What's on at Air Force Museum of New Zealand
Latest from the museum
Latest Exhibition
Tall Tails
Our Tall Tails exhibition features the mounted tails of the C-130 Hercules and P-3 Orion, this new exhibition brings visitors closer to two extraordinary aircraft and the stories they carry. It also highlights the importance of finding a permanent home for them, as the Museum continues to fundraise through the Home for Heroes project.
Tall Tails is on display in our Thérèse Angelo Wing.
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Exhibition
The Mighty Hercules
The Mighty Hercules exhibition is on in the Cochrane Gallery upstairs in our atrium. Come and visit and learn all about this extraordinary aircraft.
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Support Us
Home for Heroes
Join us in building a forever home for New Zealand’s C-130 Hercules and P-3 Orion – icons of service.
For more than half a century, these legendary aircraft carried our nation’s courage across the world – in peace, crisis, and discovery. Now, they need a home worthy of their legacy, where their stories of service, innovation and humanity will continue to inspire.
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Birthday Parties
Mission: Best birthday ever
Zip up a flight suit, grab your dog tags, and dive into a fully hosted birthday “mission”. From air & sea adventures for preschoolers to rescue and cadet challenges for older children. Our Programmes team runs the activities, the children get awesome photo moments (and party bags), and you can add catering through our café.
Book a birthday party
Our Aircraft
Explore AircraftMore to explore
Ahoy the USS Curtiss, an American battler of a ship with some interesting Kiwi connections.
The USS Curtiss was a seaplane tender which had been badly damaged with 19 sailors lost during the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii on 7 December 1941. By the end of 1941 she went in for repairs and was sent back into action in early 1942.
In 1942 the war in the Pacific was in full swing, and the RNZAF had joined the fight against the Japanese in the Northern Solomons and New Britain (now Papua New Guinea).
In October 1942 RNZAF Group Captain Sidney Wallingford was appointed to liaise with the American Command in the South Pacific and the Kiwi aircrews of No. 3 Squadron at Santo (now Vanuatu) and Guadalcanal and No. 9 Squadron at New Caledonia.
Group Captain Wallingford was running RNZAF liaison from headquarters aboard the 8600-ton Curtiss which was anchored in the Segond Channel at Santo.
Communications with the crews in the field was via telephone lines, but with the Curtiss bobbing in the tide, the lines were frequently lost between the ship and the airfields.
“The control of air operations from a ship was by no means easy owing to communication difficultes,’’ it was noted in the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War.
So, in early 1943 Wallingford waved goodbye to the RNZAF’s home away from home aboard the Curtiss and moved to shore to a new home with No. 3 Squadron at Pallikulo Airfield on Santo.
Curtiss served out the rest of the war in the Pacific, seeing action in major battles including Tarawa, Saipan and Okinawa. She survived a kamikaze attack which killed 35 crew.
In the early 1950s the ship served in the Korean War, before being converted to a helicopter tender.
In the summer of 1956/1957 the Curtiss sailed to New Zealand before heading to Antarctica to deliver people and supplies for Operation Deep Freeze II.
The Curtiss spent time in both Lyttelton and Auckland during its time down here.
The ship was scrapped in 1972 after a long and distinguished career.
📸The USS Curtiss in the Pacific. Wikimedia Commons.
📸 RNZAF personnel on Santo. Image PR1863. ... See MoreSee Less
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🚨RNZAF ROVER TO THE RESCUE🚨: When your CT-4B Airtrainer needs supervision while on the back of a truck, who are going to call?
🚨RNZAF ROVER TO THE RESCUE🚨
Yes, NZ1940 was safe under the watchful eye of RNZAF Land Rover 110 LWB MQ4542 after a forced landing (the Airtrainer, not the Landy) at Doyleston in Canterbury in 1986.
RNZAF Rover to the Rescue is our tribute to all the photos in our archive featuring Land Rovers on the way to help out, or doing extraordinary things.
These oil-dispensing marvels of British engineering and workmanship have been witnesses to a lot of history, and we think the world should know what these trusty green heroes did.
