Crashed Corsair eludes search

Press, 26 January 1988, Page 3

Crashed Corsair eludes search

By

DAVE WILSON

Near vertical terrain and almost impenetrable bush effectively stymied a week-long Air Force hunt on the West Coast for a wartime Corsair fighter that disappeared 43 years ago.

More than 30 students and instructors from the Physical Education School at Wigram took part in the ground search, which ended on Sunday. Squadron Leader Graham Cochran, the base adjutant at Wigram, said the team came home boggling at the terrain they had encountered.

“The terrain was horrendous, near vertical hills that took the men three hours to descend just one hill. Although they didn’t find the air-

craft, they say the countryside is so rough, it could be there and they just didn’t see it.”

The search for the Corsair and its missing pilot was done as a bushcraft and field survival exercise by the physical education students team, drawn from all three branches of the Armed Forces.

An area between Murchison and Inangahua was scoured, with the terrain so rough that the searchers had to be winched down by Iroquois. The object of the hunt was an American-built Chance Vought F4U-1 Corsair, a gull-winged fighter aircraft that disappeared on November 11, 1944. It was flown by Pilot Officer Brian Barstow.

He became separated from accompanying aircraft during a crossing from Westport to Christchurch. In spite of intensive air searches at the time, and occasional hunts in recent years, no trace of the pilot or aeroplane has been found.

The Air Force was spurred into the recent search through an accumulation of reports from hunters and prospectors of sightings of a crashed blue aeroplane.

The elusive Corsair remains one of eight New Zealand-based R.N.Z.A.F. aircraft still posted on the “missing” list. Seven of the aircraft disappeared during World War II and the eighth, a Mustang, vanished in 1955.