The de Havilland DH-60 ‘Moth’ and the birth of New Zealand’s aero clubs.

Merrie Spring-time greetings to you all from my office in the South Pacific (Astro. nav. ref: 37 46′ 45.51″ S  175 14′ 22.44″ E.  Posterior height 141 feet AMSL) We now move on in our reflective look back at what types of aeroplanes your forebears were flying in New Zealand during the period from 1928 through to the post WWII years when the DH-60 ‘Moth’ began to be replaced, for civil use, with large numbers of war-surplus DH-82 Tiger Moths.

This is the Email format version, with small images, using the core text that has been published in the October issue of “NZ Aviation News”. As in “Wings of Time”, #’s 01 and 02, I have selected a range of photographs which differ from the paper version and, as there are no space constraints in the ‘E’ format, I have written some amplifying/elucidating notes with which to append to them. The main text body has also been expanded somewhat with the odd digression (some would say, regression!) It has been said that some of my captions are as lengthy as some folk’s articles! Well, so-be-it. It is the way I am..it is what I do!

For the curious, I use 10 point Lucida Bright and Bold for the benefit of the many more ‘mature’ readers who despair at trying to read the tiny fonts so common these days. I actually know some chaps who are driven to berserk episodes of ‘Font-Rage’, as it has become known. Magazines printed on shiny reflective glossy paper are hurled away from their time-worn bodies as they swear and curse at the young(er) Editors that inflict such frustration upon we bespectacled ones who built this nation with only a few picks, shovels and wheelbarrows.

And do we receive any thanks or a modicum of respect? Nay, we have been consigned to the scrapheap of history by the spotty ankle-biters who now control our destiny….now where was I? Oh yes; something about ‘Moths’ I do recall.

As per the usual protocol (my current favourite word), should any club, organisation, body, clique, assembly, group, association, respectable gang or publication desire to publish this humble offering, please do contact my esteemed Editor in order to request his clearance to utilize the primary textual content. He is also a ‘Moth’ expert. John King is:

editor@aviationnews.co.nz

Thanks chaps…now, at last, read on. Oh yes; one last protocol/caveat. Should you detect any significant factual errors, please tell your wife/partner/chum/dog/hamster just what a useless sort of scribe and researcher I be. You will then feel better. Or, alternatively, you could contact me whereupon I may expend several hundred words explaining, in exquisite detail, exactly why I wrote the disputed section. Or, I may merely say: “Zounds, egad and gadzooks…you are absolutely correct…oh what a jolly fool I have been…do please forgive me dear reader”. etc, etc; in a highly mortified and humbled fashion. I am, the last time I looked:

mikefeeney@actrix.co.nz

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If there is one type of aeroplane that could be said to have truly enabled private and aero club flying to become firmly established within the UK and the many British Empire Dominions and Colonies, it must surely have been the de Havilland DH-60 Moth. Along with its direct competitor, the Avro Avian, the DH-60 had a profound impact on the affordability of flight training for people on normal wages and salaries; particularly for single young people who did not yet have families and mortgages.

Whilst the early Moths cost 650 pounds new, several years salary for the average person, they were affordable by syndicates, co-operatives and flying clubs. The same holds true today. There are only a very small percentage of our people who can afford to pay cash for a new light aircraft.

As literally millions of words have been written about Sir Geoffrey de Havilland (GdH) and his ‘Moth’ lineage, I shall confine myself to the salient points, which I consider of significance, and avoid pedantic detail.

The prototype (G-EBKT) first flew, in the hands of GdH himself, from the company’s Stag Lane ‘field on 22nd, February, 1925. Powered with a 60 bhp ADC Cirrus, the ‘Cirrus Moth’ was of all-wooden construction. The fuselage was plywood-clad with the wings fabric-covered. An important feature was its fold-back wings for ease of towing and storage.

