Post by Dave Homewood on Dec 12, 2007 11:50:18 GMT 12
This article covers both military and civil flying, but I'll place it into this board. From:
www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/dailynews/4319223a6551.html
King of the sky
VICKI PRICE - Taranaki | Tuesday, 11 December 2007
Miles King sat in his Corsair NZ5370 aeroplane over the sea near the coast of Bougainville and watched as the prop blades stopped turning in front of him. The 21-year-old left his squadron mates while his plane, hit by enemy fire, coasted, in trouble, down to the water.
It was near the end of World War II and King was hoping the plane would hit the waves gently and not flip, as often happened with the Corsairs, killing their pilots instantly. But he was lucky as the plane came down on the down slope of the swell.
King clambered out of the cockpit and dived into the water. As he dived, he noticed he wasn't returning to the surface and the water was getting darker rather than lighter.
He soon realised he still had his parachute and jungle survival pack on which he rapidly detached.
Gasping for air at the surface, King had to dive down again and find his pack as it drifted to the depths to detach the dinghy.
As he raised his head above water this time, he saw the tail of the aircraft disappear below the surface.
King grappled with the corroded pin that was meant to release oxygen from a bottle into the dinghy, but to no avail.
An aircraft overhead dropped another dinghy that broke upon landing on the water and King had no choice but to swim for the shore, some 10km away.
In the one metre swells, he occasionally saw a glimpse of the shore as a green line on the horizon.
"With no choice left, I commenced swimming alternately overarm and then, tiring, floating on my back kicking," he wrote in a book about his adventures later.
It was the stuff of nightmares. "Suddenly an ominous fin was sliding around me perhaps six metres away. Then another and another, and finally five were around me." King pulled his shark repellent cord and after two more passes, the sharks slipped away.
Four or five hours later, he reached the five metre surf swell that lifted him up, dumped his tired body on the beach and dragged him back out before dumping him again.
As he crawled on hands and knees, he wondered if he was in enemy territory and drew his revolver while still struggling with the strong sucking action of the surf. A man came running out of the jungle, wearing an Australian hat and dragged King out of the relentless surf, sitting him down to rest and lighting him a cigarette.
The Australian soldiers had attempted to launch their boats to come to his rescue, but the strong surf had wrecked them both.
Dry clothes and a large whiskey later, King was safe only one mile from the enemy line. Years later he was to bump into this same Australian quite by coincidence, while trying to sell him a plane. This adventure was to mark the style of life of this grandson of Newton King, pioneer and businessman of Taranaki.
King's father Eliot had been an airman too, serving as personal pilot to T.E. Lawrence Lawrence of Arabia during World War I. After a war of his own aeroplane mishaps, he returned to New Plymouth, where he sited and laid out the old Bell Block airfield. King also returned to New Plymouth after his war had ended, to ordinary life and work at his grandfather's vast company.
One day, while standing waist deep in the snow-fed freezing waters of the Stony River, installing a ram pump, King saw a plane circling the top of the mountain.
"I looked up and thought, `this is no place for me'."
A visit by the Director of the Department of Civil aviation in 1949 was to change the course of King's life and bring back the excitement he had experienced as an underage pilot in the war. The previous year the RNZAF had carried out trials, sowing superphosphate from the air and it was suggested that King could make use of his flying experience and his association with Newton King Ltd to help get this industry off the ground.
King investigated and set out to spread the fertiliser by hand as was currently the practice on hill country farms.
For two days he clambered around the highest hills of the company's farm and, shouldering the 180lb bags, he spread the superphosphate by hand. "Those two days nearly killed me, and I retired to bed for another two days."
King realised there was indeed a real need for aerial topdressing and he approached the board of Newton King Ltd with the idea to add to the services the company provided to farmers. But they turned him down. Apart from his father, Eliot, the other members had never flown and couldn't see the potential.
So King was on his own. His determination to return to the soil that which man had taken became a burning ambition - so much so that he left the family firm and went out on his own. He needed 3700 to get started, which would buy two Tiger Moths and a loading vehicle. His father said bluntly, "Here is my cheque for 200 - you go get the rest."
It wasn't easy getting the rest of the money together, as there wasn't a lot around in those days and not many people believed in his idea, but he managed it within a week.
