A beautiful night to die

 In this extract from his book, Damien Lay imagines the final moments of the Lady Southern Cross and its pilots Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith and Tommy Pethybridge as they went down over the Gulf of Martaban in 1935.

‘Charles!’ Tommy screamed, his voice slicing through the thick tropical heat clinging to the early morning air. Exhaust and smoke – heavy with the sharp taste of burning oil – blasted through the shattered protection where a windshield once was. The open cockpit canopies did little to vent the smoke-laden acrid stench penetrating the firewall. Their eyes stung. Their airways tightened.

They knew.

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