Historic flight retraced

Press, 12 October 1988, Page 5

Historic flight retraced

By

DAVE WILSON

A Royal New Zealand Air Force Friendship and crew from Wigram will make a special commemorative flight across the Tasman on Friday, evoking the memory of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith.

On the sixtieth anniversary of the first east-west crossing of the Tasman, the R.N.Z.A.F. Friendship and a Royal Australian Air Force Hawker Siddeley 748 will retrace the route. The flight between Woodbourne and Sydney is expected to take six and a half hours, both

faster and in considerably more comfort than the 23 hours it took Sir Charles Kingsford Smith in the Southern Cross on the same day in 1928. On arrival at Sydney the aircraft will join a replica of the Southern Cross for a flypast over Sydney before landing at the R.A.A.F. base at Rich-

mond. They will arrive at Richmond on one of the trade days of the Australian Bicentennial Air Show, the largest aviation event in the Southern Hemisphere. The R.N.Z.A.F. Friendship is from the Navigation, Air Electronics and Telecommunications

Training Squadron (N.A.T.T.S.) at Wigram. The aircraft, NZ2781, has been stripped of its passenger seating and will carry a minimum crew of three to give the aircraft the necessary endurance. Squadron Leader Peter Stockwell, the N.A.T.T.S. commander, will be navigator on the flight. He

said it was appropriate a Wigram-based aircraft should be chosen to commemorate the flight. The first crossing of the Tasman, in September 1928, ended at Wigram. Flight Lieutenant Murray Wratt will be the Friendship’s captain and Pilot Officer Andrew Ward will be co-pilot.