Attrition Airframes

[Dave Homewood]

A few questions about Attrition Airframes of the RNZAF. These are aircraft bought or taken from service to go straight to storage, to be used in the event of having to replace an in-service example.

Apparently five Airtrainers were purchased in 1977 as attrition aircraft. The five were basic airframes without all the fittings and between them only one engine to be used to flight test all five.

I do not recall seeing any attrition Airtrainers in my time stored at Wigram in 1991-93, and so were these five all eventually placed into service with the rest of the fleet? Or were they simply kitted out with engines and remained unused?

Attrition airframes I do recall were:
- Harvard NZ1009 (RNZAF Historic Flight Spare)
- Harvard NZ1083 (RNZAF Historic Flight Spare)
- One of the Andovers of No. 42 Squadron remained unused when I was based at Whenuapai (1989-90) as a spare, this may have been attrition storage or perhaps just caused by reduced hours?
- I also know that the basic shell of Iroquois NZ3815 was purchased from Bell to be fitted out from RNZAF stores and replace the destroyed NZ3810. So in a way that's an attritional replacement

What other RNZAF types ahve had aircraft purchased purely so they could be stored for future usage? Any?

[corsair67]

I've never really understood the whole deal with the attrition Airtrainers, because I think they were in full service not too long after being purchased.

As to the Andovers, weren't a number of them placed into 'mothballs' at various times during their careers? I seem to recall that for a period during the 1980s at least four of them were withdrawn from service for a year or more?

[Calum]

when I was on 42 sqn in 1987 there was at least 1 aircraft (26 IIRC) that was "in mothballs"

[Dave Homewood]

Several different types were withdrawn from use and mothballed at different times, largely in the 1970's, simply due to budget problems and the oil crisis. These included Freighters, Iroquois and Sioux.

One Andover was definately kept in mothballs all the time, as attrition I think. Of course usually two others were out of service at any time too, one for Check Two at SAFE Air, and the other for major servicing at No. 1 RD.

But I've just read in Aircraft of the RNZAF (Duxbury et al) that with the arrival of the Boeing 727's and increased tactical flying of the Hercules fleet, three Andovers were decalred surplus and removed from service. They considered leasing them out to civil operators (novel idea) but the cost of converting them was too much. When that book was published in 1987 the three were still mothballed. Maybe two went back into service soon after as Calum's and my memory both tally one laid up. By 1989/90 when I was on base there were Andovers over at Tehrain, in Iran on UN duty so that probably accounts for reactivation.

I know later, approx late 1992 or early 1993, the budget crisis the RNZAF was suffering saw hours cut and three or four Andovers were again removed from service and mothballed. I think they later went into UN service.

[skyhawkdon]

The CT-4B attrition frames were all rotated into the active fleet over the years. Usually as one active aircraft came due for a major servicing it was placed into storage and replaced by one of the attrition frames. By the time I worked at PTS at Ohakea in 1995/96 the airframe hours of all the Airtrainers were pretty similar so they had all been in and out of storage at some stage. When I started at PTS there were three airframes in storage. Gradually these were all brought back into service due to an increasing demand for aircraft due to larger pilot courses and the Macchi being stopped from being used for the advanced phase of the Wings course. By the end in 1996 (when everything was commercialised) I think we had all 18 (?) airframes in service. I remember one Wise Owl we did back at Wigram in 1996 and we took 13 aircraft with us - quite an impressive line up from memory!

[Dave Homewood]

Thanks Don.

18 total would be correct - 19 were purchased but NZ1934 was destroyed in the mountain crash. NZ1940 was also badly crashed but was rebuilt as the CT-4C which flew in 1991 to test the turbo engine theories, then returned to the RNZAf as a CT-4B in about 1992.

I recall the day that 12 of the Airtrainers got together and flew in formation - sad, it was when they left Wigram for good. I don't know when the other sixe left, but I think maybe the same day in a seperate formation as I have a photo of six together ion the air in the same set as this: (does anyone recall the date? I think it was around July 1993 I took this)