Lainie Anderson: I watched as the Vickers Vimy which flew around the world in 1919 was taken apart

For its day, it was a feat as memorable as the moon landing. Keith and Ross Smith flew across the world in 1919, and their plane is going to a new home, writes Lainie Anderson.

Ross Smith, Keith Smith, James Bennett, and Walter Shiers with the Vickers Vimy. [approximately 1919] Digital.collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/nodes/view/5547#idx44684

South Australian skill, determination and derring-do got the Vickers Vimy from England to Australia in the first flight across the world in 1919.

Those same South Aussie traits came to the fore again in the wee hours of Friday morning when the iconic aviation artefact was moved to its new home at Adelaide Airport.

Watching from the sidelines as the plane was literally inched out of its memorial hangar in three carefully disassembled and artfully wrapped pieces, I thought how much Sir Ross Smith and his crew would have loved to be a part of it, too.

Sir Ross, who won the Great Air Race of 1919 with his navigator brother Sir Keith Smith and air mechanics Wally Shiers and Jim Bennett, joked the Vimy’s registration letters G-EAOU stood for “God ’Elp All Of Us”.

But it was military precision planning and ingenuity that really got them home in an open-cockpit plane made of wood, wire and fabric – and over parts of the globe where airfields were non-existent.

Ross and Keith Smith, James Bennett, Wally Shiers and supporters with their converted Vickers Vimy plane just before take-off at Hounslow Heath. Picture: State Library of South Australia

Postcard: Vickers Vimy aircraft at Butler & Kauper Aerodrome, Northfield 1920. Picture: Tom Huntley

Sir Ross was so pedantic about the Vimy’s flying weight that he had all non-essential items thrown off at the last minute, down to the crew’s spare clothes and even the cockpit radio.

In Egypt they fashioning a cracked engine repair with chewing gum.

In Indonesia they laid a 300m bamboo matting runway to take off over a reclaimed rice paddy field. In a world devastated by World War I and Spanish influenza, our boys achieved a 28-day feat that aviation historians now say was as awe-inspiring as man landing on the moon 50 years later.

Those same aviation historians say that today, our record-breaking Vickers Vimy is one of the most important aviation artefacts on the planet. (Only one other original Vimy remains – it was flown across the Atlantic by John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown in 1919 and has been a prized exhibit of London’s Science Museum ever since.)

Knowing all of that, it was a beautiful thing to see the love and care that went into relocating our precious Vimy overnight on Thursday, led by Artlab Australia, logistics teams from Adelaide Airport and the construction firm Besix Watpac.

Ian Miles – project manager for Artlab Australia looking after the dismantling of the Vickers Vimy at the Adelaide Airport. Picture: Lev Luo

Almost three years ago to the day, ahead of the 2019 federal election, SA Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham and SA federal Labor MP Mark Butler both committed $2m to relocating the Vimy if they won power.

The commitment was matched by the Marshall government and again by Adelaide Airport.

In the intervening years, the cultural conservation specialists at ArtLab have prepared for the move down to the last nut and bolt (the proof being that they planned a 4½ hour operation and they were right, almost down to the minute).

The three plane segments each had scaffolding built around them to carry the weight and protect the structure, with about 20 three-point turns needed to delicately manoeuvre the large central fuselage section out of the old hangar.

Moving the Vickers Vimy plane to a new museum at Adelaide Airport. Pictures: Royal Australian Air Force

Moving the Vickers Vimy to the new museum at Adelaide Airport. Pictures: Royal Australian Air Force

In coming months, the plane will be reassembled and a new exhibition space completed, so by year’s end we’ll be able to walk around the Vimy and a small, expertly-curated museum.

The 1950s John Dowie sculpture of the four crew members will be positioned outside the new

display space.

After years of campaigning alongside many others for this move (kudos especially to Greg Mackie from the History Trust, Greg Weller from Air Force and the SA Aviation Museum gang) I expected Thursday to be an emotional night.

It was nerve-racking at times, especially as that huge, fragile central section was inched out of the old hangar with centimetres to spare and then slowly towed more than two kilometres before being inched into the new space.

But mostly it was a pragmatic, carefully-engineered operation that put emotion to one side and let practical planning reign.

That’s exactly how Sir Ross Smith would have done it, too.

Artist’s impression of the Adelaide Airport Vickers Vimy relocation exhibition space. Picture: Supplied/Adelaide Airport