Built Dummy Aeroplanes During War Years

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31042, 23 April 1966, Page 23

Built Dummy Aeroplanes During War Years

A motor body tradesman who has built everything from war-time dummy aeroplanes to bus bodies in the course of his 50 years association with the industry was. honoured at a function to mark his retirement last evening. He is Mr Wilfred Rogers, who has retired as manager of Modern Motor Bodies, Ltd., of Christchurch.

Mr Rogers served his apprenticeship with Cooper and Pryce, Ltd., where he began working at the age of 13 in 1916. Part of his trade training was at the Canterbury University College school of engineering. He began business on his own account as Modern Motor Bodies in 1937.

Between 1939 and 1958 Mr Rogers was president of the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Motor Body Builders’ Employers’ Association on seven different occasions, and Dominion president in 1951. He served on the apprenticeship committee as a foundation member for 18 years.

During the war years Mr Rogers’s firm built desert ambulances and dummy aeroplanes to divert attention from genuine airfields. For a time he was in charge of a Lyttelton factory which built under contract floating bargetype jetties for United States Liberty ships landing men and supplies on Pacific Islands. All the Christchurch motor body firms pooled their labour resources to fulfil the contract.

One of Mr Rogers’s earliest recollections of his apprenticeship is taking the pay around to the men each week when their wages were in gold. He used himself to receive a halfsovereign and two halfcrowns. A tradesman’s pay was two sovereigns, a half sovereign and two halfcrowns (about £2 15s) for a 47-hour-six-day week. Mr Rogers also recalls that on a number of occasions he was called round to Bishops Court to crank a 1913 Renault which Bishop Julius had trouble in starting.