The MacRobertson Air Race, the de Havilland DH.88 Comet, and the Douglas DC-Two That Carried Passengers to Second Place

On October 20, 1934, twenty aircraft lined up at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and raced 11,300 miles to Melbourne, Australia. The fastest purpose-built racer in the world won - but it was a KLM commercial airliner carrying three paying passengers and a mail pouch that delivered the race’s most consequential result. The MacRobertson Air Race didn’t just crown a winner; it announced the end of the purpose-built racer as aviation’s leading edge and validated the commercial transport as the future of flight.

What Was the MacRobertson Air Race?

Melbourne was celebrating its centenary in 1934 - one hundred years since the settlement of the Port Phillip district. Australian confectionery magnate Sir Macpherson Robertson donated £10,000 to the celebration fund and proposed a race from England to Australia as its centerpiece event. His reasoning was direct: modern aircraft had shrunk the British Empire, and London and Melbourne were days apart rather than worlds apart.

The route ran from Mildenhall southeast through Rome, Baghdad, Karachi, Allahabad, Singapore, Timor, and Darwin, then south to the finish at Flemington Racecourse in Victoria. Five compulsory checkpoints required crews to sign in regardless of fuel needs. Robertson structured the prize across two competitions: a speed prize for fastest elapsed time, and a handicap prize for the aircraft that best exceeded its predicted performance.

Sixty-four teams entered at various stages. Twenty made the start line.

The de Havilland DH.88 Comet: Built in Nine Months

The three aircraft that defined the race were purpose-built for it. Geoffrey de Havilland and his team received a brief to build the fastest long-range aircraft in Britain - and signed the first contract roughly nine months before race day. Nine months to design, build, test, and certify an entirely new airplane.

What they delivered was the DH.88 Comet: a low-wing monoplane powered by twin de Havilland Gipsy Six engines producing approximately 220 horsepower each. It featured retractable undercarriage - still far from standard in 1934 - and variable-pitch propellers that let crews optimize blade angle for climb, cruise, and descent. Top speed reached approximately 237 mph at altitude, with a range close to 3,000 miles on full tanks. Only five DH.88s were ever built. Three of them were at Mildenhall on race morning.

Race number 34, Grosvenor House, was crewed by C.W.A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black. Scott held the solo England-to-Australia speed record and brought methodical precision to the cockpit. Campbell Black had built his flying career in East Africa, solving problems with whatever the toolbox held. The second Comet, Black Magic, carried Jim Mollison and Amy Johnson - the most famous aviation couple in the world. Mollison had been the first person to fly solo from Australia to England. Johnson had been the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, completing that flight in 1930 in a secondhand Gipsy Moth. The third Comet was flown by Owen Cathcart-Jones and Ken Waller.

The KLM Douglas DC-2: An Airliner Enters the Race

Behind the three red Comets, KLM entered a Douglas DC-2 named Uiver - Dutch for Stork. The crew was Captain Koene Dirk Parmentier and First Officer Jan Moll, supported by a radio operator and navigator. Three paying passengers had booked tickets for the race as though it were an unusually eventful scheduled service. There was also a mail pouch.

The DC-2 had entered service with American Airlines earlier that year. KLM operated them on European routes. Designed for passenger operations, it cruised at around 170 mph and was powered by two Wright Cyclone engines producing 700 horsepower each. It weighed roughly twice what the Comet weighed, carried a full passenger cabin, and had been engineered for economics, not glory.

Parmentier flew it like a professional: scheduled stops, proper fuel management, crew rest where operating parameters called for it. The passengers reportedly had no idea whether they were winning or losing.

How the Race Unfolded

The starting gun fired at 6:30 a.m. on October 20, 1934. Aircraft departed at ninety-second intervals. The Comets cleared the field before most of the pack had begun their takeoff runs.

The route punished the unprepared. The Alps in marginal weather. Iraq and Persia, where desert heat sapped engine power at high density altitude. India in monsoon-transitional conditions. The Dutch East Indies, where island chains offered both emergency landing options and the constant risk of disorientation over open water.

