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
COOPED UP: Imagine you’re about 10 years old in the early 1980s and you’re looking for somewhere to play with your mates after school in a rural part of North Otago.
If you’re Richard Carter you sneak down the road to your neighbour’s place at Totara, where there’s a spare Lockheed Hudson sitting in a field.
Richard has been reunited with that Hudson after 43 years – and it is fair to say it is looking a bit better than the last time he saw it.
Our Hudson, NZ2013, was manufactured by Lockheed in California in 1941 and served in the Pacific during World War Two.
By 1948 it was surplus to requirements and somehow or other ended up working as a chicken coop at Totara, south of Oamaru.
That’s where Richard and his mates found it and climbed aboard.
“To us it was a just a big plane – we could climb in and pull on the levers and play around. We didn’t realise its significance until later.’’
The Hudson was a chicken coop and a shed until it was purchased by us, with fundraising assistance from No. 26 Oamaru Squadron Air Training Corps in 1985.
After nine years of painstaking restoration work, NZ2013 went in display in 1996 wearing its No. 4 Squadron colour scheme from its service in Fiji in 1943.
The pictures show its recovery and progress over the years.
Thanks for visiting Richard – your playground is safe with us!
#lockheedhudson ... See MoreSee Less
Comment on Facebook
As a kid it was always the highlight of a trip down highway 1 to spot the Hudson out the window as we passed, I always wanted to play in that chicken coop... and the Vampire that was at Cave! So great to see them both restored!
Just curious. Where were all the Hudson parts (including wings, etc.) acquired?
Love background stories.
Wonderful restoration. I'm another who scrambled around inside that chicken coop. Nearby, at the time, was a Mosquito fuselage that was also full of chicken left-overs. It is now being restored at Ferrymead. A Mosquito engine – Rolls Royce Merlin – was also on the farm, under a lean-to. It is now displayed in the car museum in the Wool Store building, Oamaru.
View more comments
DETECTIVE OSCAR: Meet super sleuth Oscar, the latest winner in our hunt competition.
Oscar took home a Cluedo Junior prize pack for turning detective and sucessfully solving our Detective Fanshaw hunt.
Oscar and his family are regulars to the museum and love doing the hunt because there are different options for all the siblings.
His favourite aircraft is the mighty Skyhawk – a crowd favourite!
if you want to turn detective - just like oscar - get along to our place and get detecting!
#hunt #airforcecmuseumofnewzealand #cluedo #whodunnit ... See MoreSee Less
Comment on Facebook
NEVER CLOSER! Never before in history have Oxford and Hastings been closer!
In this case it is a Morris Oxford and a Handley Page Hastings - two of the most stylish machines of the 20th century.
On the map Hastings and Oxford are roughly 800km apart in different islands (or 160 km apart if you're talking about the less well known Hastings in East Sussex and the obscure university town of Oxford in Oxfordshire) but on this day in October 1963 they look perilously close!
The Morris Oxford and the Handley Page Hastings were snapped at the end of the runway at Rangitaiki Airfield.
The RNZAF operated four Handley Page Hastings transport aircraft from 1952 until 1965.
This is one of the 50,000 great pictures in our collecti#handleypagehastingst#morrisoxfordxford ... See MoreSee Less
Comment on Facebook
Used to see both when I was a kid growing up in Sanson...5km from Ohakea airbase.....Dad had a work provided Morris Oxford back in the early '60s
My second car was a 1965 Morris Oxford. Rego DW2559
The Hastings is an attractive aircraft in flight. You would have to imagine getting freight uphill into it must have been a challenge.
I think one crashed in Australia after a bird strike, possibly Darwin,,part of another is in Motat and i guess the others were scrapped.
What happened to the New Zealand Hastings?
View more comments