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Post by Tonys18 on Jan 24, 2009 12:34:38 GMT 12
Yep that is correct about the gun. Also heard there is an avenger down there but it has no engine. You might know us my dad was freinds with you. Should catch up and go for a dig. Do you still have your stash of nice parts? Can I come look! You do live in hamilton still. Oh nearly the latest pic of the dump, well the only one I could really find.
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Moeggo
Flight Lieutenant
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Post by Moeggo on Jan 27, 2009 22:07:21 GMT 12
This very interesting! Would anyone close by be keen to show me around, if I make make trip up one weekend?
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kiwikid
Flight Lieutenant
Posts: 86
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Post by kiwikid on Jan 28, 2009 8:22:20 GMT 12
Amazing photos of the Rukahia boneyard 43willys. They would make an aircraft restorer go weak at the knees. Imagine if someone had just thought "these might be worth something one day. I'll just grab a couple of dozen and put them in the shed for 50 years". I think it was a US Govt requirement that they be broken up? It might be worth getting together a syndicate to put a tender in for a Skyhawk when all this sale nonsense blows over. They might be worth something one day. kiwikid
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Post by 43willys on Jan 28, 2009 18:53:33 GMT 12
I think it was not so much the US govt back in those days. but the price of buying one of these planes was far out of the reach of the average working man. Times have changed now and when the US govt says no sale, thats the end of it. just look at the armys 113 APC's. all but 14 went to scrap. no chance of anyone buying one.
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Post by corsair67 on Jan 28, 2009 19:09:17 GMT 12
A paddock full of Corsairs, Kittyhawks, Hudsons, Venturas and sheep - what more could a man want??? ;D
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 28, 2009 19:30:58 GMT 12
Those old photos of the aircraft dump are superb 43willys. Great photos but a sad sight to see.
I believe there actually was a clause in the Lend-Lease agreement that after the war if the NZ Government didn't either pay for the aeroplanes or give them back to the US Government they had to ensure the third option which was to destroy them. NZ didn't want them, the uSA didn't want them, and hence they had to be sold for scrap. The reason they lasted so long and were not all scrpped immediately, I was told by Derm Hurley who was Engineering Officer i/c the dump postwar, was because of the tax laws. The smelter could only smelt and sell a certain amount per year before a big jump in the tax bracket, so he kept under it and the planes sat round for 25 years or so, slowly whittling down.
Tony, you mention an Avenger. Very late in the piece, late 1960's or early 1970's. my late father built a mini-motorbike (from scratch, that's the kind of genius he was). Anyway to cast the wheels he went to the Asplins and they said they'd do the smelting and casting etc but in return he had to work for them for a bit, which he happily did. So on weekends and spare time he spent at their smelter tipping bits of Corsair into the melting pot - the same aircraft that as a kid he used to watch everyday when he lived across the raod from wartime Ardmore.
Anyway, at the end of his time there the boss, I assume Mr Asplin, apparently turned around to Dad and said, 'You've worked really well here and we've really appreciated your help. You see that Avenger there, if you want it, it's your's, as a thank you present." Dad took one look at the complete TBF Avenger sitting there and said to him, "What the hell would I do with that?? No thanks." Yes, he regretted it hugely later. I would wager that if there is an Avenger buried there, it's the one offered to Dad. From memory Dad said the boss had said he'd tried to get rid of it several times and no-one wanted it.
I am still amazed that Dad didn't hook it on behind the Holden and tow it home. He used to bring home and hoarde all sorts of useless junk but when offered a genuine warbird he turned it down! He only told me this just before he died, while he was in hospital. I think he didn't have the heart to tell me before that, knowing my passion for the old aircraft. ;D
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Post by Tonys18 on Jan 28, 2009 20:16:31 GMT 12
Thats neat and sad at the same time. Man I was born in the wrong time. Well there is a chance, but I dont know if it will still look as good as it was before
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Post by 43willys on Jan 28, 2009 20:49:02 GMT 12
Here is Possibly the worst photocopy i have but it is the Avenger sitting at Rukuhia.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 28, 2009 21:56:03 GMT 12
Crikey, no wonder Dad told him to keep it. ;D
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Post by 43willys on Jan 31, 2009 13:01:57 GMT 12
And at the end of the day this is how these magnificent planes left Rukuhia.
