Honour for N.Z. airman

Press, 13 October 1982, Page 1

Honour for N.Z. airman

By

DIANA DEKKER

London "It was highly frustrating not being down there flying and fighting," said Air ViceMarshal Kenneth William Hayr, a New Zealander, in London yesterday. , Although Air Vice-Marshal Hayr’s contribution to the Falklands war came from outside the field of battle, he was among the heroes who have received awards’ for their courage during the conflict.

Air Vice-Marshal Hayr, aged 47, yesterday became a Companion of the Order of the Bath (C. 8. for his “out of theatre" heroism. Be was responsible, as Assistant Chief of the Air Staff

(Operations) for “developing the special additional capa-

bilities required of the Royal Air Force in the South Atlantic” — getting the aircraft away to the war and making sure they could do the job when they got there. It was, he said yesterday, a frustrating position for a fighter pilot to be in, but it did have its compensations. Air Vice-Marshal Hayr attended a daily, meeting for Chiefs of Staff at Whitehall, “and whatever the press has said , about inter-Service rivalry, it was very much a team effort” “Our first problem was

that we could not see how we could project air power to the Falklands without having ap airfield there. The Argies, of course, would not let us use theirs,” he said: r ,

“From Britain to the Falklands is an awful long way.

We did a lot of brainstorming. There were many ideas. We just had a go at it and just about all of them' came off."

A high spot of the war for Air Vice-Marshal Hayr was “actually getting a bomb on to the runway at Port Stanley, actually getting one on our first sortie. That w r as pretty amazing.” .Another triumph was “getting the Harriers on to the Hermes with no alternative airfield, in horrid weather.” Successful air-to-air refuelling and an impressive delivery of weapons were also “interesting problems we put our minds to.”

Air Vice-Marshal Hayr is now based at Bentley Priory, near Stanmore,. North London, and is Air Officer Commanding 11 Group. Another New Zealander, Sir Keith

Park, ran 11 Group during the Battle of Britain in 1940.

Air Vice-Marshal Hayr was born in Auckland, where his parents still live, and was educated at Auckland Grammar School.

In 1954, at 18, he left for Britain and spent three years at Cranwell. From 1958 until 1964 he served with the R.A.F.’s Hunter and Lightning squadrons. He later commanded the R.A.F.'s first Harrier squadron, No. 1 Squadron. He was instrumental in developing Sea Harriers, “the concept of which we resurrected with no difficulty 11 years later.” - “I hardly got away from Whitehall for three months after the trouble blew at the end of March,” he' said. “Being a Harrier man myself it was frustrating not being able to go south.”