My Account
A highlight of this year’s special Armistice Day events in Warkworth, weather permitting, will be a flypast of vintage planes, recalling an era when flight was simpler, slower and riskier.
As part of the programme organised by Heritage Mahurangi, Jim Schmidt of the Rodney Aero Club is arranging the flypast, which will feature at least three 1940s Tiger Moths, one of the most iconic light planes ever designed.
The planes will fly in formation over the town at the end of the U.S. commemorative march down Queen Street, remembering the presence of U.S. Marines in Warkworth in 19421-44.
The Armistice Day celebrations are part of the broader Heritage Festival, marking 170 years of European settlement in the Warkworth area.
“Subject to weather conditions, the flyby will add a special aspect to the day’s parade that will be received extremely well I’m sure,” said Heritage Mahurangi chair Dave Parker.
Schmidt, who flew for America’s Delta before moving to New Zealand in the 1970s, said that in addition to the locally-based Tiger Moths, he is in discussion with friends at Ardmore airport about the possibility of several other vintage planes flying up to join in.
They could include a Stearman, an American biplane built by Boeing and used for Air Force and Navy training during World War II.
The British De Havilland DH82 Tiger Moth is a single-engine, two-seater biplane designed in the 1930s by Geoffrey de Havilland at the aviation company he founded near London.
Although mostly used as a training aircraft, during the Second World War the RAF occasionally used them for maritime surveillance.
The Tiger Moth was introduced to New Zealand as a RNZAF trainer ahead of the war, when production got underway at De Havilland’s New Zealand plant at Rongotai in Wellington.
A total of 345 Tiger Moths were assembled there, and thousands of Kiwi and Commonwealth pilots trained in New Zealand, in what were known as Elementary Flying Training Schools.
The planes were used during and after the war by RNZAF No. 1 Squadron in Whenuapai, No. 2 Squadron in Ohakea, No. 3 Squadron in Christchurch, No. 4 Squadron in Whenuapai, and No. 42 Squadron in Rongotai, later moving to Ohakea.
After the war, the RAF replaced the Tiger Moth in Britain with the single-wing De Havilland Chipmunk, after which the little biplanes were used for mostly civilian purposes, including recreation and training.
In New Zealand, Tiger Moths became workhorses in a range of commercial fields, including topdressing and aerial bait laying, and were also used for leisure and training.
Records show there were scores of accidents during the 1940s and over the following decades, with crashes reported into trees, fences, hedges, phone lines, the sea – even the main street of Gore.
One fatal crash in Hawkes Bay in 1951 was attributed to a short pilot using an apple box as a seat to give him better visibility. When the plane was inverted during an impromptu aerobatic display, he slipped off the box – or so the speculation went.
Jim said that back in the day, it was cheaper to buy another plane than to repair it following an accident.
The very first Tiger Moth made in Rongotai, with the serial number DHNZ1, is currently the focus of a volunteer restoration effort by the NZ Warbirds Association.
The Tiger Moth that Jim will be flying over Warkworth on November 11 was built in Rongotai in 1942, with the serial number DHNZ132. It was later declared to be surplus and sold to a transport company in 1956, for ₤400.
Its later life included stints as a trainer as flying schools in Hamilton and Tauranga in the 1960s. Jim bought it in 1987, completing restoration work that had been started by a previous owner.
With the callsign ZK-CCQ, its home is a hangar at Rodney Aero Club at Kaipara Flats, but it spreads its wings frequently. Jim has flown it numerous times to the bottom of the South Island, airfield hopping down the country for events including regular Tiger Moth Club of NZ get-togethers.
Another of the Tiger Moths that will take part in the flypast, ZK-ASM, was used as a topdresser in Hastings in the 1950s. Now owned by musician Bruce Lynch of Matakana, it’s in the hangar next door to Jim’s.
Jim said they were looking forward to the flypast, but stressed it would be weather-dependent.
“If it’s not good flying weather there’s no point in doing it. If it’s really windy, or a rainy, overcast, low-ceiling kind of day, we wouldn’t do it,” he said. “When you fly what’s called ‘visual flight rules’, you’ve got to have a 1000 foot minimum ceiling.”
