The New Zealand Fighter Pilots Museum is an aerospace museum located at Wanaka Airport on New Zealand's South Island. It was founded by Sir Tim Wallis and in 1996 became one of the first aerospace museums on the internet. The museum includes the Alpine Fighter Collection, dedicated to New Zealand's fighters during World War II.[1] The museum is funded, in part, by grants from the Community Trust of Otago.[2]
Contents |
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.[3]
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 Second World War fighter seen in New Zealand for some years and played a major part in the 1980s and 1990s expansion of the Warbird movement in New Zealand.
The collection undertook a pioneering effort in recovering and restoring Warbirds from the post-glasnost Commonwealth of Independent States. It arranged and funded the first restorations to flying condition of Polikarpov I-16s (six restored) and Polikarpov I-153s (three restored). It also restored the first Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa to fly since the 1940s. [1],[2], [3] [4]
In 1988, the collection's core members organized the first Warbirds over Wanaka airshow to showcase the collection - it attracted 14,000 people. The collection continues to provides the basis of the biannual Warbirds over Wanaka Airshow which attracted over 100,000 visitors in 2006. [5],[6]
The collection has been reduced by sales in recent years and may yet be broken up. The sole airworthy component is a Hawker Hurricane Mk IIA, with a de Havilland Vampire FB5 and Royal Aircraft Factory Se.5a reproduction on static display. [7].
Royal New Zealand Air Force Museum