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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 16, 2008 21:20:17 GMT 12
On Monday I had the great pleasure of interviewing two surviving memebrs of a No. 3 Squadron RNZAF Hudson crew. Amazingly there are four members still alive from the crew, but just two were able to make it along on Monday.
Anyway, they flew in a Hudson at Guadalcanal that was painted with the nose art name of "Tutae Wera", which is Maori and literally means "Shit Hot".
At some stage during their tour there, the famous New Zealand Herald newspaper cartoonist Gordon Minhinnick visited the squadron for some sort of tour. I don't know why he was there but assume it may have been some newspaper-sponsored public relations tour. Does anyone know more?
He apparently at the time had a famous logo that he used in some of his political cartoons that was Maori tikis, and he called them the 'Maori Majority'. This was a reference to the fact that Labour had won their election only by scraping in with the help of a few Maori seats. That's what these chaps told me anyway.
They said that when Minhinnick saw their plane had a Maori nickname he then painted his tiki symbol underneath the name. The photo they have of the plane was taken before this occurred. But they think he painted artwork on other Hudsons while he was there too.
Does anyone know anything more about this? Is there an archive of Minhinnick's life and works somehwere that may possibly ahve details or photos from his Pacific tour in 1942-3?
I'd love to learn more if I can.
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