There’s virtually nothing Brendon Deere doesn’t know about World War II Spitfire fighter aircraft, except how to fly one. Well, he knows how but he doesn’t know what it feels like, because after spending 35,000 hours restoring a wreck acquired from a US collector, he made a decision never to fly it himself, even though he is a qualified pilot.
“I could have, but I felt it was too precious and I have a view that it should be flown well,” he says. “I have flown in a Mosquito and it remains the highlight of my aviation career.”
What is “precious” in a monetary sense? “No comment,” says Deere. “We consider our aircraft to be priceless and we have no plans to sell anything.” (Platinum Fighter Sales – a Californian business that specialises in the sale of historic warbirds – lists a fully reconditioned, flying, 80-year-old Spitfire at NZ$7.7 million. It also has a North American P51B Mustang advertised at $5.9m. And, perhaps reflecting the greater scarcity of the vanquished, a 1938 Messerschmitt Bf109e for $10m.)
Deere, a high school teacher before he turned to business, is a member of one of New Zealand’s small but elite corps of collectors of war planes. He and fellow aviation enthusiasts like film director Sir Peter Jackson and the late Warbirds Over Wānaka founder Sir Tim Wallis have built significant collections of former fighting craft, sharing their passions with public displays at events such as the Wānaka show or Wings Over Wairarapa.
Deere’s Supermarine Spitfire Mk IX lives with a collection of other vintage flying machines in two private hangars at the RNZAF’s Ohakea air base, a short drive from his Marton home. The hangars were built by the Biggin Hill Trust, created in 2018 by Deere and his wife Shirley, on land leased from the government. The availability of selected aircraft for official heritage and commemoration flights and air shows is an arrangement of mutual benefit to the RNZAF and the trust, says Deere.
The Biggin Hill facility was designed to house airworthy examples of World War II vintage aircraft – the Spitfire, a P51-D Mustang, a Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber and a Harvard trainer – and others on static display, such as a De Havilland Devon, a Tiger Moth, an Aermacchi jet trainer and Iroquois and Sioux helicopters.
Family salute
The Deeres started buying vintage aircraft 15 years ago, having established a very successful business, Integration Technologies Ltd, which supplies automation systems to 40,000 service stations in 64 countries. Deere is loath to put a figure on what he’s invested in the trust. “Shirley and I have both put a lot of funding and effort into preserving the aircraft and would like to think they will be seen by many generations ahead,” he says. Of the next generation, the Deeres’ five children maintain an interest in their parents’ passion: one son, Joe, is an aircraft engineer and works at Biggin Hill.
The craft have a significant flying future, says Deere. “Any aircraft needs a lot of maintenance and there comes a point when you have to do significant maintenance covering the airframe and engine. We have an annual schedule of checks taking two to three weeks to ensure it is safe to fly for the following 12 months.
“Included in the maintenance is a full engine overhaul every 500 hours. We don’t fly often, and certainly there are no joyrides.”
Why the name Biggin Hill? It’s a salute to Deere’s uncle, Alan Deere, the New Zealand-born decorated RAF fighter pilot based at the southeast London airfield in World War II. A Battle of Britain hero, Al Deere, DSO, OBE, DFC and bar, commanded the Biggin Hill Wing, comprising the 611 West Lancashire Squadron, the 341 Free French and, from the latter half of 1943, the 485 New Zealand Squadron.
Biggin Hill today is a busy corporate jet airport for London, but it also houses restored Spitfires, Hurricanes and Mustangs, some of which have had a passenger seat added for joyride flights (NZ$6199 for a spin in a Spitfire). Restored combat aircraft are becoming a big business globally; return on capital invested is a strong motivation.
Brendon Deere’s interest in aviation was sparked by his first meeting, aged 6, with his famous uncle. Alan Christopher Deere was born in Westport in 1917 and moved to Whanganui, where in 1933 the family doctor, Lynford Christie, a Wanganui Aero Club member, paid for the 16-year-old to have a life-changing joyride in Charles Kingsford Smith’s Southern Cross, which was on a fundraising tour.
Deere joined the RAF in London in 1937 and flew his first Spitfire in 1939, aged 22. Over France in May 1940, as the British army was retreating via Dunkirk and Calais, Deere shot down two German Me 109s for his first kills. Two days later, he was shot down himself and crash-landed on a Belgian beach, from where he hitched rides back to England. Over the next three years, Deere survived many life-threatening incidents.
After the war, he stayed on in the UK but returned to see family in New Zealand and was in Wellington for the opening of its new airport in 1959. “He was very impressive in his uniform,” his nephew recalls. “He promised to send me some aircraft photos, which he did about six weeks later.”
Brendon kept in touch and visited Alan, who rose to become an air commodore in the RAF, and his family in the UK.
“Four of his five brothers also fought in World War II – infantry, tanks, navy. But Al was the best known as he was made into something of a hero. He was publicly prominent; even went on a six-week trip to the US in 1942, where he lectured their pilots about tactics learnt in the Battle of Britain and France.”
He left the military in 1967. As a civilian, he worked with the RAF as its sporting director until his retirement in 1972. “He was quite a celebrity in his own right but a very modest, understated man,” says his nephew. “I found him very inspirational.”
Massive rebuild
The showpiece aircraft at Biggin Hill Ohakea are the Spitfire and a P-51D Mustang, both restored to new condition and flown only by experienced fighter pilots – two RNZAF squadron leaders. Stu Anderson flies the Spitfire and, on November 11, Sean Perrett got the Mustang airborne for the first time since it was mothballed 66 years ago (see opposite). The Mustang will have its first public showing at Warbirds Over Wānaka this Easter, March 29-31, along with the Spitfire and Biggin Hill’s Grumman Averger.