From a pile of 50 and 100 notes, the cutting edge company Rural Aviation Ltd was formed.
Then started some of the earliest aerial topdressing in the country. "The aviation was exciting, it was all exuberant," remembers King's sister Adrienne from her New Plymouth home. "They'd get carried away by how many tonnes they had put on today. We're talking about young men who went from school, to war and they were in there not knowing whether they'd be dead tomorrow, and they lived on the edge. And they'd go fast."
In these exciting, pioneering days, the company practised its manoeuvres and refined the machinery required for the job, as there was no readily available machinery to buy, it simply hadn't been done before. They based themselves at their first customers farm, that of Nukuhakare, 10,000 acres owned by Newton King Ltd.
Here the dust flew as the Tiger Moths repeatedly took off and landed at the grassed airstrip. There was little room for error as the pilots flew with overloaded planes, travelling as low as possible along steep hillsides, all the while striving for fast turnaround times.
King's business grew to be the largest general aviation organisation in the Southern Hemisphere. It was instrumental in dramatically increasing the output of the tough hill country farms.
Competition between rival topdressing companies drove those involved, in flying, loading and organising, to constantly strive for better output and increased customers. Rural Aviation Ltd was soon servicing North Taranaki, Rangitikei and the Wanganui District.
For the fledgling company, the added pressure to perform was to prove the validity of their beliefs as a completely new industry.
Each load of fertiliser that was dumped was equal to a day's work for the pack horses and hand spreaders they were to replace.
This led to great excitement and enthusiasm by previously doubting farmers to create air strips and hire these new heroes of the air.
Fertiliser, in King's, eyes led to an accident as his plane came down to land, wiping out fence posts as it went and ending up in a drain. The three men then involved put in eighteen hour days back in the hangar, repairing their only plane.
King remarks in his book: "Twenty-three days after the accident we were back on the airstrip again, wiser and working. glorying in the freedom of flight, dedicated to and loving our choice of profession, knowing that we were contributing. Ecstasy, total ecstasy."
References:
1. The Sky My Canvas, by Miles King
2. Untitled work by Adrienne Tatham (currently being published)
www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/dailynews/4319223a6551.html
King of the sky
VICKI PRICE - Taranaki | Tuesday, 11 December 2007
Miles King sat in his Corsair NZ5370 aeroplane over the sea near the coast of Bougainville and watched as the prop blades stopped turning in front of him. The 21-year-old left his squadron mates while his plane, hit by enemy fire, coasted, in trouble, down to the water.
It was near the end of World War II and King was hoping the plane would hit the waves gently and not flip, as often happened with the Corsairs, killing their pilots instantly. But he was lucky as the plane came down on the down slope of the swell.
King clambered out of the cockpit and dived into the water. As he dived, he noticed he wasn't returning to the surface and the water was getting darker rather than lighter.
He soon realised he still had his parachute and jungle survival pack on which he rapidly detached.
Gasping for air at the surface, King had to dive down again and find his pack as it drifted to the depths to detach the dinghy.
As he raised his head above water this time, he saw the tail of the aircraft disappear below the surface.
King grappled with the corroded pin that was meant to release oxygen from a bottle into the dinghy, but to no avail.
An aircraft overhead dropped another dinghy that broke upon landing on the water and King had no choice but to swim for the shore, some 10km away.
In the one metre swells, he occasionally saw a glimpse of the shore as a green line on the horizon.
"With no choice left, I commenced swimming alternately overarm and then, tiring, floating on my back kicking," he wrote in a book about his adventures later.
It was the stuff of nightmares. "Suddenly an ominous fin was sliding around me perhaps six metres away. Then another and another, and finally five were around me." King pulled his shark repellent cord and after two more passes, the sharks slipped away.
Four or five hours later, he reached the five metre surf swell that lifted him up, dumped his tired body on the beach and dragged him back out before dumping him again.
As he crawled on hands and knees, he wondered if he was in enemy territory and drew his revolver while still struggling with the strong sucking action of the surf. A man came running out of the jungle, wearing an Australian hat and dragged King out of the relentless surf, sitting him down to rest and lighting him a cigarette.
