Yes ideed Charles, that’s quite right. Many young men lost their lives in training, it is really sad. If you ever get the opportunity to look at the books “For Your Tomorrow” by Errol Martyn (there are two volumes with a third being written now), they list every New Zealander who died in Air Force service from 1915-1998. The books detail the circumstances, and it’s so sad reading about the many training accidents that took lives. One that stunned me was an instructor pulled a loop in a Tiger Moth, and his pupil’s harness snapped. The forces threw him from the aircraft to his death. Awful. Another similar case was the cowl flew off mid flight and took the head off the pupil,in the front seat. The poor instructor had to return with the corpse and then go out with a search party to find the poor boy’s head.
It is also sad to read how many wartime pilots and aircrew were killed on the ground in things like car accidents – one even died falling off a swing in the park!! And many, many people in the wartime RNZAF personnel died from disease – particularly those who served in the Pacific. We see the cenotaphs and assume they were all killed in combat. Not so.
Not sure if both were but at least one of those Anson sandwiches in Aussie that James mentioned was fatal – the crew in the bottom plane were decapitated.
So true Dave,
I remember my Grandfather telling me he was watching a Tiger Moth doing loops over Wigram just after the war and all of a sudden both wings folded back. Apparently, someone hadn’t put the locks in properly.
Just spun into the ground with the consequences you’d expect. 🙁
TNZ
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