HISTORIC AEROPLANE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23688, 21 December 1938, Page 20

HISTORIC AEROPLANE

FLOWN BY NOTED PILOTS MANY MISHAPS ENCOUNTERED Many prominent airmen, some of world fame, have flown an aeroplane of Great War vintage, which will end its career at New Plymouth as material for making model aeroplanes. It is an Avro 504 K biplane that once belonged to the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and in which Mr F. C, Chicester learned to fly. A two-seater machine fitted with rotary engine and bomb racks, Avro 504 K was used by the crew of the Southern Cross, including Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, after they first flew the Tasman, and in her Mr C. T. P. Ulm learned to fly that type of machine. Captain P. G. Taylor, who was Sir Charles Kingsford Smith’s copilot on his second Pacific flight, also piloted the machine. Among other noted pilots who flew the Avro were Captain G. Hood and Lieutenant J. R. Moncrieff, the first New Zealand pilots to attempt the Tasman crossing, Flying-officer H. L. Piper, test pilot on the first flights of the Mayo composite aircraft, Squad-ron-leader J. D. Hewitt, who flew in the Melbourne centenary air race, and later crossed the Tasman, and the late Squadron-leader M. C. McGregor. The Director of Civil Aviation, Group Captain T. M. Wilkes* once made a forced landing in the machine. . The Avro experienced many mishaps in her Tong history. She was forced down and damaged at least a dozen times after being delivered to the Royal New Zealand Air Force at Lyttelton in 1925 as a reconnaissance machine. In 1935 the machine was lifted by a gale and cast upside down cn the roof of a hangar at the New Plymouth aerodrome. The only fatality connected with the the machine was when her part qwner, Mr F. C. Norton, of Wanganui, was killed by an explosion of petrol in the last stages of the machine’s active life