Alpine Fighter Collection

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The Alpine Fighter Collection is a collection of vintage aircraft based at the New Zealand Fighter Pilots Museum at Wanaka established by helicopter and deer entrepreneur Sir Tim Wallis.

The collection was started in 1984 with the purchase of a North American P-51 Mustang. Painted in RNZAF colours, it attracted much media attention as the first flying World War II fighter seen in New Zealand for some years and played a major part in the 1980s and 1990s expanison of the Warbird movement in New Zealand.

The collection was a pioneer recovering and restoring Warbirds from the post glasnost Commonwealth of Independent States. It arranged and funded the first restorions to flying condition of Polikarpov I-16s (6 restored) and Polikarpov I-153s (3 restored). It also restored the first Nakajima Ki43 Hayabusa to fly since the 1940s. [1]

In 1988 the collection organised the first Warbirds over Wanaka airshow to show case the collection - it attracted 14,000 people. The collection conintues to provides the core of the biannual Warbirds over Wanaka airshow which attracts over 100,000 visitors.

The collection has been reduced by sales in recent years and may yet be broken up. It now features flying examples of the Supermarine Spitfire Mk XVI , Hawker Hurricane Mk IIA, , Polikarpov I-153 Chaika, Polikarpov I-16 Ishak, de Havilland Tiger Moth, de Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk and ex-Royal Flight de Havilland Fox Moth. A de Havilland Vampire FB5 is under restoration for the collection [2].

[edit] References

Ian Brodie Warbirds - Alpine Fighter Collection 2000 ISBN: 1 86948 833 4
Neville Peat Hurricane Tim: The World of Tim Wallis Longacre 2005 ISBN: 1877361178