Fairey Gordon

[kiwi]

Apparently a restoration was started on the only substancial remains of a Fairey Gordon (NZ609) left in world , here in NZ , in 2005 . Is there any news on this project ?

[Dave Homewood]

Nope.

[raymond]

From the ADF Serials site

The aircraft was recovered from the crash site by a team led by Bunny Darby in 1976. It was registered as ZK-TLA in 1988 but has since been stored awaiting restoration and the civil registration has been cancelled. In April 2004 it was reported that the restoration of the aircraft had started.

[shamus]

No. No restoration has begun on the Gordon since it was recovered.

[agalbraith]

Last I heard she was roumered to be sitting in a container at Ardmore???

Anyone know more?

[ZacYates]

I recently inherited a huge stack of Aeroplane Monthly mags from WONZer Marcus a little while back and found this relevant news story from the October 1988 issue:
Aeroplane Monthly October 1988 by Zac Yates, on Flickr

And while looking for info on Gordon NZ629 today I found the ADF Serials April 2004 newsletter (link), which features this article by Charles Darby:

Fairey Gordon Mk I NZ629
This aircraft is the last remaining Gordon and apparently also the last survivor anywhere of the large army-co-operation light bombers which served in the European and North American armed forces of the 1920s and 1930s. The closest surviving aircraft that approaches the Gordon in terms of size and time-frame appears to be the Blackburn Ripon in the Finnish Air Force Museum.

Design of the Gordon stemmed from the mostly-wood Fairey IIIC and IIID which saw widespread service in World War I, with further developments in the 1920s leading to the mostly-metal Fairey IIIF for the Fleet Air Arm. By 1930, further development of the IIIF relating mainly to replacement of the Napier Lion broad-arrow engine with a 14-cylinder two-row radial Armstrong Siddeley Panther IIA led to the Gordon, which entered RAF service in 1931. By this time, the specification required that all wood be removed from the aircraft, great attention was to be paid to standardizing airframe parts such as ribs and spars, and also to making the big aircraft simple to construct, easy to maintain and repair and, with its simple wing-fold mechanism, economical of hangar space despite its 45”9’ wing span and 14”2’ height.

RAF Service of NZ629
Its Fairey constructors number is believed to be F.1813 and its RAF serial number is believed to be K2759. If correct, it was built at Hayes, Middlesex, (near the present London/Heathrow airport) under Contract #166235/32, and was delivered to RAF Station Henlow on 15 December 1932.
The first recorded operational assignment for K2759 was to 2 Bomber Group in East Anglia where it joined A Flight of 35 Squadron at Bircham Newton, Norfolk, on 19 September 1935. Presumably it was new equipment supplied just before the squadron was assigned to the Middle East Air Force at El Damer, Sudan, on the 23rd September. The detachment did not last long, and on 1 December 1936 the squadron was reassigned back to the UK, this time to Worthy Down in Hampshire.

In mid-1937 the squadron re-equipped with Vickers Wellesleys, hence on 8 October K2759 went to 4 Aircraft Servicing Unit for overhaul and storage, emerging again on 25 June 1938 with re-assignment to 1 Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit. This service did not last long either, and on 1 October it went to 24 Maintenance Unit for another period of servicing and storage. In 1939 it was allocated to the RNZAF, and on 6 September it went to 36 Maintenance Unit for and shipment.

RNZAF Service of NZ629
In New Zealand, the Gordon with serial number NZ629 was allocated to 1 Service Flying Training School at Wigram, Canterbury, along with most of the other RNZAF Gordons. The standard RAF 1930s colour scheme of silver with black decking had by this time been changed to camouflage: light green/light earth upper surfaces of the lower wings, dark green/dark earth on all other upper surfaces, and yellow lower surfaces.

On 12 April 1940 NZ629 was taken on a war-load climb to 15,000 feet exercise by two trainee pilots, LAC Walter G. Raphael (pilot) with LAC Wilfred T. Everist in the rear cockpit. As described in a letter from Wally Raphael, they got disoriented in cloud (possibly as a result of anoxia), entered a spin, and attempted to bale out. With interfering hands and feet removed from the controls the old Gordon recovered itself from the spin so they sat down again, but almost immediately saw the ground as they mushed into trees near the snowline on a ridge on Mt White.

It was lucky they hit where they did. A few feet higher and they would have cleared the ridge, but would almost surely have flown into a cliff-faced mountainside which extended to a higher altitude on the other side of the valley. Both survived the crash with minor injuries even though they were not strapped-in because the aircraft “tripped-up” on trees on top of the ridge and flipped backwards down the far side, with the deceleration load forcing them back into their seats rather than forward into hard structures! They climbed out and made their way down through the very steep, snowy beech forest to a shearer’s hut from which they were rescued several days later by an RNZAF search party.

Recovery - 1976
Little historical information on the RNZAF Gordons remains --- official records were removed before the mid-1950s by someone who cut the relevant pages out of the RNZAF’s master record book. I set out to find the aircraft after noticing entries in the logbooks of trainee pilots from 1 Service Flying Training School recording time spent on search for missing aircraft NZ629. Eventually I contacted John Claydon who, as a Leading Aircraftsman in 1940, had been detailed to take two helpers and go camp in the snow at the crash site, recover the instruments and guns, dismantle the engine, and carry it out on their backs for use as spare parts! John, who reached the rank of Wing Commander and retired in the late 1960s, confirmed that the rest of the aircraft would still be at the crash site as it was in a remote part of the Southern Alps.