The aircraft was 23′ 11” long, its wings spanned 30′ and had an area of 243 sq. ft.
Empty weight was 920 lbs (417 kg). Maximum was 1,750 lbs (794 kg).
The DH-60G’s maximum level speed was 105 mph (91 knots) and its normal cruise speed was 85 mph (74 knots).

The Cirrus engine was ‘cobbled’ together by GdH’s friend Frank Halford who designed a new crankcase on which to mount cylinders from war-surplus Renault V-8s. This worked well, but GdH wanted to set up an in-house engine division to become independent of other suppliers. So he tasked Frank Halford to create a new engine to be manufactured adjacent to the airframe plant. And so, in 1928, the first of the famous ‘Gipsy’ series was born.

The upright, four-cylinder Gipsy 1 weighed 300 lbs and developed 98 bhp at 2,100 rpm. The cylinder bore was 4.5″, stroke 5″ and displacement was 319 cubic inches (5.23 litres…the same as the Lycoming 0-320 which powers most of our Cessna 172s and Piper PA-28s). The Gipsy II had its stroke increased to 5.5″ and produced 120 bhp. The Gipsy proved to be easy to maintain and reliable. Many very long-distance flights were made with the pilot carrying out basic maintenance en-route. Pretty well all maintenance could be done with a simple set of tools and the engine’s handbook; not unlike how we used to take care of our own motorcycle engines. You could readily remove the cylinder heads to lap/grind or replace the intake/exhaust valves and a complete cylinder replacement was quite straight forward; assuming you had a spare in the baggage locker. Magneto changes and timing was also simple.

In 1931, the fuselage was changed from wood to a steel tube structure. This became the DH-60M; the ‘Metal Moth’. That same year, the engine underwent a major modification. In order to lower the engine and improve forward visibility, but to raise the propeller shaft height, it was inverted. This became the DH-60G-III ‘Moth Major’. It was intended primarily as a military primary trainer; the DH-60T, but did not sell well. Egress from the front cockpit when wearing a military parachute was not easy in an emergency. It was from this variant that the DH-82 ‘Tiger Moth’ was directly developed…but that is another interesting story.

The advent of the Moth spurred the forming of several flying clubs in the UK which were very soon followed by others in several countries such as Australia, Canada, South Africa and our own New Zealand. The Moth totally dominated the club types with over 80% of the fleets being comprised of Moths.

The first DH-60 to arrive in NZ was imported by Douglas Mill in February 1928, when he formed the Air Survey and Transport Company at Hobsonville. He and his wife made three extensive tours of both islands which attracted considerable interest. G-NZAT was even displayed in Milne and Choyce’s Queen Street store. (G-NZ..was the initial registration series until 1929 when we were allocated the ZK prefix.). Mill. and his photographer, J. Williams, carried out the first extensive civil aerial photographic work in NZ.

Our aero clubs take off

The advent of the DH-60 and the birth of our aero club movement may be seen as having a symbiotic element to it. The Moth was an attractive, practical and pleasant to fly aeroplane and the recent creation of the “A” (Private Licence) and “B” (Commercial Licence) brought a realisation that ‘ordinary’ civilians could actually become air pilots and carry their family or friends anywhere within NZ with complete freedom from the awful roads that prevailed until after WWII. And the speed of travel between towns was a fraction of that of motor vehicles and our very slow trains on winding narrow-gauge track. A journey between Auckland and Dunedin consumed several days over land, sea and land; a similar time to that of a voyage to Sydney by ship.

If I may be permitted a small digression to illustrate the tortuous nature of road travel in NZ in the later 1940s. When our family embarked on trips from Hamilton to Lower Hutt in our 1937 Ford 10 (it still amazes me how that tiny little side-valve engine could manage to haul us over our rugged winding landscape; albeit with much time grinding up hills in low gear. I can actually recall hopping out and skipping merrily along behind our trailer), towing a small trailer with our weighty camping gear, the journey took almost two days with an overnight stop at Marton where we would make camp. I can still hear my late younger sister Janet’s weary voice:

“Daddeee…when are we getting there?”. This was repeated several hundred times during the seemingly endless trip down what is now SH 1. I was a strange lad, even then, and was perfectly content to note down, in my exercise book, details of every vehicle we passed; model, colour and registration number. This early propensity to observe and record vast amounts of (mainly useless) data has continued to this very day. I am am hopelessly addicted to data-hoarding and analysis. A sad case I am afraid!

