Anniversary Of Wigram Flight

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31362, 6 May 1967, Page 17

Anniversary Of Wigram Flight

Fifty years ago tomorrow the first flight was made from the aerodrome of the Canterbury Aviation Company, Ltd., at Sockburn, later to be renamed Wigram in honour of the man who made it all possible, the Hon. H. F. Wigram, later Sir Henry Wigram. According to Mr D. P. Woodhall, writing in the latest issue of the Aviation Historical Society of New Zealand’s journal, the actual first flight received scant attention in the newspapers although details of the aircraft used—a 60 h.p. two seater Caudron bi-plane—were given in the “Lyttelton Times.”

The pilot of the aircraft was Mr C. M. Hill, the. newlyappointed chief instructor of the company. He arrived in Christchurch on May 3—five days before the flight. Mr Hill, however, was an experienced flyer, having formerly been the chief pilot of the Aviation School at Hendon, England. The Caudron was powered with a six-cylinder Anzani engine built in France. The period of time the aircraft was airborne in not known.

The Canterbury company was established on September 20, 1916, and bought 106 acres of land at the then Plumpton Park, the same land that today, with many additions, is still used for flying. Work began on the erection of hangars, workshops and quarters for the staff and pupils in February, 1917, and the company’s first aircraft, a Bleriot monoplane, was bought. At the time it was not proposed to fly it but to use it for "rolling only.” The Caudron which made the first flight arrived at Auckland about mid-April the same year, because on April 21 it was delivered to Sockburn where its assembly began immediately. Six days after the first flight, Sir Henry Wigram invited the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr H. G. Russell, to visit Sockburn where Mr Hill, using the Caudron, put on a 15-minute flying display. The first passenger flights from Wigram in the same aircraft were made on June 19,

1917, when Sir Henry Wigram was the first to be taken aloft. He was followed by his wife and then the first six pupils of the flying training school.

Flying training later began in earnest and the staff of instructors increased to four. By June 17, 1918, two days before the anniversary of the first passenger flight, 100 future war pilots had been trained. Since those early days thousands of pilots and aircrew have received training at the R.N.Z.A.F.’s Central Flying School at Wigram—long considered the home of military and civil aviation in New Zealand.