Man of courage who led in peace and wartime

Sir Richard Bolt (third from left). Photo / Mark Mitchell

Air Marshal Sir Richard Bolt 1923 – 2014

Sir Richard Bolt had a tonne of courage, a common touch and a sense of irony.

The Bomber Command airman, who once cleaned the bilges of flying boats and rose to the highest job in the New Zealand Defence Force, never shirked his duty, even when he was retired. Air Marshal Bolt was one a group of 16 former senior officers and civil servants who in 1985 criticised Labour's defence policy - or lack of it, in their view. For their temerity to break ranks, the then Labour Prime Minister, David Lange, dismissed them as "geriatric generals".

Dick Bolt got the last laugh.

One of his passions after he left military life was racehorses. He owned a couple - Wairere Boy, which made a habit of coming second, and Kotare Chief. In the summer of 1987, Kotare Chief, then a 9-year-old, won the Auckland Cup at Ellerslie. Mr Lange was on hand to present the cup to the former Chief of Defence Staff. "Not bad for a geriatric," teased the former defence chief, then aged 63.

Sir Richard, who was laid to rest with full military honours last month after he died at 91, was destined to be an airman. His father was George Bolt, a pioneering aviator who became chief engineer for Tasman Empire Airways Limited (Teal), the airline that became Air New Zealand.

As a teenager Dick Bolt was an engineering apprentice for Teal, where he "swept hangar floors and cleaned bilges in flying boats".

In 1942, he joined the RNZAF, qualified as an instructor, and was posted to Britain to complete his training as a bomber pilot with the RAF.

By the age of 21 he had flown 38 missions, returning safely from one flight after a bomb dropped from one Lancaster knocked out an engine on his aircraft.

Not everything he dropped was deadly: in April 1945, Bolt was part of Operation Manna, when food parcels were delivered by air to the starving Dutch community. "For once," he said, "we were not killing anyone."

At the end of the war he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross. The citation mentioned the Kiwi pilot had shown the "utmost fortitude, courage and devotion to duty".

In peacetime, Bolt resumed duties with the air force, and took charge of No 40 Squadron, flying Hastings transports in the Far East and Pacific.

In 1955, he was made commander of the RAF's No 24 (Commonwealth) Squadron, which ferried VIPs all over the globe. He was the only New Zealander to hold the job.

In 1974, he became head of the air force as the Chief of Air Staff. He became Chief of Defence Staff two years later, a job which put him in contact with then Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon.

At his funeral in Wellington, it was mentioned only two men ever stood up to Sir Robert - Cabinet rebel Derek Quigley and Dick Bolt.

On his retirement, Bolt may have quit his uniform but not his devotion to the air force. He was a force behind the establishment of the Air Force Museum in Christchurch, and patron of the Air Training Corps (cadets).

He played billiards and snooker well - chalking up 11 championships at the Wellington Club from 1981 to 2004.

There are two roads named after his father George Bolt around our airports - the main one running to Auckland Airport, and a short street beside Wellington Airport.

Lady Janice told the Herald that, driving to Auckland Airport, she would remind her husband where they were travelling. "I'd say, 'Wouldn't it be nice if they had a Richard Bolt Drive.' But he would never blow his trumpet and he'd say to me, 'I don't think so somehow'."

Andrew Stone