Jan Chisum and the 1929 Gipsy Moth flown by father Stan White from London to Sydney 90 years ago, in which she will take to the air in a commemorative evening flyover above Hastings on Wednesday. Photo / Doug Laing
Jan Chisum and the 1929 Gipsy Moth flown by father Stan White from London to Sydney 90 years ago, in which she will take to the air in a commemorative evening flyover above Hastings on Wednesday. Photo / Doug Laing
More than 20 aircraft will fly over Hastings and Havelock North on Wednesday to mark the anniversary of Hawke’s Bay pilot Stan White’s Gipsy Moth flight from London to Sydney 90 years ago.
Included will be the now long-since restored aircraft, built in 1929 and flown by daughter and BridgePa aviatrix Jan Chisum, who acquired the de Havilland DH.60 Gipsy Moth ZK-ADT about 13 years ago, having first flown the aircraft for a 75th anniversary flyover in 2009.
Aged just 23 at the time of his multi-stop adventure, White died at the age of 80, but his daughter had inherited the bug, learning to fly in the late 1970s and ultimately, with husband and fellow Moth flyer Jerry Chisum, built a home with a hangar backing on to Bridge Pa Aerodrome.
“Some people have cats and dogs,” she muses. “We have a hangar.”
Her dad bought the Gipsy Moth in England about June 1934 and after some work, including removing one of the two seats to make room for greater fuel capacity, flew out on September 8, hoping it would take three weeks.
Hawke's Bay aviator Stan White with the Gipsy Moth he flew from London to Sydney in 1934. He died at the age of 80, but daughter Jan Chisum inherited the flying bug and will be at the controls of the 95-year-old aircraft in a flyover above Hastings on Wednesday. Photo / Supplied
It took six.
White logged 160 hours in the air, double his recorded flying time beforehand, and had stops and delays in such places as France, India, Sumatra, Burma (now Myanmar), and Darwin, fighting the vagaries of engine trouble, bad weather, malaria, and finally being charged duty for importing into Australia the petrol still in the tank after crossing the Timor Sea.
Once landed in Sydney, G-AAJO was loaded aboard the cruise liner Niagara, shipped to Auckland, and flown by White from Mangere airfield to Hawke’s Bay, eventually becoming ZK-ADT.
Despite having no team support, using just AA maps and a shell card for fuel, and with a spare propellor lashed to the machine, he was typically nonchalant when meeting media in Auckland.
“It was just a holiday,” he told them: “I was not out to break records or anything like that.”
He said that apart from the “little misfortunes”, the flight was “mainly uneventful” and added: “I struck bad weather once coming along the coast of Burma. It was the tail end of the monsoon, with a good deal of patchy rain, and I decided to land at an emergency aerodrome. I was not held up for long.”
Modern Hawke's Bay aviatrix Jan Chisum in the cockpit of the 95-year-old Gipsy Moth she will fly over Hastings on Wednesday to commemorate father Stan White's flight from London to Sydney in the same aircraft in 1934. Photo / Doug Laing
He estimated the whole exercise, including buying the aircraft, cost about £1500 (equivalent to over $70,000 at present NZ currency rates).
Jan Chisum says much of the aircraft, including the comparatively small amount of metal framework, is original, and its kept state has allowed it to feature in many fly-ins and flyovers around the country. Its good, authentic condition also meant it was an automatic choice for the starring role of the aircraft in 2016 TV movie Jean, commemorating the 1930s exploits of Kiwi aviatrix Jean Batten.
Chisum also had a role, doing the flying scenes, although the lead role of Batten was played by actress Kate Elliott.
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 51 years of journalism experience, 40 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.
