Down Under in New Zealand: Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre

During a vacation trip covering the South Island of New Zealand, a visitor from Australia told us that he just had been at the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre in Blenheim, in the northern part of the island. He highly recommended that we see that museum. So we did, and were hugely surprised.

The museum has sixteen displays covering planes, events, and artifacts of World War I. Everything is housed in one large and stylish building. The hall of exhibits has no overall lighting. Instead, each display is lit by spotlights that make everything stand out.

The YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu9Brk0E9P0 gives a good overview of the museum and exhibits.

The website of the museum http://www.omaka.org.nz/ has lots of additional information. The famous film director Peter Jackson, multiple Oscar winner and creator of a long list of outstanding movies, among them the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, used his influence to bring in artists of the movie industry for the design of the exhibits.

Together, they created a number of stunning dioramas showing the exhibited planes in landscapes with lifesize and lifelike people. We cannot cover all the displays here, but instead look at particular exhibits and facts that constitute a good sampling.

The Etrich Taube (Dove) is surely the most bird-like plane ever designed that actually flew. Created in 1910, it uses wing warping introduced by the Wright Brothers in 1903. It also can alter the angle of attack of the entire wing. A beautiful bird, stylish and elegant. The display shows the Taube in a dive, away from attacking planes.

Etrich Taube

 

New Zealand pilot Keith Logan "Grid" Caldwell was New Zealand’s highest scoring ace with 25 aerial victories.  A display shows amazing airmanship of the pilot.

Keith Logan "Grid" Caldwell

In a mid-air collision, his SE5a fighter was damaged and entered a flat spin. He moved halfway out of the cockpit onto the left wing and discovered that, by holding his left leg into the slipstream he could control the aircraft somewhat. Doing so, he returned back behind allied lines. Just before the aircraft hit the ground and crashed, he jumped off, rolled, and was still in one piece. Indeed, he survived WWI, and in the first half of WWII was C.O. of the RNZAF Base Woodbourne.

In the early years of WWI, forward firing of the machine gun was impossible since it invariably sawed off the propeller blades. To avoid this, the Airco De Havilland DH-2 had a pusher configuration.

Airco De Havilland DH-2

The Fokker E.III "Eindecker" was the first aircraft equipped with a synchronizer gear that allowed reliable firing of the machine gun through the propeller arc.

Fokker E.III "Eindecker"

During the second half of 1915, the Fokker E.III was so effective that the British press wrote about the "Fokker Scourge" and called the poorly armed reconnaissance planes of the Allies "Fokker Fodder."

A section of the museum is devoted to the display of various WWI artifacts. Some of the material is amazing. For example, the American pilot Frank Luke had his first solo flight Dec. 1917, became Second Lieutenant Jan. 1918, arrived in France March 1918, and became an ace with 18 kills during the time of March 1918 to Sept. 1918.

He was reckless to the point that he was grounded. On Sept. 29, 1918, he ignored that order and took off.

He brought down three German balloons and two planes, and dropped hand bombs, killing eleven German soldiers and wounding a number of others. He was wounded in the shoulder and had to make a forced landing in enemy territory. When the airplane came to a halt, he started shooting with his automatic and died in a hail of gunfire.

A large exhibit is devoted to Manfred von Richthofen, the record ace of WWI with 80 kills. The centerpiece is a display of the destruction of his downed aircraft after he had been shot down. Pieces of equipment, even the canvas covering the plane, are being ripped out and carried off as memorabilia.

A continuously running movie created from vintage footage begins with that event, then shows von Richthofen with the pilots of his squadron, with the emperor, and finally taking off in the famous Fokker triplane.

Von Richthofen comes across as supremely confident if not outright cocky. He had his plane painted red so that the opposition knew it was him. Eventually, he was beset by too many enemy aircraft. In response, he had all triplanes of the squadron painted red.

When asked why he wanted to invite overwhelming attacks on his squadron, he answered something like, "It’s like in a business. You want the customers come to you."

For each kill, he had a jeweler make a commemorative silver cup, in my opinion a ghoulish process that reduced people to silver pieces. After the 60th kill and the corresponding 60th cup, the jeweler told von Richthofen that silver was no longer available for cups, and proposed to substitute other material. Von Richthofen refused, so there are no cups for kills 61-80.

Interesting are engines and corresponding speeds of WWI aircraft. At the beginning of the war, engines output around 100 hp, and airspeeds were around 100 mph.

The most impressive engine was the light-weight Rhone rotary engine, with stationary crankshaft and rotating cylinders for effective cooling. The fuel-air mixture was supplied through the crankcase and then with pipes to the top of the cylinders.

Horsepower numbers climbed gradually, until, at the end of WWI, very powerful engines emerged. A terrific example is the Napier Lion W12 engine, with three banks of four cylinders arranged in W-form, 25 liters ( = 1,525 cu.in.) displacement, and 500 hp output.

The engine had dual overhead cams for each row of 4 cylinders, driving 4 valves per cylinder. In the 1920s, the output was boosted to close to 900 hp, and the engine was used to set speed records in the air, on land, and on water. An astonishing design and performance.

Napier Lion W12 Engine

The message here is: If you get to the South Island of New Zealand, don’t forget to visit the Omaka Aviation History Centre in Blenheim. Last but not least: New Zealand is a wonderful place.

As a friend of mine put it: "Every country has something beautiful. In New Zealand, EVERYTHING is beautiful." Hard to believe, but it is so, as we discovered in four wonderful weeks of camping, hiking, and meeting the friendly folks of New Zealand.

Have any questions or feedback about the Omaka Aviation Heritage Center? Please share your thoughts in the comments.