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Post by Tonys18 on Jan 31, 2009 23:20:09 GMT 12
Anyone still building that time machine
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Post by fletcherfu24 on Feb 1, 2009 9:11:16 GMT 12
Truck load of Skyhawks next?.....
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Post by paddy on Feb 2, 2009 7:06:22 GMT 12
Truck load of Skyhawks next?..... Please please don't say that
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Post by 30sqnatc on Feb 2, 2009 17:16:54 GMT 12
Truck load of ali and a very big recycling bin outside the airbase full of white plastic rapping.
Paul
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Post by Tonys18 on Feb 11, 2009 11:07:27 GMT 12
I hope they dont get rid of the Skyhawks, its our only defence left! Anyway they are still good I hope maybe a dent here and there, some paint missing in spots its still good. Do we still have pilots for the planes? Should let em flew em again.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Feb 11, 2009 19:13:41 GMT 12
Tony, the Skyhawks are no longer in service and are unflyable. Most of the A-4 pilots transferred to the RAF and RAAF. They are not capable of defending NZ and won't be seen in our skies again.
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Post by Tonys18 on Feb 12, 2009 8:42:43 GMT 12
Bugger I liked those planes!
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ronb
Sergeant
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Post by ronb on Jun 10, 2009 20:48:09 GMT 12
Well,growing up in TeKuiti and having relations all over NZ meant that the family was forever out driving on the weekend and Asplins was always on the lookout for me. I would pester the old man to stop off so we could buy petrol there and I could spend time in the 'show room looking at the aircraft parts EVERYWHERE. They had a Corsair out front for decades on display and that was sold to a collector in the USA. In the early 70's I was flatting with a mate in Drury who was mad keen warbird fanatic and he showed me a photo of the corsair in the US,looking really sad at an airfeild . Dad lived in Papatoe during WW2 so he knew where the American camps were intimately (a good place to hang out when looking for chocolate apparently,though I suspect cigarettes were more likely).My Flatmate in the 1970's also lived in Puhinui and said that in the 1960's aircraft and vehicle parts could be found laying on the ground beside the railway tracks. I guess the whole area is built on now but in the 70's it was still paddocks. The discovery of aircraft under the soil when building the motorway showed that more than one place was used as dump.
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ronb
Sergeant
Posts: 11
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Post by ronb on Jun 10, 2009 21:00:31 GMT 12
Just thought I'd add something else too,In the Waikato times in the 1960's they published an article about Asplins and the tax regime they worked under. There was a photo of mr Asplin standing next to the melting pot with an aircraft wing sticking out.Something for the historians to look for I suppose. In the post war years Dad was saying,that driving past Rukuhia,there were melting pots going on the side of the road,RIGHT on the Edge of the road!.As he drove past he would often see whole wings sliding down into the pots .No EPA or global warming then apparently. Dad was telling me a while ago that they used to sneak into Rukuhia and get into the planes looking for rubber dinghys.. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D The radios were only things missing when he was doing his 'liberating' ,everything else was still there and he remembers them flying in after the war. What was also worth grabbing were belly tanks,which they would cut open to make a canoe.. ;D ;D
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Post by thebrads on Jun 12, 2009 23:20:50 GMT 12
Thought I would register so I could share my experience. As a teenager about 10 or 15 years ago myself and a likeminded friend went "hunting" for some treasures, and Powerbeat's premises (as it was then) seemed a likely spot. Luckily, we happened to run into Powerbeat's gardener, who confirmed we were in the right place. I asked him if he had come across any parts, and the response was "every bl**dy time he mowed the lawn he had to resharpen the bl**dy mower blades", and that anything he found he threw over the back fence, down into the gully. He said we could go down for a look if we wanted, and (the best part?) we could have anything we found. So we clambered down, and really without looking, found treasures, far too many to take away. Loaded a few small momentos into the car, and thus to this day in the shed sits what i think is a prop shaft, several valves and other small bits, and presumably an allison crankshaft. Always wondered what the Powerbeat staff must have thought of seeing two teenage boys emerging from the bush, struggling with huge chunks of metal... Just this week i drove past for the fieldays, it appeared that shotcrete or something similar has been applied over large areas of the bank, right where we found the stuff. Who knows what they covered up. (sorry, bits are down country, so no pictures).
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