” finished in black) - crewed by Owen Cathcart-Jones and Ken Waller
G-ACSR - crewed by Jim Mollison and Amy Johnson Mollison. Amy Johnson had flown solo from England to Australia in 1930; Jim Mollison held transatlantic records. They were the most celebrated aviation couple of the era.
G-ACSS (“Grosvenor House,” painted deep red) - crewed by C.W.A. “Scotty” Scott and Tom Campbell Black

Scott and Campbell Black: The Crew That Won

Scotty Scott was not racing a route he didn’t know. He had already flown solo from England to Australia and held the record before the race began. Tom Campbell Black brought thousands of hours across difficult African flying - the kind of pilot who had been in trouble before and found his way out. Together they were precisely what a long-distance race demanded: speed where possible, discipline everywhere else.

The race started at 6:21 AM on October 20, with aircraft departing at 45-second intervals. The Comets went to the front immediately. But mechanical failures eliminated both Black Magic and the Mollisons’ entry before Melbourne. Of the three Comets that left Mildenhall, only Grosvenor House finished.

Scott and Campbell Black made every stop count. Baghdad in under seven hours. Allahabad in just over 22 hours from the start. Singapore by day two. Darwin well before the end of day three. Turnarounds were as fast as rules and machinery allowed - fuel, a quick engine check, eat if there was time, and go.

Grosvenor House touched down at Flemington Racecourse in 70 hours, 54 minutes, and 18 seconds. Scott and Campbell Black had won the MacRobertson Air Race.

The Commercial Airliner That Nearly Stole the Show

Still flying toward Melbourne was a KLM Douglas DC-2, registration PH-AJU, call sign Uiver - Dutch for “Stork.”

The Uiver was not a racing machine. It was a commercial airliner in regular KLM scheduled service, entered to demonstrate what modern commercial aviation could achieve. Captain Koene Dirk Parmentier commanded the flight; First Officer Jan Moll flew right seat. Behind them in the cabin: three fare-paying passengers and a cargo of mail.

The DC-2 cruised at approximately 170 mph - slower than the Comets, but faster than almost any airliner then flying a regular schedule. All-metal construction, retractable landing gear, powerful radial engines: the DC-2 represented a genuine generational leap in commercial transport capability.

Parmentier and Moll flew the same route as every other competitor, running their schedule with airline discipline rather than racing aggression.

The Night Albury Lit the Field

On the final night over Australia, cloud built over New South Wales and rain moved through. The Uiver was running short on fuel and could not locate Albury, its next planned stop. The crew circled in the dark. Radio contact was confused. They were in serious trouble.

Albury was a town of roughly 20,000 people in the New South Wales river country. Residents had been following the race on the wireless. When word came through that the Dutch airliner was somewhere overhead, unable to find a way down, someone organized a solution.

They drove their automobiles to the Albury showgrounds, arranged them around the oval, and turned on their headlights. The local radio station established contact with the Uiver’s radio operator and relayed bearings.

Parmentier brought the aircraft down. The field was soft from rain - one main wheel dug in on landing - but the Uiver stopped without structural damage and without injury. The three passengers climbed out onto wet grass, surrounded by car headlights and a crowd of strangers who had turned out in the middle of the night for a crew they had never met.

The team fueled from cans, waited for the weather to lift, and flew on.

The Uiver arrived at Flemington Racecourse in 90 hours and 13 minutes. Second in the speed category. First overall in the handicap category.

Why This Race Reshaped Commercial Aviation

Those results landed in airline boardrooms with immediate force. A commercial airliner in standard configuration - carrying mail and paying passengers - had finished in the top three against purpose-built racing machines over 11,000 miles of the most demanding route aviation had yet attempted in competition.

And the DC-2 was not even Douglas’s latest thinking. The DC-3 was already in development. Pan Am was watching. Imperial Airways was watching. Every major airline in the world understood the same thing simultaneously: long-haul commercial aviation was about to change in ways the flying boat era had only suggested.

At de Havilland, Geoffrey’s team filed away everything they had learned building and racing a clean twin-engine wooden aircraft with variable-pitch propellers and refined aerodynamics. When the Royal Air Force later came looking for a fast twin-engine aircraft for a new role, de Havilland drew on that body of knowledge. The aircraft they produced carried two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines and a top speed approaching 400 mph. It became the de Havilland Mosquito.

What Survived - and What Didn’t

G-ACSS Grosvenor House still exists. She is on permanent display at the Shuttleworth Collection, Old Warden aerodrome, Bedfordshire - still in the same deep red livery, still widely regarded as one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built. Her survival, when so many aircraft of the era were lost to accidents, wars, and metal drives, is almost as remarkable as the race itself.

PH-AJU Uiver was lost in an accident in 1937. But what she demonstrated in October 1934 - that a commercial airliner in standard configuration could compete at the highest level of international aviation while carrying paying passengers - still echoes in every long-haul commercial flight since.

Source material: Flight Magazine, October–November 1934; historical research by Graham Simons on the MacRobertson Race.

Key Takeaways

The MacRobertson Air Race launched from Mildenhall on October 20, 1934, covering 11,000 miles to Melbourne with five compulsory stops and no modern navigation aids
The DH.88 Comet was designed and built from scratch in nine months; G-ACSS Grosvenor House won the speed category in 70 hours, 54 minutes, and 18 seconds
The KLM DC-2 Uiver, carrying three paying passengers and mail, finished second in speed and first on handicap - demonstrating commercial aviation’s long-range potential to every major airline watching
The people of Albury, New South Wales arranged a ring of automobile headlights on a showground oval at midnight, allowing the Uiver’s crew to land safely after losing their way in overcast
De Havilland’s racing experience with the DH.88 directly informed the design of the Mosquito, one of World War II’s most capable aircraft