Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 16, 2017 9:52:58 GMT 12
I was just chatting with Bryan Cox and he told me that while on leave after his wings course he was bored at home in Te Rapa so hitched a ride from Rukuhia to Hobsonville in an Oxford. The pilot of that aircraft was Jack Day and he was heading there to test fly the first Corsair assembled in NZ. So Bryan got to watch the test flight and said it was very fast in the Hobsonville circuit and really impressive but he was surprised how much it backfired while taxiing, something he never experienced later when he flew them himself.
Anyway, he then hitched a ride across to Whenuapai and he said there was a B-25 parked on the apron. So he wandered up to it for a close look, and noticed the door was open so he climbed in and went up to look at the cockpit and sat down in the right hand seat. He noted charts on the floor and it looked like people had been walking all over them. The pilot entered the aircraft and came and sat in the left hand seat, and told Bryan they were heading our later to New Caledonia so he was going to run the engines. So he started the engines up and was running them, and when he checked the magnetos - as he switched off the starboard engine Bryan was watching out his window and noted the engine was shaking all over the place as if it was not firing on all the cylinders. He looked back at the pilot who was watching the engine gauges, and he was furiously tapping his leather-gloved finger on the gauge trying to get it to read as it should rather than the massive drop in power that it was reading. However Bryan said the gauge was fine, it was the engine that had the problem. Anyway he left the aircraft and he hitched a plane to Christchurch.
He said he always wondered how that aircraft fared, did it make it to New Caledonia with that duff engine? Did they repair it first? Anyway 20 years later in 1964 when he was controller at Ardmore he said he met a chap who'd been an ATC cadet during the war and he told Bryan that he'd witnessed the B-25 take off, lose power and come down in a paddock only a mile or so from the end of he runway. Apparently the story went that it was not badly damaged and the crew survived but when people got to the aircraft the crew were swigging whisky.
Bryan has never been able to confirm this story and I have never heard of a B-25 crashing or making an emergency landing at Whenuapai in 1944 either. Has anyone else ever heard this story?
Anyway, he then hitched a ride across to Whenuapai and he said there was a B-25 parked on the apron. So he wandered up to it for a close look, and noticed the door was open so he climbed in and went up to look at the cockpit and sat down in the right hand seat. He noted charts on the floor and it looked like people had been walking all over them. The pilot entered the aircraft and came and sat in the left hand seat, and told Bryan they were heading our later to New Caledonia so he was going to run the engines. So he started the engines up and was running them, and when he checked the magnetos - as he switched off the starboard engine Bryan was watching out his window and noted the engine was shaking all over the place as if it was not firing on all the cylinders. He looked back at the pilot who was watching the engine gauges, and he was furiously tapping his leather-gloved finger on the gauge trying to get it to read as it should rather than the massive drop in power that it was reading. However Bryan said the gauge was fine, it was the engine that had the problem. Anyway he left the aircraft and he hitched a plane to Christchurch.
He said he always wondered how that aircraft fared, did it make it to New Caledonia with that duff engine? Did they repair it first? Anyway 20 years later in 1964 when he was controller at Ardmore he said he met a chap who'd been an ATC cadet during the war and he told Bryan that he'd witnessed the B-25 take off, lose power and come down in a paddock only a mile or so from the end of he runway. Apparently the story went that it was not badly damaged and the crew survived but when people got to the aircraft the crew were swigging whisky.
Bryan has never been able to confirm this story and I have never heard of a B-25 crashing or making an emergency landing at Whenuapai in 1944 either. Has anyone else ever heard this story?
