Well Done New Zealand Warbirds

Hi Dave and OFMC Fan… Thanks very much for your posts!

With regards to the pilot’s hands being severed, the record I have merely states that “…the canopy not locked back (sic) and slammed shut on Flt?Sgt J.W.Wright’s arms causing injuries, aircraft w/o.”. From this, it is not conclusive that his hands were severed, so it is possible it might be another aircraft. I’ve been through all of the RNZAF corsair records though, and couldn’t find another with similar details… though I may have missed one, and I guess it is possible that it could have been a US corsair. I am interested that so many US corsairs came to NZ, considering how far away from combat it was, although, maybe I have just answered my own question there! Does anyone know more about US corsairs in NZ?

With respect to Ross Jowitt’s corsairs, well, he had a website up several years ago trying to sell the project. It was offered at $160k, with no takers. A couple of years later, I saw it listed on Barnstormers for $170k, but then nothing… and no news in the press either. I found the lack of notice in the press surprising, especially considering the rear fuselage being from a birdcage aircraft… the pictures on the site clearly showed it. I had heard from someone else that the rear fuselage was from a USMC aircraft that had been recovered from New Guinea many years ago (and that the original pilot had seen it in NZ and signed his name on the fuselage). Perhaps the reticence over purchasing the project was due to concerns from potential American buyers about interference from the US Navy over ownership? Anyway, it’s an interesting story, and I’d love to hear views from other people.

Cheers,
Richard

OMFC Fan,

I’ll have to have another read of Bryan’s book when I get a chance, it has been manyyears since I read it in full. I remember that story you relate now. I don’t recall whether that was the incident that made me wonder if it was Dad’s house or not, possibly was. I shall have to have a look for his letter sometime to remind myself. I was thinking that Bryan was the pilot involved. Maybe the memory is playing tricks. It’ll be worth reading it again anyway, it’s a very good book.

Cheers
Dave

RMAllnutt,
I must admitt that it seems to me that you know more about R .Jowitts Corsairs than I Do!

I’ll have to ask around,maybe even Ross himself!

Dave ,I remember from Bryan Cox’s book that a pilot took off from Armore in a Corsair for a night flight and decided to formate on what he thought was a tail light of a Corsair ahead. Need less to say he woke up a few days later in hospital.What he thought was a small tail light was in fact a light coming from a kitchen window.The pilot had demolished his Corsair and narrowly missed the house and occupants

(my two cents worth!)

OFMC Fan

I’m glad that you chaps enjoyed those stories. If Dad utters any more of interest I’ll post them.

Two recommended books by RNZAF Corsair pilots are ‘Too Young To Die’ by Bryan Cox, and ‘Tiger Moths and Butterflies’ by Peter Norman. I love the title of that second book, very apt, s he details his training in Tiger Moths, and up in Canada as well as in Corsairs in the Pacific.

Richard, did F/Sgt Wright definately lose his hands? I wonder if he’s still around, whoever thew chap was.

I was looking up RNZAF records to try and trace the incident but when Dad mentioned that there were hundreds of US Corsairs also operating from Ardmore then I realised maybe he was an American.

Incidentally the US shared the station called RNZAF Seagrove too, which was right next to where the Karaka National Stud is nowadays. If you travel south on the motorway before getting to Karaka there’s a causeway with estuary on both sides. Look to the right and that expanse of land was apparently Seagrove, where the RNZAF Dauntless squadron (No 25) formed and trained, and other units operated from both the RNZAF and USA. There is a nursery or some sort of plant place that you can see from the road, and it is definately making use of old RNZAF style buildings. I only discovered the base was there recently. It’s now all private land and mostly farmland. An interesting aside, it’s amazing how a whole station can disappear back into the pasture it sprang from. I wonder how many aircraft crashed off the end of the runway there into the sea.

OFMC Fan… you mentioned that Ross Jowitt had sold on one of his semi-complete corsair projects. I take this to be the hybrid example with the birdcage-based rear fuselage, and the FG-1D center section and wings. Do you know when she was sold, and to whom/where? It seemed like a bargain at US$160k, even though there would have been a huge amount of work to restore her to fly.

Cheers,
Richard

GRAT Corsair reminiscences, interesting stuff….would love to poke around NZ and see if a U-bird or two could still be found somewhere…I know they trashed them all at Rukuhia after the war and only one exists in the NZ museum but i bet there’s one or more buried somewhere unexpected. Great to hear that the Flying museum has an ‘arms open’ attitude for folks just coming to see the planes for a day…more museums should adopt this attitude instead of the ‘top secret’ attitude some take…

Mark

WWII Corsair incident at Ardmore, NZ

Dave… those are fascinating stories. Incidentally, I think that it’s probable that the corsair accident which removed the hands of the pilot when the canopy crashed shut was that of NZ5514, piloted by Flight Sargeant J.W. Wright (26 Squadron, Ardmore). My records state that the aircraft swung off the runway during landing, and overturned. This happened on 3 June 1945, and the aircraft was written off, although the pilot seems to have survived thankfully. As it turns out, I have an ammo. box from this aircraft… which is a bit of a quirk of fate when you think about it!