Car motion sickness was almost endemic and one frequently passed other vehicles stopped on the verge with children heaving in misery…but it was a jolly life I tell ‘ee lads! The rural sky was then, prior to the advent of aerial topdressing, almost totally devoid of aeroplanes and, of course there were no farm airstrips. When I think back to those immediate post WWII years, it seemed that NZ was relatively unpopulated.

On March 15, 1930, Jim Hewett flew his Gipsy Moth, ZK-AAR, from Dunedin to Mangere in 10 hours overall time. This was sensational and was widely covered by the media.

A group from Canterbury, led by Sir Francis Boys (many readers will have competed for the RNZAC ‘Boys Cup’ upon which my name is appended; I say modestly!), approached Govt. for assistance. They must have made a convincing case as, on 5th, April 1928,  approval was given for the immediate purchase of eight DH-60s. Two were loaned to Canterbury Aero Club, two to Auckland Aero Club, with the others going to the NZPAF who even mounted one on floats.

A grant of 25 pounds, to approved clubs, was made for every member who was issued an “A” licence; up to 500 pounds per year. It was an exciting time for air-minded New Zealanders as groups all over the country formed clubs. This was just prior to the Wall Street stockmarket crash of 1929 and by December of 1928, seven clubs had been established; Auckland, Hawkes Bay and East Coast, Middle Districts, Canterbury, Otago and Western Federated (New Plymouth, Hawera, Wanganui, Feilding). One can imagine the animated meetings at each other’s homes and the poring over the popular British journals, “Flight” and “Aeroplane”, for the latest on the new UK flying clubs and their Moths and Avians.

The first flight operation commenced at Auckland on February 29, 1929. The AAC staged the country’s first air pageant at Mangere on April 20th which attracted a huge crowd of 22,000 people; amazing given that the population of the entire nation was barely a quarter of todays.

AAC were particularly progressive and, as early as 1929, were embarking on sorties about the Auckland Province, sometimes with formations of several aircraft, to encourage interest in club flying. When they landed at Cambridge on what became the horse racing grounds, they attracted wide-spread interest from the Waikato-ites. Not long after, a branch of AAC was established at Te Rapa, north of Hamilton, on one of Mr. Bryant’s farm paddocks.

With respect to landing grounds and airfields, the DH-60, with its large diameter wheels and low stalling speed, could use any reasonably smooth area of a few hundred metres in length as long as the approach path was clear of trees and high wires. In 1928 advisor, Air Marshall Salmond, had recommended the establishment of 41 ‘Emergency landing grounds’. Then, in 1929, Parliament passed the “Local Authorities Empowering (Aviation Encouragement) Act, 1929.”

This provided official support for various airfield development projects throughout NZ. During the 1930s, some of the vast numbers of unemployed men worked on these aerodromes in return for a meagre ‘dole’ payment. Many also worked at planting our vast North Island pine forests. It was treading close to being a form of directed ‘slave’ labour and separated the men from their families for long periods, but NZ was in a truly terrible plight until the initiatives of the 1935 Labour Govt. began to take effect.

It may seem odd that, whilst the nation, and so many of its people, were suffering abject poverty and deprivation, some were flying in expensive light aeroplanes. However, the actual numbers of flying members of aero clubs was miniscule as a percentage of the population. At a guess, I would estimate perhaps only 1,200 – 1,500 in all; perhaps one in a thousand!

Also, many of the club members would have been going without and literally saving every sixpence and shilling  for weeks just to take a short lesson of perhaps 25 or 30 minutes. But of course, as in every economic crash, there are always those who retain steady well-paying jobs. In the early years of my local aero club, Waikato, local doctors and businessmen were strong supporters of the club and played a valuable role in keeping the club viable during those depressing times.

