73 PLANES TO BE SOLD

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28349, 7 August 1957, Page 14

73 PLANES TO BE SOLD

Harvards And Mustangs The Government Stores Board, on behalf of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, will call for tenders for the sale of 73 singleengine aircraft. The Minister of Defence (Mr T. L. Macdonald) announced this today. The aircraft—s 4 Mark II Harvard trainers and 19 singleengined Mustang fighters—will no longer be needed by the service, Mr Macdonald said. The Mark II Harvards were used for training war-time pilots, and were taken out of service at the end of the war. A Mark II Harvard aircraft last flew at Wigram in 1945. The R.N.Z.A.F. is now using the later Mark lIA and Mark 111 Harvards, which meet today’s more exacting requirements for initial flying training. Mr said that it would take £500,000, plus 240,000 man hours, to bring the Mark II Harvards up to the high standard demanded by the service. Furthermore, the R.N.Z.A.F. has sufficient of the later Mark lIA and 111 Harvards to meet its needs for several years. Altogether, 30 Mustang singleseater fighters—now obsolete — were delivered to the R.N.Z.A.F. between August and September, 1945. They arrived in New Zealand too late to be flown on active service, and were put into storage. They were taken out of storage in 1951, and delivered to the four Territorial Air Force fighter squadrons. Between July and November, 1955, 15 of the remaining 19 aircraft—ll were either written oft or broken down for spare parts—were withdrawn from service and are now in storage at Woodbourne. The other four aircraft were flown until May of this year, and are now stored at Woodbourne.