Mission Aviation: Flight, publicity, and narrative construction (1928 – 1941)

For more than a century faith-based organizations have used aircraft to help extend their evangelical reach. To date however there has been little scholarly interest in either these organizational outreach activities, or those involved. This is despite Australian and Canadian studies having highlighted, especially in recent years, both the potential and limitations of our existing knowledge (vis-àvis missionary aviation). Historians and publishers have mostly focused on successful initiatives, rather than those that failed. This research absence and imbalance is particularly striking in sparsely populated countries like Australia, where clergy were amongst the first to try and capitalize on the aircraft’s missionary potential. The following case study seeks to redress this shortcoming by profiling and evaluating the efforts of Keith Langford-Smith—one of Australia’s earliest missionary pilots.