England to Australia
 All
of Sumatra appeared to be on fire. From one end
of the Indonesian island to the other, farmers
were burning the jungle and rice fields for planting.
So much smoke filled the air we could hardly
see the ground 2,000 feet below as we desperately
searched for a place to land. Our twin-engine
biplane, a replica of the open cockpit, World
War I era Vickers Vimy bomber, was going down.
- Peter McMillan
So begins Peter McMillan's book, The Greatest
Flight, which chronicled his journey with Lang
Kidby from England to Australia in a Vickers Vimy
biplane in 1994. The book, with incredible photographs
by National Geographic photographer Jim Stanfield,
details every aspect of the flight, from preparation
to landing, and provides an account of the original
England to Australia flight in 1919.
 The
articles in this section summarize Peter's account
of the trip with excerpts from his May 1995 National
Geographic article.
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