The Australian soldiers had attempted to launch their boats to come to his rescue, but the strong surf had wrecked them both.
Dry clothes and a large whiskey later, King was safe only one mile from the enemy line. Years later he was to bump into this same Australian quite by coincidence, while trying to sell him a plane. This adventure was to mark the style of life of this grandson of Newton King, pioneer and businessman of Taranaki.
King's father Eliot had been an airman too, serving as personal pilot to T.E. Lawrence Lawrence of Arabia during World War I. After a war of his own aeroplane mishaps, he returned to New Plymouth, where he sited and laid out the old Bell Block airfield. King also returned to New Plymouth after his war had ended, to ordinary life and work at his grandfather's vast company.
One day, while standing waist deep in the snow-fed freezing waters of the Stony River, installing a ram pump, King saw a plane circling the top of the mountain.
"I looked up and thought, `this is no place for me'."
A visit by the Director of the Department of Civil aviation in 1949 was to change the course of King's life and bring back the excitement he had experienced as an underage pilot in the war. The previous year the RNZAF had carried out trials, sowing superphosphate from the air and it was suggested that King could make use of his flying experience and his association with Newton King Ltd to help get this industry off the ground.
King investigated and set out to spread the fertiliser by hand as was currently the practice on hill country farms.
For two days he clambered around the highest hills of the company's farm and, shouldering the 180lb bags, he spread the superphosphate by hand. "Those two days nearly killed me, and I retired to bed for another two days."
King realised there was indeed a real need for aerial topdressing and he approached the board of Newton King Ltd with the idea to add to the services the company provided to farmers. But they turned him down. Apart from his father, Eliot, the other members had never flown and couldn't see the potential.
So King was on his own. His determination to return to the soil that which man had taken became a burning ambition - so much so that he left the family firm and went out on his own. He needed 3700 to get started, which would buy two Tiger Moths and a loading vehicle. His father said bluntly, "Here is my cheque for 200 - you go get the rest."
It wasn't easy getting the rest of the money together, as there wasn't a lot around in those days and not many people believed in his idea, but he managed it within a week.
From a pile of 50 and 100 notes, the cutting edge company Rural Aviation Ltd was formed.
Then started some of the earliest aerial topdressing in the country. "The aviation was exciting, it was all exuberant," remembers King's sister Adrienne from her New Plymouth home. "They'd get carried away by how many tonnes they had put on today. We're talking about young men who went from school, to war and they were in there not knowing whether they'd be dead tomorrow, and they lived on the edge. And they'd go fast."
In these exciting, pioneering days, the company practised its manoeuvres and refined the machinery required for the job, as there was no readily available machinery to buy, it simply hadn't been done before. They based themselves at their first customers farm, that of Nukuhakare, 10,000 acres owned by Newton King Ltd.
Here the dust flew as the Tiger Moths repeatedly took off and landed at the grassed airstrip. There was little room for error as the pilots flew with overloaded planes, travelling as low as possible along steep hillsides, all the while striving for fast turnaround times.
King's business grew to be the largest general aviation organisation in the Southern Hemisphere. It was instrumental in dramatically increasing the output of the tough hill country farms.
Competition between rival topdressing companies drove those involved, in flying, loading and organising, to constantly strive for better output and increased customers. Rural Aviation Ltd was soon servicing North Taranaki, Rangitikei and the Wanganui District.
For the fledgling company, the added pressure to perform was to prove the validity of their beliefs as a completely new industry.
Each load of fertiliser that was dumped was equal to a day's work for the pack horses and hand spreaders they were to replace.
This led to great excitement and enthusiasm by previously doubting farmers to create air strips and hire these new heroes of the air.
Fertiliser, in King's, eyes led to an accident as his plane came down to land, wiping out fence posts as it went and ending up in a drain. The three men then involved put in eighteen hour days back in the hangar, repairing their only plane.
King remarks in his book: "Twenty-three days after the accident we were back on the airstrip again, wiser and working. glorying in the freedom of flight, dedicated to and loving our choice of profession, knowing that we were contributing. Ecstasy, total ecstasy."
References:
1. The Sky My Canvas, by Miles King
2. Untitled work by Adrienne Tatham (currently being published)