#RNZAF #newplymouthairport #landrover ... See MoreSee Less
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Air Force Museum of New Zealand Small typo - unless the ‘Airtiraner’ was a secret developmental variant of the trusty and well-known Airtrainer 😎
I was in the left seat with an engine failure on test flight over Ellesmere We managed to nurse a very sick trainer back having lost a large chunk of its engine oil after aerobatic checks From memory the only thing salvaged from the engine was the dipstick Which became the famous dipstick award/trophy
There was more than one occasion of a forced landing in a paddock between Wigram and Lake Ellesmere with an Airtrainer. I spent the night in a woolshed with two of my Airmen keeping guard on one Airtrainer ,may have been the one in the photo, around that time! It landed with a rough running engine late afternoon with recovery the next morning. A quick visit to camp packup for stretchers ,sleeping bags ,generator and frying pan and rations from the mess and off we went for the night.Fortunately it was Summer,so a woolshed overnight was more than adequate!
I remember one at Canvastown, too Rule #1 in aviation check "your own fuel quantity before flying to Nelson for a lunchtime date...
Was that aircraft damaged on the return to Wigram ? I was the Engineering Officer involved in a very similar incident, just weeks or months later. Certainly before May 1986 anyway. I was seconded from 4 Hangar to go and investigate a 'Trainer parked on the side of the road, by Green Huts ? Anyway, Roger Read had been trialing a new aerobatic sequence and it involved quite a bit of inverted or negative 'G' work. The 2 Hangar guys checked the normal stuff trying to determine the possible cause of the fuel starvation, All seemed to be in order and I determined that the problem was 'G' related. I was in the same gliding club as Roger and he had just demonstrated his gliding skills in the CT4. Rather than risk the road transport and ail that entailed, I authorised a return flight to Base. The aircraft was back at Wigram before I had breakfast.
Was that the occasion when a distinctly non-swept tail growth issue encountered a telephone pole when traversing a corner - asking for a friend Alex Newman…
I think the truck went around a corner and the tailgate overhang hit a telephone pole causing additional damage.
Seem to recall more than one of them limping back to the field with a cylinder head detached and hanging by the ancillaries. Young throttle jockeys 🏇 😅
A fair number also ended up stuck below the low tide mark and parked on their roofs at the Kaipara Range over the years. A number of pilots tried to barrel roll them. Ably assisted by the armourers when they really wanted to submariners . TY Kings I seem to remember them being called.
I flew the Airtrainer Great Aircraft .Very versatile. I would suggest that Aircraft was in a different position while traveling on on the Road.? 🫡😀
That particular 110 when it was near new was brought into 5 hangar for repair and I got the job, the gear stick had come off in someone's hand and it had actually broken the corner of the top plate off. The alloy gearbox was not as good as the old cast iron slushboxes! These were terrible on the highway too tending to snake when you hit the right speed and that's without towing a trailer! These were only good off road!
I spent a night out guarding an Aircraft with the two Dave’s. In a caravan keeping the cattle away with Rocky horror music playing a good part of the night. Thought it was out Rangiora way. What an experience.
Fun plane to fly
that must have been one hell of a landing, on the back of a truck, particularly sideways like that.
Guilty!
As a sideline the defence forces could have compiled an extensive Land Rover archive museum 😉
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PICTURE PERFECT PLANES: Come along to see our exhibition of the best work of Defence Force Photographers featuring – you guessed it – a lot of RNZAF aircraft!
The brand-new exhibition features 40 stunning images from the portfolios of our eight New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) photographers.
The exhibition also features the story of photography as a trade in the RNZAF, which dates back to 1929, and a display of historic cameras taken from our collection.
As well as stunning pictures there’s a lot of history thrown in – including the amazing fact that pictures not always taken on phones in digital form!
Defence Photographers is on now in our upstairs atrium and is FREE!
Our thanks to the talented NZDF team - Petty Officer Chris Weissenborn, Leading Aviator Classification Connor Williams, Corporal Jalesa Nomani, Corporal Maddy Butcher, Corporal Naomi James, Corporal Rachel Pugh, Sergeant Sean Spivey and Corporal Andy Jenkins.
The exhibition is also a tribute to the work of all the hundreds of military photographers who have served since 1929.
We are progressively digitising all their work and there are more than 55,000 historic images in our digital photo library which are free to search and download at fotoweb.airforcemuseum.co.nz/fotoweb/https://airforcemuseum.co.nz/photographs/
#nzdf ... See MoreSee Less
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I've been demoted Maddy Butcher Naomi James
Hi guys, I was part of the Army Air Dispatch crew that flew on the last B170 airdrop into Malaysia before the Sqn RTNZ in 1977. Are there any photos taken during that mission in the archives??? I have a copy of this, taken after we landed back at Tengah. I seem to remember an RNZAF Photographer filming, using a movie camera setup in the Bristols toilet, during the drop!!
Looks amazing - will be coming in to view!
sorry link not working