After obtaining rights from the NZ Government to retain the Gordon if I could salvage it, and with the support of the landowner who, although he had never been to the crash site, allowed us to access his property and use a musterer’s hut as our base, I went off with a couple of friends to search for the aircraft. We spent three days searching the very steep slopes of Mt White, and were surprised that we could not find the aircraft as the beech forest is very open and it is easy to see long distances. Eventually we ran out of time, but returned a few weeks later for another look. Still no luck after a couple of days, so we decided to walk up a ridge-top deer track to have lunch and enjoy the view from the alpine grasslands. Just before we left the tree line I noticed a tiny piece of alloy on the track, looked up and recognised the crash track the aircraft had carved through the treetops, and there at the end of the track was the Gordon, still mostly hanging up in the trees. We had got to within 50 metres of the aircraft on our first pass on the first day, but assumed that since the aircraft was flying west to east it would be on the western side of the ridge so did not search the eastern slopes where it had actually come to rest.

A few months later a friendly helicopter company, Helicopters NZ Ltd, agreed to drop us off on the mountain to prepare the crash site for lifting out the Gordon, which they had graciously undertaken to do free of charge with their heavy-lift Lama helicopter in return for a favour of some years earlier. However, we were astonished to see that the site was already cleared of trees and that the Gordon appeared ready to lift out! Pilot Russell Gutschlag, almost as enthusiastic as us about the challenge presented by recovering the old bomber, dropped us on a rock protruding from the trees about half a mile from the site, told us to get things ready while he waited down in the valley, and said he would come back up in a couple of hours and try a lift!

In the course of bundling-up the Gordon we discovered that it has a built-in 4-point lifting cable assembly in the wing upper centre section . . . perfect for lift-out. The Lama duly returned and hooked onto this cable, but a large tree stump was caught in the remains of the engine mount tubes and added so much weight that the load started dragging down into the trees and taking the helicopter with it. (There was no ground effect to help the lift, as the rotor downwash simply flowed away down the very steep slope). Back to square one, but when the chopper came back an hour later everything worked well and the Gordon was carried off to a paddock beside the nearest vehicle track. One more trip to pack-out small parts, then back for us and the initial recovery was complete. Our planned multi-trip mission had been completed in one day.

Shifting the large aircraft on a trailer first to Blenheim using a rental Holden car was relatively easy. The trip across Cook Strait to the North Island and up to Auckland behind my 1970 Fairlane was another story, not least because of tyre blowouts on the trailer caused, as we discovered after the fifth blowout, because the trailer had broken chassis rails that dug into and destroyed tyres at random depending on the angle assumed by the trailer as it negotiated the sharp and thus steeply-cambered bends in the road. We also got stopped and weighed by a traffic cop who said he wished to check if the rig was overweight. He weighed the load on each wheel independently, added up the numbers - and got the addition wrong by over a ton in our favour. A deliberate error, we feel sure, as he agreed that the load was safe, secure, and well-lit - and very interesting.

Restoration
There is virtually no corrosion on the aircraft except in areas of impact damage which have to be replaced anyhow. The wing, tail and control surface spars and ribs, interplane struts and landing gear legs are all damaged, but most of the innumerable fittings throughout the aircraft appear to be recoverable. Some of the steel tubes in the front two bays of the fuselage require replacement but most of the stainless steel spool joints should be serviceable or repairable. From the front cockpit back to the stern-post the basic structure is intact except for one tube, and most of the equipment in both cockpits is still fitted and functional. Even some of the black leather covering the pilot’s seat and the padded front cockpit rim can be used again!

The philosophy of restoration is: original parts wherever they can be used safely; original patterns and original material specifications where replacement is necessary. The objective is to rebuild a damaged Gordon not to create a look-alike replica of modern materials. Acquisition of systems components is fairly well advanced, with most of the instruments, gunnery and bombing equipment, and the old R.1082/T.1083 radios ready for servicing.

The major remaining unknown is the engine.

Historical support
After the aircraft was recovered, several people connected with its early history were located and have proven most supportive and interested in the lengthy process of returning it to airworthy condition. Among those most closely involved with 629’s early life is the pilot Wally Raphael who, although the official records show he did damage government property back in 1940, was ultimately proven to be responsible for the survival of an extremely historic and now-unique piece of history. The rear cockpit crewman, Wilf Everist, was shot down flying a fighter over France and did not survive the war.

Other key people include Peter Gardiner, K2759’s own Engine Fitter on 35 Squadron, and Fred Adkin, the engineer officer of A Flight (both of whom resided near Liverpool at the time of the aircraft’s recovery); 35’s gunnery officer Sqn Ldr R. J. N. MacLachlan, who sadly died of cancer just after his old aircraft was recovered, and Eric Hamerston who flew the aircraft in the Sudan although he was not its regular assigned pilot.

[ZacYates]

The aircraft is for sale and showcased in a six-page spread in the March 2023 issue of Aeroplane Monthly. The story is also online here but is behind a paywall.

The fuselage is covered and looks amazing. What an achievement.

[johnnyfalcon]

Wow! What a fantastic effort.

www.key.aero/article/revealed-barn-find-restoration-sole-surviving-fairey-gordon

[Dave Homewood]

I do not see anything at that link.

[ZacYates]

Feb 11, 2023 14:31:18 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

I do not see anything at that link.

Unfortunately as I mentioned it's behind the Key Premium paywall, but the six-page article is in the March 2023 issue of Aeroplane Monthly.

[johnnyfalcon]

Feb 11, 2023 14:31:18 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

I do not see anything at that link.

Dave, try the link I posted. It takes you to the article via Key Aero Forum

[Dave Homewood]

I did. It still did not work for me. But I have now found it.