An airforce aerobatics team are sharing the sky with a warbird that boasts a proud Wairarapa heritage at the Joyeux Noel WWI Evening Air Show in Masterton today.
The Curtiss P-40E Kittyhawk, registration NZ3009, is a WWII aircraft based at the Vintage Aviator hangar at Hood Aerodrome.
It was partof the RNZAF 14 Fighter Squadron which flew in the region for about a year from April, 1942 to train fighter pilots.
The aircraft was never used in combat and is today worth about US$1.5 million ($1.86 million) after initially being rescued from smelting at a cost of £25, according to display pilot and part-owner Stu Goldspink.
Mr Goldspink, an airline pilot from Britain, said he would be flying the Kittyhawk at the Masterton air show today ahead of another display flight in Tauranga next weekend.
The Red Checkers are taking part in the display at the Masterton show as part of RNZAF 75th anniversary celebrations.
John Lanham, a former commanding officer of 14 Squadron, said the Kittyhawk had been under-rated as a fighter aircraft and had become "literally, a sword beaten into ploughshares" by New Zealand farmers starved of parts not easily available in the post-war years. The squadron had at first worked in Wairarapa with Harvard trainers and later with P-40 Kittyhawk fighters. Officers lived in a Masterton hotel while the ground staff lived at a camp near the east end of Kuripuni St. Blast pens, to protect the aircraft from attack, were constructed around Hood Aerodrome at the time and the Kittyhawks also provided air defence for the capital city. The squadron left the region in February, 1943 to fight in the South Pacific.
Mr Lanham, now working with the Civil Aviation Authority in Wellington, will be at the air show today. He flew NZ3009 as a display pilot about eight years ago, he said.
Today's show will include mock dogfights and aerial displays, with vintage vehicle rides from 3pm to 4.30pm and the air show running from 4.30pm to 7pm.
Also on display will be two former RNZAF Bristol F.2B fighters, which were flying in New Zealand until 1936 as the last in the world to be retired from operational use.
