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
🌨❄ OH NO, FOUR BELOW! 🌨❄ Don't worry Cantabrians, we've got you!
The forecast is terrible again, but we've got a ton of fun inside this weekend with hunts, games and plenty of ways to keep the kids entertained in a warm and FREE destination for children.
Come along today (did we mention we are FREE!) and see our brand new Tall Tails Exhibition.
It features the giant fin and rudder sections off our national heroes - the C-130 Hercules and P-3 Orion.
Kids (and grandies) can fly a C-130H Hercules through the Drop Zone, try an Aermacchi cockpit for size, pilot our Balloon Busters aircraft, or discover what life was like in a prisoner of war camp in our Captured exhibit.
For just $5 you can go behind-the-scenes to our conservation centre and see the hidden gems in our reserve collection or fly a Mosquito Mission simulator on your choice of dangerous raid.
And for parents or grandparents wanting a breather, our Contact Café team is there to make you a coffee, snack or lunch!
If you’re feeling the petrol pinch, make it a full adventure by taking the bus. Hop on the Hornby bus at the central bus interchange. For full journey planning details visit go.metroinfo.co.nz/, The Air Force Museum is conveniently set up as a destination.
The Air Force Museum is free for New Zealanders and people living in New Zealand. There is a $15 charge for international visitors aged over 18 years.
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Wish we were closer 🤩
A beautiful warm place
🚨📢GET THE KETTLE ON DENISE!:🚨📢 Come on down Denise Fuller, winner of this week's double trouble mystery aircraft and airfield competition.
Denise wins a stunning Air Force Museum of New Zealand coffee mug with exquisite roundel designs - just the thing for a cuppa in the winter.
Denise successfully identified the mystery aircraft as a Boeing B-47 Stratojet, JB- 47E variant.
Furthermore, she also correctly identified the airfield as Christchurch International Airport (Harewood).
The 1966 picture of the Cold War Boeing was from the Woolhouse personal album collection.
The United States Airt Force B-47 Stratojet 52-514 accompanied Lockheed U-2 56-6722 during Project HICAT (High-altitude Clear Air Turbulence) and was used as an airborne command post and as a liaison between the U-2 and airports.
The picture is one of the more than 55,000 in our digitial collection which are free to access at fotoweb.airforcemuseum.co.nz/fotoweb/
The Woolhouse album is a stunner - with pictures of some rare aircraft including a Meteor and a Gordon.
Please get in touch by emailing communications@airforcemuseum.co.nz Denise and we will fire up the Tiger Moth and fly your prize out to you. We have decided not to use the Bristol Freighter owing to the price of fuel. We do not own a Stratojet - that would be even pricier to run.
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EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, Kiwis were part of a desperate effort to attack the German battle cruiser Gneisenau and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen at the port of Brest in France.
The German raiders posed a lethal threat to shipping, and on 24 July 1941 the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command sent 100 aircraft on a daylight raid to try and stop them in their tracks.
Of the 100 aircraft sent on the daylight raid, 12 were lost and six New Zealanders died.
Those RNZAF crew who failed to return were: Sergeant Mervyn Evans, 25, Opunake; Sergeant Donald Frederick Streeter, 24, Wellington; Sergeant Graham Stewart Walker, 25, Te Kuiti; Sergeant Edward Campbell McDonald, 21 Waihi; Pilot Officer Morrisson Jolly, 23, Wallacetown; and Flight Lieutenant Frederick Henry Craig, 26, from Waipawa.
There were also some lucky escapes.
No. 75 Squadron Wellington bomber pilot Flying Officer David Leatham Pritchard was on the raid, and his account of the raid is detailed in his logbook, which is in our collection.
Pritchard and the crew of Wellington AA-W were attacked by a German fighter, which rear gunner Flying Officer William Brown shot down.
On their return the Wellington collided with a Blenheim aircraft and made an emergency landing at Boscombe Down. The damage was severe as the photos from his logbook show.
Ultimately, months of continued air raids on the ships failed, and the Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau escaped Brest in February 1942.
We’ve placed poppies beside the names of those Kiwis lost who were not so lucky.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
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In the photo of the fallen crew, there is a J F Wallace. That may be my great uncle Jack Fisher Wallace who was killed in 1941 while on deployment with 151 squadron RAF as a Sergeant Gunner on Bolton Paul Defiant night fighter aircraft.
James Garratt I donated all your Poppa's RNZAF flight records, notes, books, pics etc to this museum. In case you are ever near the Museum you may find it interesting.
We Will Remember Them
RIP
RIP and thank you Kiwis 🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺
Rest in peace those lost . Lest we forget .
Bless lest we forget RIP
Brave lads 😔 It took a nuke to finish off the Prinz Eugen it lies at the edge of Bikini Atoll. Dan Farnham sent this photo after diving on the Eugen yesterday 23 July 🫡
F/O William Brown contemplating how close the Blenheim came to destroying his rear turret
Letter sent to Dave Prichard by Air Commodore Sorley, the CO of the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A.&A.E.E.) at Boscombe Down, enclosing photos of the damage. - Barry Prichard.
Lest We Forget
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