WONZ 215 – Charles Darby

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Guest: Charles Darby

Hosts: Dave Homewood, Bevan Dewes

Recorded: 19th of August 2019

Released:  31st of January 2020

Duration:  1 hour 3 minutes 47 seconds

In this episode Dave Homewood and Bevan Dewes sat down with the legendary Charles Darby at his home in Auckland. Charles has always had a passion for historical aviation since he was a child and used to spend a lot of time as a kid at the graveyard of WWII aeroplanes at Rukuhia in Hamilton. He would eventually be involved in the recovery of P-40E NZ3009 from there, an aircraft that went on to spend time in MOTAT before being restored to flight and becoming a regular on the British and then the New Zealand airshow scenes.

Charles was invited by American tycoon David Tallichet to lead expeditions into the Pacific islands to locate and rescue WWII aircraft from there. He and Monty Armstrong recovered around 25 aeroplanes, including Bell Airacobras, Curtiss P-40’s, Bristol/DAP Beauforts, CAC Boomerangs and Supermarine Spitfires.

Also discussed is Pacific Aircraft Restorations Ltd, a company that Charles set up with the late Jim Pavitt to restore P-40’s. That company later became Pioneer Aero Ltd which is still restoring warbirds at Ardmore Airport, Auckland.

Charles also talks about his late friend John Smith, of Mapua, who collected several old aeroplanes and saved them from being scrapped.

And of course Charles has written three books. RNZAF The First Decade is a classic, as is Pacific Aircraft Wrecks. And more recently he has written Australia’s Liberators.

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Above: A photo of P-40’s at the Rukuhia aircraft graveyard in the 1950’s or early 1960’s (Photo Dudley Payne, via the late John Scullin)

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Above: P-40E NZ3009 (ZK-RMH) which was rescued from Rukuhia, seen here at Classic Fighters 2017, with Stu Goldspink as the pilot (Dave Homewood photo)

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Above: ZK-CAG, the P-40N A29-448/A29-1050 recovered from Tadji, Papua New Guinea, in 1974

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Above: A recent photo from December 2019 of Charles Darby, left, and Peter Wheeler, right, at MOTAT. Charles and Peter were both part of the AHSNZ Auckland Branch that recovered Kittyhawk NZ3009 from Rukuhia, and they were catching up here for the first time since those days. Photo Dave Homewood

NB: The music at the end of this episode is Wild Flower by Joakim Karud