Fantastic News - "Lost" 14 Squadron Beach File is Found

[Dave Homewood]

I have fantastic news for RNZAF historians. The file that most of us have wanted to see for years but thought we never would because it was lost, has been found!

This is the accident report into the incident where four No. 14 Squadron P-40K's ended up on the beach in New Caledonia and the fifth in the sea!!

It has been assumed by many that it had been stolen and/or destroyed to protect the career of one of the officers involved. However no, this now seems not to be the case at all, it just had not made it to Archives NZ like most of the other accident reports. And that officer is in the clear.

The file was located in a secure file room during a clean out, where it has resided gathering dust for the last 40, 50, 60 years. The chap who found it, who I will not mention, approached me about it last night. He was not aware of its significance till he talked to me about it, he'd assumed it was just a copy. Now that he is aware, he will ensure it is sent to National Archives in due course and should become publicly available soon.

I have been sent a pdf copy of the file, it's absolute gold. If any researchers are interested, please email me at [e-mail]

This is the Holy Grail for some of us!

Just amazing!!

[davidd]

Great news Dave H, I always hoped it might resurface one day. I imagine this might be a fairly fat file!
David D

PS, will attempt to recreate my own "lost file" later this evening, or maybe tomorrow, the one detailing the "fleet" of aircraft operated by the FGS/FLS, May 1944 to September 1945. Incidentally, I may have been a bit flippant with your last suggestion, but I will give a little more time to the question of those spinners with split fore/aft colours. As you have already noted, unusually coloured P-40 spinners were certainly not the sole privilege of the aircraft at Gisborne/Ardmore, but as P-40 spinners were always eyed greedily by airmen with spray guns all around the world (they were just so BIG!), anything is possible. However, as I have also pointed out, they already had fuselage codes for specific aircraft identification at a distance, but a split colour spinner would at least provide reasonably reliable unit identification from frontal angles.

[Dave Homewood]

I'm assuming you received the emails David?

[baz62]

Good news indeed.

[Dave Homewood]

I am very surprised to find that this incident was reported in the newspaper. Rather sympathetically too.

FLIGHT TO WAR

DOMINION AIRCRAFT

JOURNEY INTO PACIFIC

THE KITTYHAWK SQUADRON

The first transfer from New Zealand to a forward fighting area in the South Pacific of a fighter air squadron under its own power was completed in April with the arrival in the war zone of a New Zealand Kittyhawk squadron. Not only did the squadron's pilots ferry their own warplanes from the Dominion, but New Zealand bombers and United States transports also carried across many hundreds of miles of sea a large proportion of the ground crews, with their equipment, enabling the squadron, in fighting trim, to reach the battle area in a fraction of the time that would have been occupied by surface transport.

New Kittyhawk aircraft, freshly arrived from the United States, were assembled and test flown at a New Zealand station, and collected direct by pilots of the squadron concerned. Each pilot was allocated his own machine—the machine in which he was to fly direct from New Zealand to the war—and, as soon as the first half-dozen had been delivered, a departure date was set.

Hudson aircraft of another New Zealand squadron were allocated as escorts, arrangements were made with the American authorities to provide two large Douglas transports, and a representative party of airmen of the fighter unit was chosen to go as a flying service party.

Oddly Assorted Convoy
It was an oddly assorted convoy and escort that finally assembled at a North Island station. The Kittyhawks, lean fighting aircraft not intended for long-distance operation, carried long-range tanks to give them the requisite fuel for the journey; the Hudsons, to which a 1000-mile ocean crossing is a commonplace, were detailed to fly one ahead and one astern of the fighters, and the Douglas transports, wartime versions of the famous DC-3 of American civil airlines, were heavy with the ground crews, their luggage, their kits, the Kittyhawk pilots' luggage, and surplus equipment, and those essential oddments involved in such a journey.
The fickle weather of the South Pacific almost brought disaster near the first party. The Kittyhawks, after a long stretch over the ocean, readied the end of their second hop to find their destination, an island aerodrome, completely enshrouded in low, swirling cloud and blinding rain. Under the protecting guidance of their Hudson escort, they cruised back and forth along the coast, trying to poke their sharp noses through a break in the weather, but finding only rain, mist and growing darkness.

The Hudson cruised until her margin of fuel to return to the day's starting point was a bare minimum, and then was obliged to leave the fighters, which had no chance of getting back.

A Landing on the Beach
When their fuel was nearly done, the commander of the Kittyhawk party ordered his pilots down on the best country he could find, a curving beach that showed dimly through the murk. They dropped down out of the dark sky, made precautionary approaches, cut their throttles —and landed uninjured.

Plans made for the flights of remaining groups were pressed forward, and these flights went with clockwork precision. At brief intervals, as fast as fresh batches of Kittyhawks were delivered, parties were assembled, crews briefed, and aerial convoys sent off northward with a minimum of delay.

If departures were prosaic, arrivals for the most part were even more so. Succeeding groups of Kittyhawks, complete with escort and transports, simply dropped out of the sky, to land on the tropic strip that was their destination.

Pilots and ground crews trooped off to seek quarters, a meal and a shower. Yet within a couple of weeks a full fighter squadron, complete with reserve aircraft, sufficient tools and equipment to carry on until the bulk arrived, and enough trained ground personnel to keep the machines in fighting trim, came unobtrusively into the war zone, to take over the defence of an island vital to Allied strategy in the South Pacific area.

NEW ZEALAND HERALD, 23 JUNE 1943