Black Magic did not survive India. Mollison made a hard landing at Allahabad in deteriorating visibility, damaging the undercarriage severely enough that the aircraft could not continue. He and Johnson walked away uninjured - but they were out of the race before the halfway point.

Grosvenor House pressed through all of it. Scott flew with the methodical aggression of someone who understood the difference between flying fast and flying smart. The Gipsy Six engines ran without drama. The variable-pitch propellers justified their place on the airframe every time terrain shifted and power demands changed.

Uiver followed, steady and professional, all the way to Melbourne.

The Result That Changed Aviation

Grosvenor House touched down at Flemington Racecourse on October 23, 1934. Scott and Campbell Black had covered 11,300 miles in 70 hours and 54 minutes. Cathcart-Jones and Waller arrived third in the speed section.

Second in the speed section was the Uiver. Parmentier and Moll brought the DC-2 in at 90 hours and 13 minutes. With their passengers. With the mail pouch intact.

In the handicap competition, the Uiver won outright.

A commercial airliner - engineered for scheduled service and fare-paying passengers, flown by airline crew following professional operating procedures - had crossed half the world within twenty hours of the fastest purpose-built racing aircraft in existence. Aircraft that existed for one purpose. The DC-2 had done it carrying people and post.

Why the MacRobertson Race Mattered for Commercial Aviation

The aviation establishment needed only a few days to process the full weight of what had happened. The gap between a military-derived racing machine and a well-engineered commercial transport was far smaller than anyone had assumed. The DC-2 was faster and more reliable over long distances than its competitors had expected - and it was doing something no purpose-built racer could: earning revenue on the crossing.

Donald Douglas did not wait long for the phones to start ringing. European airlines that had watched the American DC-2 with polite interest began writing letters. Asian carriers. Pacific route operators. The MacRobertson result was the most effective sales demonstration in commercial aviation history.

Within 21 months of the race, Douglas introduced the DC-3. Stretched, widened, more powerful. It carried 21 passengers, or 14 in sleeping berths for overnight routes. By 1939, the DC-3 carried 60 percent of American airline traffic. It served in every theater of the Second World War, hauling mail, freight, paratroopers, and humanitarian supplies on six continents. Some remain in service today.

The MacRobertson race did not create the DC-3. But it announced, to anyone paying attention, that the frontier had moved - and the future belonged to something that could carry the world in its cabin while making the crossing.

Where Are These Aircraft Now?

Grosvenor House still exists. Restored in the 1980s, it lives at the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden Aerodrome in Bedfordshire, displayed in the race markings it wore when it crossed the finish line.

C.W.A. Scott lived until 1980 and never entirely left the cockpit. Tom Campbell Black died in 1936 in a taxiing accident at Speke Airport in Liverpool - not a dramatic end, but the quiet kind aviation occasionally delivers when the guard is down on the ground.

The Uiver returned to KLM scheduled service after the celebrations ended. Captain Parmentier became a national hero in the Netherlands. On December 20, 1934 - two months after the race - the Uiver disappeared in a storm over the Mediterranean. The wreckage was never found. The crew and everyone aboard were gone.

Key Takeaways

• The MacRobertson Air Race ran October 20–23, 1934, covering 11,300 miles from RAF Mildenhall, England to Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne, Australia.
• Grosvenor House, a de Havilland DH.88 Comet crewed by C.W.A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black, won the speed prize in 70 hours and 54 minutes.
• The KLM Douglas DC-2 Uiver - carrying three paying passengers and a mail pouch - finished second in the speed section at 90 hours and 13 minutes, and won the handicap competition outright.
• The DC-2’s performance proved that a commercial transport could nearly match a purpose-built racer over transcontinental distance, driving sales of the Douglas DC-3 and reshaping global aviation within two years.
• The Uiver was lost over the Mediterranean on December 20, 1934, less than two months after its historic finish.