Civil Aviation in New Zealand by David Rendel

[Dave Homewood]

I have just got a copy of this book, published in 1975.

On just a casual flick through I found a couple of mistakes in the photos captions, and wonder just how accurate this book is. Was it rated highly or lowly by the enthusiast community over the years?

One of the points I noted was on page 101 it shows an aerial photo of Rongotai and states it was 'in the 1950's'. I'm sure it cannot be in that decade as the once beautiful Centennial Buildings are clearly seen, and yet these were burned to the ground in 1946. On looking into how this happened it seems it was actaully quite sinister for the time - a dramatic arson/suicide by an RNZAF guard there who was in trouble over RNZAF mess funds. Such a pity he took that amazing architecture and historic building with him.

Another galring error in this book was on page 34 a photo credited in the caption as being a Moth on approach to Rongotai. Almost anyone would recognise this as not being a Moth. It's in fact a Waco. If the writer had trouble with identifying Moth's, I wonder how much more he got wrong?

It does have some lovely photos though, many i hadn't seen before.

I'm interested to hear other people's opinion of the book.

[Peter Lewis]

This book was and is unreliable crap by an uninformed author. The only accurate parts of the book were cribbed from other sources.

[Bruce]

The best thing about the book are the awesome photos, but as you say, it is wise to ignore the captions. Generally I thought the text was somewhat light on substance, with lots of statistics to pad it out, much of which appears to come form the annual reports of the various companies. In the airfield section, along with the caption error on the Rongotai photo are photos of several other airfields, all of which seem quite interesting, however nothing in the body of the text links up with them. Likewise there is a great photo of the Everson Evo III homebuilt where it mentions it was flown from an airstrip alongside the Waikato river, but no information whatsoever as to where - even roughly!
Ignore the text, enjoy the pictures.....

[corsair67]

I bought a copy in Dorkland in April (I think it cost me $15) and it was the photos that caught my eye too.

One day I'll get learned on reading! ;D

(Off topic - The book I really want to find is Peter Anderson's excellent "Mustangs of the RAAF and RNZAF" which came out in the early-70s.)