What's on at Air Force Museum of New Zealand
Latest from the museum
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
Latest Exhibition
Victory!
It is 80 years since the end of the Second World War.
Our Victory exhibition, upstairs in the atrium, marks this significant milestone in world history, and the story of the RNZAF.
Victory includes images and memories of Victory in Europe (VE) Day and Victory over Japan (VJ) Day which have been sourced from photographs, letters, postcards and personal histories in our collection.
Victory includes insights into how Kiwis celebrated, and how they felt.
Many found it difficult to rejoice after so much loss and suffering.
You’re welcome to come along and learn all about the end of World War Two with us.
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.
Learn More
Update
Overseas visitor charge
A $15 entry charge was introduced for all international visitors to the Air Force Museum of New Zealand from 31 March 2025. Tickets available online or from our Welcome Desk on arrival.
The charge is required to cover rising costs and to contribute to our new $20 million extension to house the newest members of our collection – our historic Hercules and Orion aircraft.
Learn More
Our Aircraft
Explore AircraftMore to explore
WE HAVE A WINNER!!! Come on down David Evans - winner of our latest Guess the Cockpit competition.
David correctly identified that this week's mystery cockpit came from an RNZAF Bristol Freighter.
Or, in David's words, it was from 'the RNZAF's Concorde of the skies - the shapely Bristol Freighter'.
Brilliant work David. If you email communications@airforcemuseum.co.nz we will get your beautiful new Air Force Museum of New Zealand roundel mug - the world's most desirable mug* - sent out to you. Owing to the latest war in the Gulf and subsequent oil shock we will not be firing up the Freighter to air drop it - we will use more conventional means.
The mystery cockpit picture is as interesting as the Freighter is easy on the eye.
It is of a No. 41 Squadron Freighter in Thailand, believed to be at Korat in 1962.
The pilots are in, we think, NZ5903, and are preparing to extract the aircraft from soft soil it became bogged in as you can see from the photo sequence.
Thank you David and for everyone who entered.
If you would like to see shapely NZ5903 - the RNZAF's Concorde of the skies - in all its glory, it is waiting for you here at the Air Force Museum of New Zealand, 45 Harvard Avenue, Wigram. Open f#mysterycockpit*#guessthecockpit #RNZAFt#rnzafpastandpresentcockpit #rnzaf #rnzafpastandpresent ... See MoreSee Less
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LIKE A HURRICANE! Back in the early 1940s, when invasion by Japanese forces was a real threat, some brainy wizards in intelligence got together and decided to fool potential invaders with the threat of Hurricanes.
The mighty little Hawker fighters had been superseded by the Spitfire, but there were plenty of them in Allied air forces with 14,487 rolling off the manufacturing lines.
It would have made sense to make the enemy believe they’d made their way down here to the RNZAF, so dummies were sprinkled around various stations to bolster operational fighter numbers.
From the air the Hurridummies looked convincing, but up close it soon became apparent they were made of plywood and four by twos.
The fakes are pictured at Woodbourne and Nelson.
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That’s a cunning plan!
There's 1 at Omaka Museum in blenheim
There was a row of wooden aircraft to the NW of Ohakea too.
Production Line. Aoart from a few hundred made in Canada, all the UK ones were buikd/assembled at the Langley factory, later Ford van and the truck factory, between Windsor and Slough. 3500 Hurricanes were supplied to Russia, their uncomplicated design and ease of repair much suited to local conditions. They were superseded by the Tyohion and then Tempest. The latter prototype would clock 472 mph, and 432mph in service in 1945, far faster than the Spitfires of thr time.
I remember a line of mock up planes near Ohakea in the 1940's.
What always puzzled me is why Hawker Hurricanes? It was not a type operated in New Zealand at the time. Surely wooden versions of existing types, P-40s or Harvards, especially given that there were also wooden Hudsons, too?
Malcolm Cox
I remember seeing them at Woodbourne
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RNZAF UNICORN OF THE WEEK: Air force treasure Peter Thorpe arrived at our place the other day to reconnect with his old stomping ground and his favourite aircraft - the beautiful Bristol Freighter.
What makes Peter our unicorn of the week (and possibly year!) is the sheer breadth and length of his career – from apprentice to engineering officer to pilot – and the fact he is still working for the NZDF 68 years since he started.
Our story begins in 1958 when young Peter Thorpe joined the RNZAF at Station Woodbourne as a 17-and-a-half-year-old with his heart set on an airframe engineering apprenticeship.
Before long he found himself with a three-year posting to RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire, England, where he graduated in 1961 as a corporal airframe fitter.
During his time at RAF Halton – in 1960 to be exact - he took a flight in a glider and fell in love with flying – but more about that later.
Over the next 30 years or so, he built a successful career in the RNZAF, ending up as an engineering officer with postings including Singapore, Thailand, RAF Henlow, Wellington, Hobsonville, Woodbourne, London, Canberra, Whenuapai and a few stints here at Wigram.
His roles including serving as aide-de-camp to Governor General Sir Paul Reeves, and a seven year stint as commanding officer of the technical wing at Whenuapai.
Along the way – and what makes his career even more unusual - he was selected for pilot training here at Wigram and earned his wings.
He was able to train as a pilot on the understanding he would not fly operationally – but the training would be valuable to his skills as an engineering officer.
In 1993 he retired from the RNZAF (or so he thought) as a Wing Commander and he worked in quality assurance and engineering related roles for the next 15 years.
Around 2009, when most people would be ready to retire, he spotted a job working for the RNZN as a Quality Assurance Officer which shortly after became an NZDF position in the Defence Munitions Management Group HQ at Kauri Point on Auckland’s North Shore.
He joined as a civilian quality assurance officer, and 17 years later he is still working fulltime with no plans to retire after 68 years in the workforce.
His specialty is quality assurance work, process, attention to detail and of course, the experience of a year or two in engineering.
His hobby is gliding and was President of Gliding New Zealand for several years, and he still has a pilot’s licence and flies glider tugs.
His best memories as a young man in the RNZAF are from his time in Singapore and Thailand in the 1960s with No. 41 Squadron and the mighty Freighter.
“There’s nothing quite like the time when you’re on squadron overseas and I loved working on the Freighters,’’ Peter says.
“They used a heck of a lot of oil and were also a bit prone to oil leaks. It was pretty easy to tell if something had gone wrong. When they landed the engine nacelles were always oily, but if their tail planes were dripping with oil, you knew they had a leak.’’
In his later career his most memorable posting was to London for nearly three years with his family.
Welcome home our unicorn Peter and thank you for your extraordinary service.
NOTE: Peter's dad served from 1937 until 1946 as a Flying Officer. Peter's son served 20 years, ending up as a Squadron Leader. That's three generations of Thorpes!
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Just a true wow - has any individual done more for his country than Peter? I doubt it.
Whoa back, whoa back, stop drinking or smoking whatever it is that made you insert the --beautiful Bristol Freighter-- in the article for Bristols were anything but "beautiful" and in fact we flew them mainly at night to avoid scaring women, children, and horses, plus wore a disguise in case one of our mates saw us in or near one, and in the fourteen years I flew them I wore out several disguises. Truthfully, a Bristol and a Breguet 763 would possibly be equal in the looks dept.
Peter is my conduit for todays Air Force scuttle bug. The definition of an Officer and a Gentleman. A good CV you've got there Peter. Good photo too.
An amazing person whom it is a privilege call a friend, and he recently took this geriatric veteran for his first glider flight.
Hi. I also learned to fly gliders as an ATC cadet at RAF Halton early 1960's.
🫡🙏
What a career. Well done!
Top guy.
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