Cheers,
Richard

Yesterday my Dad began to tell me a few stories about his memories of living next to Ardmore during and after the war. He doesn’t often bring it up so this time I paid particular attention. There were a few interesting little anecdotes.

He recalled that the Corsairs that used to fly into the station would often crash on landing because pilots were unaware of the need to land tailwheel first (as if on a carrier, virtually stalling it onto the deck). Many pilots he says would land with the maingear and with tail up, and the weight of the engine would flip the F4U’s onto their nose. He said he saw this happen very often.

He also said that often things would go ary for pilots on landing and they’d try to pull out to go around, but the engine would die or th aircraft would stall, and they’d crash into their paddocks. Grandad’s farm was right at the end of one of the runways. He said one day he was in a paddock with Grandad doing farm stuff, and a Corsair did this, coming down right in the paddock. He said it hit nose down and the prop was still turning, It churned out the soil, burying itself till the whole cowl was buried. He said the pilot then managed to stop the engine, and as the plane was vertical, tail up, he said he saw the pilot climb out and slide down the fuselage to the ground. By this time the fire engine and a crane were already there to recover the aircraft.

He said that Ardmore’s fire crews during the war had big V8 open cab fire engines, and when a plane crashed they would do their utmost to get to the scene as fast as possible. He said that although there were several crash gates round the station (for those that don’t know, these are wooden gates designed to be driven through in an emergency, smashing off instead of the crew having to stop and open it), he reckons the crews wouldn’t waste time driving to a crash gate and back. The engines had a large V shaped wire cutter, and he said he saw them several times drive straight into anf through the wire strain fence. In NZ most farms and airports, etc., use a fencing system of posts with No 8 wire and battens. If the engine had driven through without the cutter it would take the crew’s heads off. But he said they’d go through like a knife through butter, and then jump the deep drain ditches to get out onto the road. It must have been very exciting for a kid to see.

He said that there used to be a huge paddock between Ardmore and nearby Papakura (which has an Army camp there) where planes often crashed. He said it was a really big expanse of boggy, peat land that was covered thick in gorse and almost impenitrable on foot. He said he knew of one Corsair that crashed in the middle and was deemed so hard to get to they never recovered it. And more interestingly he said quite a while after the war the Army was exercising in the gorse paddock in Bren Gun Carriers, and they came across a Corsair that no-one knew was even there. It had gone missing in the war, and had lain there for years (obviously with a pilot aboard).

I don’t know if it was an RNZAF one or from the USA. Dad says the US Corsairs used to often arrive en masse, and he estimated that sometimes two or three hundred would fly in off carriers, in groups of ten at a time. He may be over-estimating there, I’m not sure. But he said that often when they’d all landed they’s park along the entire length of the runway several deep and the whole airfield would be full of hundreds of F4U’s, including the RNZAF ones based there. That must have been a sight and a half. I’d love to see photos.

I guess these Corsairs were exercising before going up to the Pacific to do battle.

Anyway, that’s a few of my Dad’s reminiscences, maybe one or two of you will find them of interest.

oopps ..sorry Jorgo

Dave,

The pilot of the Venom was John Denton(former NZ Warbirds CFI) .The Venom came to a halt after being stopped by some substantial trees.Causing substantial damage to the airframe.Apparently the accident was caused by an over rotation initially.

To see the display by TT Bland and John Denton..a tailchase manouvers etc where TT flew the P-51 and John in the Venom was something really to be seen.Quite an unusual sound of the Packard and jet engine roaring past in close formation.Unforgettable!!

Also a noteable crash was John Greenstreet and Harvard 25 in Feb 1990 ,during a practice display over Ardmore airfield.Plane and pilot ending some 5-10 metres into the ground.Tragic.

Jargo ..nice Hvd pic.

OFMC Fan

Beautiful shot of the Vampires – how different two shades of silver can be.

nice pics Jorgo !!

I believe Brett Emeny’s Vampire is based at/near New Plymouth.

Yes, the guys at Ardmore are all excellent ambassadors for aviation. Anyone who lets me fly with them can’t be all that bad. Top people all round.

Here’s some photos of relevance from Wanaka 2004.

Wow, great stories !!.
Thanks, Dave.

I once heard that Ardmore is the busiest airport in NZ (due to light plane movements).

Hi Chris,

The Venom was taking off from Ardmore when the engine flamed out on takeoff, and it basically sank back onto the ground, skidding along on its belly, right through the perimeter fence, and across the road – seemingly about two feet in front of a car travelling along the road! A very, very near miss.

Imagine driving along on a country road at a reasoable open road speed and having a jet try to cut you off perpindicularly at high speed! Funnily enough the car appeared in the video to simply keep on going – not sure if it stopped down the road. Maybe the driver blinked and missed the jet go past his bonnet!