Five more clubs were running by the end of 1929, Wairarapa, Wellington, Marlborough, Westland and Southland. However, none of these were loaned aircraft by the Govt. and were struggling to raise funds to purchase an aircraft. Sponsors, such as Castrol Oil, were sought and debenture schemes were instituted. Even though the Great Depression was now starting to bite hard, there were still a small percentage of people who had money, so gradually all the clubs managed to obtain an aircraft.

Flight instructors were another matter and the Govt. would only approve a subsidy if a club had a qualified instructor and the aircraft were under the maintenance control of a properly qualified engineer. In 1930, many of the clubs formed a controlling ‘umbrella’ body, the New Zealand Aero Club (the ‘Royal’ came later). This enabled the clubs who joined the NZAC to discuss policy matters with Govt. with a united voice. It was a ‘lobby group’. We must bear in mind that during that pre-war decade, a high proportion of the pilots in NZ were operating in the club system with the training programs being carried out by, in the main, ex RFC/RAF pilots so the actual flight training was similar to that of the military; essentially following the RAF’s Smith-Barry system. This situation also prevailed when the clubs got going again after WWII.

Govt. subsidies lasted right through to 1962. When I was issued my PPL in 1957, I also received a most welcome cheque for 60 pounds; about 40% of the cost of the 40 hours then required. From the formation of our clubs, and for the following 33 years, a pool of basically trained civil pilots was considered to be in the national interest. The subsidy policy changed when an increasing number of private flying schools began operations who considered that the clubs were still being ‘subsidised’ due to their exemption from paying company tax. Even today, the aero clubs are non-profit Incorporated bodies.

Space dictates that we must leave my intended outline of our historic flight training methodology to another time. I would also like to thank Gerald Grocott for his years of operating his lovely DH-60, ZK-AEJ, so that we could enjoy the machine before it returned to its original home in ye merrie England.
I should also thank WWII Catalina and Sunderland pilot, TEAL skipper and CAA Officer and aviation historian, Maurie McGreal for suggesting some topic points which I had forgotten.

Photograph of Moth running outside hangar: I am pretty sure that this was taken on, or about, August 9th, 1926, at Orly aerodrome during the French 'Light Plane Competition' and was entered by the amazing Sophie Elliot-Lynn. I am also fairly sure it is the prototype DH-60, G-EBKT, though the registration letters under the wing are difficult to read. Note how high the engine is mounted in order to provide propeller ground clearance. And, unlike the Avro 504, no ungainly centre skid to prevent prop-strikes. The fuel tank is located in the upper centre-section; just like the later DH-82 Tiger Moth. With the upright motor, exhaust gases are conveyed by the long pipe on the port side. Much quieter than the four short stubs that most of our aerial topdressing Tiger Moths used during the 1950s. And of course, in those times, a chap could absolutely not be seen without appropriate headgear and a tie or cravat! Simply not done, you know!

Engine photograph: The DH Gipsy Mk.I. This motor could not have been much simpler. A pushrod for each overhead valve actuated by the camshaft within the crankcase; gear-driven at half crankshaft rpm. The upright engine (in my opinion) was actually more convenient to work on than the inverted Gipsy Major upon which I learned the basics when a teenager under our Waikato Aero Club engineer, Andy Aitken. Andy was a pleasant and patient chap as I recall...particularly when I was over-enthusiastically assisting him to re-rig the wings of our Tiger Moths; a delicate task using spirit levels and plumb-bobs with much adjusting of turnbuckles etc. Just a few too many turns and an aircraft would fly hopelessly wing-down and out of trim. It could also adversely effect the stalling and spinning behaviour.

