Busman’s holiday for aircrew

Five squadron RNZAF are doing community work airforce-style at Classic Flyers today where instead of servicing and making sure the air force's Orion aircraft are ready to fly, they are helping restore an old war bird.


Sanding the Grumman back for the re-paint. Picture: Chris Callinan.

'They are doing a community assist, and they thought of us,” says Classic Flyers CEO Andrew Gormlie.

'We've got our avenger to be painted and it needs a sand.”

Supervised by a couple of the Classic Flyers volunteers the Five Squadron personnel in two shifts of about a dozen attacked the Avenger for couple of hours over two days. The second round is today

The Grumman Avenger being restored by Classic Flyers will never fly again. A lengthy sea side sojourn as a children's park toy resulted in too much corrosion of the magnesium alloy structure, weakening the wing spars to the point where the aircraft will not be safe to fly. But they still fold up, the engine runs, and it will be able to taxi around on the ground under its own power.

The RNZAF operated 48 Grumman avenger torpedo bombers in the period 1943-1959. By the end of WWII the RNZAF had only 12 Avengers. Sixteen of them were passed to the US Navy, and nine to the FAA. Of the twelve in the RNZAF, six were sold for scrap in 1948, and two lost in accidents in 1949 &1956.

After the war the aircraft operated with No's 30 and 31 Squadrons in a divebombing and spraying roles, and as drogue-towers. In the post-war period they mainly operated as drogue-towers by No's 41 and 42 Squadrons, although they were also used in top-dressing trials.

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