First produced in 1938, the Spitfire was critical in Germany’s failing to win the Battle of Britain. Brendon Deere’s Mk IX was built in 1944. He bought it as a wreck from an American collector who had acquired it from Myanmar, where what was left of the fighter had been displayed on a plinth for 26 years.
“Most of the engine had gone, all the instruments, and a couple of bags of concrete had been poured into the cockpit area,” says Deere. “They’d done a lot of damage but structurally it was complete. I flew to Missouri, met the owner, arrived on a Saturday, bought it on a Tuesday, then had it shipped to New Zealand.
“We rebuilt it completely at our hangar in Feilding – over 35,000 man hours, a massive undertaking.” The work included installation of a new engine, a reconditioned Merlin 70.
“It was the first time a Spitfire had been restored in New Zealand from ground-up to finish. We did it ourselves, rather than contract it out, so it was a big learning curve with a team of very skilled people we employed – they weren’t volunteers.”
The Spitfire took to Aotearoa’s skies on March 18, 2009, with ex-Air New Zealand captain Keith Skilling at the controls. Painted with “AL” on the fuselage, it’s one of three operational Spitfires in this country.
More recently, Deere watched it flown in formation with the RNZAF’s Black Falcons Display Team at November’s Wings Over Wairarapa. Seeing it soar reminded him again of the “synergy and purpose” he sees between private collectors and the Defence Force.
“We are hopeful the collection will be able to remain at Ohakea for the foreseeable future, as it continues to benefit the RNZAF in its own efforts to acknowledge and display the heritage element of New Zealand military aviation history.”
The plane that turned the air war
A single-seater escort fighter unloved by the Americans came to the rescue of their WWII bombing campaign in Europe and then graced NZ’s Air Force.
Vintage plane collector brendon Deere’s P-51D Mustang fighter, NZ2423, has a past as storied as its Spitfire hangar mate.
Although built by North American Aviation (NAA) and used by the Americans to escort US bombers in World War II, the P-51 was in fact of British origin. The British War Purchasing Commission in 1940 wanted more Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawks, but the manufacturer could not produce enough, so the British asked NAA if it could build them. NAA owner Dutch Kindelberger was reported to have said, “We’ll make you an even better plane and we’ll do it in the same time it would take to tool up for Kittyhawks.” So, 117 days after that conversation, a prototype was flying. But the single-seater was designed to British specifications and it was the British who named it the Mustang.
Deere says the only part of the design the Americans showed any early interest in was a ground attack version called the A76a, which had four cannon; the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) ordered those but was not interested in the P-51s, which were armed with six 50-calibre machine guns.
After flying an early Mustang, British Rolls-Royce test pilot Ronald Harker suggested that if its American Allison engine was replaced with the latest Rolls-Royce Merlin, it would be a superior aircraft. The Allison had a single-stage supercharger, which limited its altitude performance to about 15,000ft, and lacked power in the thinner air. The Merlin had a two-stage supercharger and could operate up to 40,000ft.
The Mustang already had tremendous fuel capacity, and with the high-performance engine, could go to Berlin and back escorting US high-altitude daylight bombers and fighting off German attacks.
The US bombers were being decimated by superior Luftwaffe fighters like the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 and the new Me 262 jet fighter. In the disastrous Regensburg raid in August 1943, for instance, 60 of the 376 aircraft were lost. The B-17 Flying Fortresses had crews of 10.
Having effective fighter protection was pivotal to the Allies destroying Luftwaffe capacity before the planned invasion of Europe and the revolutionary Mustangs would change the course of the air war. But it did not happen until the winter of 1943, partly because the USAAF believed its heavily armed B-17s did not need such protection, but also because its commanding general, Hap Arnold, initially refused to allow a British engine to power what he saw as an American plane.
By the end of 1944, 14 of the 15 fighter squadrons of the US Eighth Air Force Bomber Command comprised Mustangs and they were the dominant combat plane over Europe, destroying nearly 5000 enemy aircraft.
In 1945, the Royal New Zealand Air Force was faced with replacing its Corsair fighters, which had been operating in the Pacific war. The US Navy was taking all the Corsair production, leaving the RNZAF a choice between the P-47 Thunderbolt and the P-51. It ordered 370 Mustangs, expecting it would need to replace all the Corsairs as the war continued.
The first 30 were completed in NAA’s Dallas factory in July 1945 and shipped on August 4. On August 6, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. On August 9, Nagasaki was bombed and the war ended.
The government of Peter Fraser tried to send the Mustangs back for a refund, with no success.
One was written off in an unloading accident; the rest were put into storage at Hobsonville, still in their USAAF markings and shipping wrappings. There they stayed until 1952, when they were allocated to the Territorial Air Force squadrons in Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury and Otago.
Four, including NZ2423, were kept at Ohakea for towing target drogues. They were then sold off by the Government Stores Board.
NZ2423 last flew in May 1957 and was sold in 1958 by tender for 80 pounds and 10 shillings. The buyer, Bill Ruffell of Blenheim, wanted the V12 engine for his speedboat but ended up onselling the Mustang and a great collection of spares to John Smith of Mapua, who had already started collecting redundant ex-war aircraft.
After Smith died in 2019, Deere negotiated to buy the whole Mustang package. NZ2423 was transported back to Ohakea in August 2020. Despite having had its wings cut off, the aircraft was in such great condition that it could have been advertised “one owner, engine barely run-in”.
It had flown 261 hours, “only halfway to scheduled engine overhaul”, says Deere. “We therefore believe it may be the lowest-time Mustang in the world.”