Sadly the jet hit a hedge or trees on the other side of the road, which did more damage, and it was written off. I believe that Trevor Bland was unhurt thankfully. Amazingly it was all caught on camera by an amatuer enthusiast – it was on the news and then later released on one of the Aviation Archives videos. I have it on tape somewhere, it showed the aftermath in more detail than the TV did.

And Aside Now – A few Ardmore Incidents

Those paddocks are no strangers to that sort of incident. As a kid Dad lived on the farm at the end of one of Ardmore’s strips throughout and after the war. He remembers Corsairs overshooting and crashing into the surrounding farmland several times. He once saw a crash, the pilot had tried to open the canopy but the impact had slammed it shut and cut the poor pilot’s hands off. Dad remembers picking up one of the hands and it was moving. Gross!

I have tried to find out who this was. Dad thought the pilot died, but I can’t find an exact match of any deaths there in For Your Tomorrow. Perhaps he survived. My grandfather apparently helped rescue a number of other pilots after crashes too, and/or recover their aircraft off his land.

Nana’s brother also crashed at Ardmore. He was flying a Harvard as target tug to some American pilots, and they shot him down! He was ordered to ditch at sea, but he insisted he could save the plane. I think it must have been just an undercarriage problem. He disobeyed the tower and bellylanded on the edge of the airfield. The plane survived remarkably apparently and was servicable again very soon, but he was Court Martialled and sent to Ardmore Military Prison.

Dad often tells of how he and his brother used to sneak onto the airfield and play there. He remembers one of the big hangars was chocka bloc full of gas masks, in readiness to hand out to Auckland if the Japs came closer. And he said one night they were playing in the drain inside the perimeter when a fire engine came round, firing a bren gun into the ditch. Apparently they did this regularly to scare off birds nesting there. He recalls bullets whistling over his head, and thinking nothing of it. The firemen never knew they were there!

And another interesting incident is that they had a short aerial of about two feet long on the top of the house. One time a Corsair was taking off and failed to gain height, and it knocked the aerial off! I had heard this story from Dad and Nana many times as they were in the house at the time and were rather shaken by the low flyer! So I was intrigued to read a very similar story in Bryan Cox’s book Too Young To Die where he described a takeoff where he failed to gain height and very nearly crashed into the house at the end of the runway. I wrote to him in 1992 after reading that and between us worked out it was most probably him in the plane. Funnily enough he and I were both born here in Cambridge.

I remember the first Venom which I loved seeing several times, and I recall seeing it’s rather spectacular crash on TV – I really wonder what the driver of the car it just missed thought! It had the better colour scheme in my opinion too. I saw its remains at Ardmore a few years back. Sad sight. Very glad no-one was hurt, it could have been much worse.

I don’t recall this crash.
What happened to the Venom, Dave ?

Very interesting, cheers for all that. Nice Vampire photo by the way.

I remember the first Venom which I loved seeing several times, and I recall seeing it’s rather spectacular crash on TV – I really wonder what the driver of the car it just missed thought! It had the better colour scheme in my opinion too. I saw its remains at Ardmore a few years back. Sad sight. Very glad no-one was hurt, it could have been much worse.

I was mistaken about Mr Bland owning the other Venom, someone told me he’d bought it as a replacement. Interesting how you can be under a misaprehension for years. Nice to be put straight. Thanks. He was the regular display pilot though, wasn’t he?

Cheers
Dave

NZ Vampires.

http://www.warbirdsovernewzealand.com/wow04/Vampires_4492.jpg

OFMC FAN

Dave..as far as I know.

Ross sold a semi complete F4U a wee while ago.Sold the Dauntless quite some time ago.Has one Corsair left in good/rebuildable condition.

The Vampire that went to Christcurch sometime ago.Was (is?) still in RAAF colours.A two seater.
The other Vampire owned by Brett Emeny in Palmerston North or near there.Now in RNZAF colours (75 Sdn?).Was a Swiss AF Vampire at one time.Also a two seater.

The Venom. Never owned by Trevor Bland.The one he owned was written off during a failed take-off from Ardmore in 1992(?). That one was in Malaysian crisis colours .
The Venom your thinking of is an ex Swiss AF machine .Painted in suedo Swiss AF aerobatic team colours.Still located at Ardmore .Has not flown in sometime.

Any more questions I can help you with?

OFMC Fan

Cheers OMFC Fan,

Garth Hogan’s P40 was up for sale, I wasn’t sure if it had been sold or not. Just checked their website and it seems it is still for sale.
http://www.pioneeraero.co.nz/kittyhawk_for_sale.htm

I hadn’t realised a Vampire had gone south. Which one? The one in RNZAF colours or the one in RAAF scheme? And in that case, where is the other one based now then?

Also I hope Trevor Bland’s lovely orange Venom is still around too by the way, I haven’t seen or read about that one for a while now.