Can anyone recognise this WWI pilot?

I am curious about the identity of a World War One pilot who also served in WWII.

In RNZAF Contact Magazine, the staff reporter Robert Grimwood (also known as Ropata Kirimuwutu) wrote a series of excellent articles based on the WWI exploits of a former Royal Naval Air Service pilot who was now RNZAF and obviously worked with or near Robert. He simply refers to this pilot as ‘The Old Timer’ and doesn’t mention him by name. But there are plenty of clues that may help someone here guess who this pilot was.

I think he was a New Zealander but can’t be certain as he may have emigrated to NZ between the wars. He certainly was in the RNZAF in WWII and still flying, though pilot may not have been his primary role by then I guess. And it appears he may have served at RNZAF Station Rotorua as this is where Grimwood was based at the time.

Every couple of months a different tale of ‘The Old Timer’ was reported. I don’t have them all, but of the ones I have, the clues in them are thus:

Episode 2 An Eventful Day (Sept-Oct 1942) – It says he served on the Island of Mudros off Greece in 1917 on a RNAS shore station. They were flying Sopwith One-and-a-Half Strutters. The story is about how a Naval Captain came to visit as he was in charge of the statiuon as well as others. The pilots put on a display for him, which went very wrong. He asked them to demonstrate some incendiary candles he’d seen, so a pilot dropped one but from too high and it drifted into the station’s 50 acres of wheat fields that they’d planted and burned the lot to the ground. Then ‘the Old Timer’ accidentally flew into the cable of a tethered balloon. The cable embedded in his wing and he spiralled down and down it for hundreds of feet before the cable finally snapped. He landed safely but the two Australian observers in the balloon were now drifting off to enemy territory and they had to make their first ever parachute jumps. They survived ok.

Episode 3 The Missing Code Book (December 1942) – This time he was at another RNAS station on the Island of Imbros in 1917. On arrival he was given the job of looking after the wireless codebooks. The last keeper of the books was in a hurry to get to his new posting so they rushed the sign-over. It was only days later he realised one was missing. He stupidly kept silent about the missing book and hoped it would turn up. Three weeks later a fire broke out but someone gave the wrong alarm signal – that of a land invasion – and the Old Timer gleefully carried out his orders of destroying all codebooks on hearing this mistaken signal. So he got away with it.

Episode 4 The Coilspring Flight (April 1943) – In this one he was based on the Island of Mitylene in the Agean Sea. Again they were flying the Sopwith One-and-a-Half Strutter, and he lead a mission to bomb the Manissa railway bridge 80 miles away. Going in line astern the eight aircraft were meant to each bomb three seconds apart, but the man right behind him was new and panicked when he saw the flak, so he sped up and dropped his bombs first – right through the wing of the Old Timer’s plane!!!

He went into a spin, diving from 8000 feet and finally recovering at 800 ft. But he found with the gaping hole, all it would do was go in left hand circles so he flew all the way home in a motion he described as a flattened coil spring, inching forward bit by bit. He was over two hours late back, but just made it. By this time the other pilots had reported him as missing believed killed, and over the next few weeks he had trouble convincing people back home he wasn’t dead as a telegram was sent. And his pay was also stopped. Great story.

So does anyone know who this guy was? Or which RNAS squadron it might have been? And if that squadron had any Kiwi pilots?

I have wondered if it were Flying Officer Herbert Vaughn Mountfort – because he was a WWI veteran and was at that time Grimwood’s CO. It is possible. Does anyone know if Mountfort was an RNAS pilot?

Any clues welcome.