New Zealand's Walsh Brothers first flight

Those readers of recent issues of ‘New Zealand Aviation News’ and ‘Pacific Wings’ will have noted my letter in the February issue of each of these magazines commenting on an article about the Walsh brothers that appeared in their Dec/Jan issues. A response by the article’s author to my letter also appeared in the February issue but the editors declined to publish in their March issue my reply in turn to it.

For those who have a genuine interest in New Zealand aviation historiography, a copy of my unpublished letter appears below.

“The Manurewa’s first flight
Sir,
The author of the unpublished manuscript to which Ross Ewing refers in his letter in February’s issue was R. J. (Bob) Johnson, who joined the Walsh brothers flying school in early 1916, five years after the Manurewa’s first flight. A copy of the 23-page manuscript, titled Early Aviation in New Zealand – A record of the N.Z. Flying School, is held by the Air Force Museum of New Zealand.

Johnson does indeed quote 5 February 1911 as the biplane’s first flight date and, as Ewing correctly notes, his story was ‘vouched for’ and signed off by Leo Walsh – though, curiously, not by his brother Vivian who did the piloting.

The five paragraphs devoted to the brothers’ trials and tribulations with the Manurewa form an interesting but less than complete and not entirely accurate description of events.

The manuscript, however, was compiled a long thirty years after the event and, apart from having been read by an elderly Leo Walsh, contains no source references whatsoever. We therefore have no way of knowing to what extent Leo Walsh checked Johnson’s text. Given the shortcomings in the story, it is most likely he didn’t but simply believed it to be correct as he remembered it. As Daniel Schacter sets out in his 2001 book, ‘The Seven Sins of Memory – how the mind forgets and remembers’, memory is the least reliable of all sources and especially so in the matter of dates.

Perhaps the Manurewa did make its first flight on 5 February 1911, but the evidence to hand so far suggests that it was not until the 9th. For example, The ‘Auckland Star’ of 10 February reports on a flight by the Manurewa ‘yesterday morning’ and in its closing paragraph states: ‘Every satisfaction was expressed at the first flight, and the news was received by the Auckland Aero Club [of which the Walsh brothers were founder members] with enthusiasm.’

Errol W. Martyn
Christchurch”

Also carried in the March issue of ‘NZAN’ is a long so-called ‘Centenary of flight celebrated’ report on page 2 by a Nicholas McIndoe. Ostensibly this is about the Walsh brothers first flight commemoration event held at Glenora Park on 5 February 2011, but almost all of which is merely a précis of the Dec-Jan article and repeats several of the errors therein as well as introducing a new one (‘the 1919 Bennington report’ – sic). Reference is made in the item to the Dec/Jan article but not to my corrective letter published in the February issue. Sigh!

Errol