Auckland Aero Club photograph: A nice old shot of a DH-60 on short final approach (surely it could not have been doing a 'beat-up'!) past AAC's imposing new clubrooms at Mangere aerodrome (buried since the early 1960s under all the extensive Auckland International Airport infrastructure). Quite how the dynamic and influential John Seabrook, and his associates, managed to fund the construction of this large building so early following the Club's formation is something I don't know much about. But I surmise that a redeemable debenture scheme may have played a role. The large motorcar may provide a clue to the photograph's period. Does anyone know what it is. A De Soto, Buick or Packard perhaps?

DH-60M 'Metal Moth'. ZK-AEJ And, of course, this article would not be complete without a shot of particularly historic ZK-AEJ (c/n 1542). It came to NZ in the 1930s as G-AAXG. It is a racing 'Speed Model' and placed second in the 1930 "Kings Cup" race at a speed of 129.7 mph (113 knots) Its last NZ owner, Gerald Grocott, reluctantly sold it to UK owners after operating it here for many years. It graced our skies and air shows for many years; providing our younger folk with a living, flying example of a machine which greatly assisted the development of our aero clubs and made it possible for dedicated New Zealand aviation-minded civilians to train for a pilot licence. I suggest you Google "ZK-AEJ" to learn more about this lovely flying machine which is now back flying not too far from the DH plant in which it was created about 80 years ago. For some further elucidation, refer to "The Woodhams Addendum" below.

DH-60G. ZK-ADT (c/n 1101) And finally, I could not finish without a view of ZK-ADT outside my home aero club, Waikato. Built in 1929, it was flown from the UK to Australia by Flying Officer S.G. (Stan) White during September to November, 1934. It was then shipped to New Zealand still as G-AAJO. It is owned by the Middleton family who restored it back to flying condition in 2004.

I was chatting to Ron Henneker, who was active in the club back then when the Air Training Corps flight training scheme was operating. Ron recalls ADT well and reckons that this photograph was taken about 1947; soon after the club resumed operations after WWII. The ex-army hut, one of two, which formed the basis of the clubhouse can be seen in the background. It was during the following two or three years that the club’s DH-60s were progressively replaced with DH-82 Tiger Moths such as ALT, ALU and BBV on which I trained from 1955. But the old hangar and workshop is just as I recall it when I spent so many interesting weekends and school holidays in it helping our Engineer and doing all the mundane tasks such as filling oil bottles, cleaning aircraft and, of course, the traditional almost daily, sweeping out of the hangar. Not a bad way to commence an aviation career I think most would agree.
Ron thinks that Arthur Baker, a well-known farmer from Whitehall, Cambridge, owned ADT for some years.

“The Woodhams Addendum”

I asked a venerable chum of mine, Jim Woodhams, noted Miles Magister and Douglas DC-8 boy-racer, about AEJ, as an uncle of his had once owned it. Here is his (in part) response…thank you leedle Jim!

“Hi Mike. As I understand it, a Mr. R.G. Tappenden purchased it from a Scottish Naval Officer, H. Kidston; who had shipped it to New Zealand “for fun”. I think this was the Teppenden who owned Tappenden Motors in Auckland. He used the aeroplane for private flying until he sold it to Fred Butler, a Hamilton businessman. (also an ex. RNZAF Squadron Leader). Fred Butler was a prominent aero club member in those days.

The aircraft first appeared in Noel Brown’s (Jim’s uncle) logbook on the 12th July, 1941, when he was tested in it at Rukuhia for renewal of his “A” licence. Noel had evidently purchased AEJ from Butler and, after flying it locally on four occasions, it was then stored in a Hamilton shed for the duration of WWII. Noel, and his brother Howard, were also well known club members and they joined the RNZAF. I can’t recall what Noel did to stem the Japanese advance, but Howard flew P-40s from Green Island (near Bougainville) where he won the DFC.

On October 12th, 1946, Noel was back flying AEJ and this is where I came into the picture by bludging flights with these two uncles whenever possible. This went on until October 2nd, 1948 when Noel flew AEJ for the last time. I believe that the aeroplane was then sold to a Mr. Jack Allen in Wairoa.”