WONZ 176 – Classic Flyers WONZ Forum Meet – Part One

Guest Speakers: Andrew Gormlie (CEO, Classic Flyer NZ Museum)
Des Underwood (former RNZAF Engineering Officer)
Roger Dalziel (former RNZAF Grumman Avenger target tug pilot)

Host: Dave Homewood

Recorded: 4th of March 2018

Released: 6th of March 2018

Duration: 1 hour 44 minutes 20 seconds

The Wings Over New Zealand Aviation Forum held another successful and entertaining Forum Meet on the 4th of March 2018. The venue was the excellent Classic Flyers NZ Museum, at Tauranga Airport. In this episode, Part One of the Forum Meet recordings, we hear from Andrew Gormlie about the museum’s current and future happenings, with some very exciting revelations and plans for the coming year.

We then hear from Des Underwood, today an aviation historian but in earlier life he was an NCO and then an Engineering Officer with the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Des talks about several projects he was involved with, including the ferrying of the Hawker Siddeley Andover fleet from Britain to New Zealand when they were purchased for RNZAF service; the recovery of a wrecked RNZAF Bell UH-1H Iroquois from a precarious crash site on the edge of a several thousand foot drop into a chasm; his becoming an Engineering Officer; and his role in the rebuild of wings and refit of avionics in the RNZAF’s McDonnell Douglas A-4K Skyhawk fleet under project Kahu.

Lastly in this episode we hear from Roger Dalziel, who was an RNZAF pilot in the 1950’s, and he talks about his role as a pilot of the No. 42 Squadron Grumman Avenger target tugs. Roger tells what the Avenger was like to fly and his memories of those days towing targets of Army and Navy guns to fire at, plus some air to air gunnery by Sunderland crews.

Andrew Gormlie (Photo: Phil Treweek)