Training NZ’s first fighter pilots
George Bolt, Howard Coverdale and Mr Ross share their experiences as engineers, trainees and flight trainers at the Walsh brothers’ New Zealand Flying School in Auckland, 1915. The school, New Zealand’s first, graduated over 80 pilots during the war, with about one-third of them arriving overseas in time to see action in the air with the Royal Flying Corps or the Royal Naval Air Service.
Year:[1915] Recorded in the 1960s
Location:Auckland, New Zealand
Training NZ’s first fighter pilots
George Bolt, Howard Coverdale and Mr Ross share their experiences as engineers, trainees and flight trainers at the Walsh brothers’ New Zealand Flying School in Auckland, 1915. The school, New Zealand’s first, graduated over 80 pilots during the war, with about one-third of them arriving overseas in time to see action in the air with the Royal Flying Corps or the Royal Naval Air Service.
Year: [1915] Recorded in the 1960s
Length: 7:34
Production Company: Radio New Zealand
Source: Radio New Zealand collection, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Catalogue Reference: 254437 [Early pilot training; 1915]
People: George Bolt, Howard Coverdale, Mr Ross
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Image Title: The Manurewa, the DIY British-designed Howard Wright biplane built by the Walsh Brothers, shows Vivian Walsh in the pilot’s seat, Glencora Park in Papakura around the time of the first flight.
Image Source: Courtesy of Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref: MNZ-2066-1/4
Following the sustained, controlled flight in their self-constructed, British-designed Howard Wright biplane, the Manurewa in early February 1911, the Walsh Brothers went on to construct a modified Curtiss-based design of sea plane that would become the basis for flight training over Mission Bay in Auckland’s Waitematā Harbour.
Employed as an engineer by the Walsh Brothers, George Bolt reflects on the brothers’ early aircraft designs and pilot training prior to their enlisting in the Royal Flying Corps. Mr Bolt explains that his own interests in aircraft engineering and flying developed out of his childhood passion for model making. Howard Coverdale shares why he chose to become a RFC pilot while another flight instructor, Mr Ross describe aircraft specs and the schooling undertaken by cadets during the three-month course.
George Bolt later became Chief Engineer of Tasman Empire Airways Limited (TEAL) in the 1960s.