A poignant moment

It’s the story behind the story – ve guys who got a bee in their bonnet. But without them, without their unshakeable determination, a signi cant event this week would probably have slipped quietly by.

e men were the hearts and minds, and muscle, behind the plan to pluck the portside engine of a crashed DC-3 from its 60-year-long resting place on a high ridge on the Kaimai Range near Ngatamahinerua. It’s now in a ‘remembrance room’ at Classic Flyers Museum – a permanent, tangible reminder of NZ’s worst ever domestic air in which 24 people died. It was dedicated at a 60th memorial service earlier this week.

e salvage team comprised Philip Brewster, Steven Park and his Dad David Park, Dave Melville, who prefers to be known as

‘Outdoorsman Dave’, and Grant Horn, whose vision it was, a vision that goes back nearly quarter of a century. “In 1999 I was asked to take a bunch of ATC cadets on a tramp. I thought I’d marry the bush with aviation.” But the crash site was too impenetrable, too dangerous for the cadets.

It didn’t happen, the idea was parked, but his fascination for this dark chapter in our national aviation history would still take him back to the site time and again.

And Grant got to hear stories that deeply o ended him. “ ere was a rumour someone had souvenired the instruments out of the wreck, got sick of carting them round the country and threw them in the Wellington tip,” says Grant.

He didn’t want the crash site to be picked over and plundered.

He would take lots of people into the site, including Simon Gault for the TV programme ree of the salvage team , David park (foreground) Philip Brewster (centre) and Grant Horn lever the engine free of the rocks. about New Zealand tragedies “Descent from Disaster”.

“I didn’t mind them picking stu up and looking at it, but I would tell them for God’s sake, put it back.”

To Grant, to many, this place was sacrosanct, consecrated territory.

“I just knew in ve years they would get sick of their souvenirs and throw them in the rubbish. And they would be lost for all time.” en he got an impassioned plea from a woman who lost her parents when ZX-AYZ slammed into the vertical Kaimai cli face that day in July, 1963. at was 2012 and the idea would lay dormant until one day two years ago, when Grant was operating a digger on a farm at the foot of the mountain range. e “cocky” and him got talking about the Flight 441 aircraft engine and decided they should go looking for it. e two man search party became ve. ey were determined to nd the engine and bring it home.

“I had taken her to the crash site and she was standing there holding a piece of aluminium, the size of a cell phone.

“She said: ‘can I have this? It’s all I have of Mum and Dad.’ ” He couldn’t very well say no. And he didn’t. at got Grant Horn thinking.

Because the Kaimai terrain is so craggy and challenging, few people venture in.

So why not bring a signi cant piece of the wreckage out so people associated with the crash had something tangible to connect with.

“We went back twice to look,” says Grant. And they came across the starboard wing and the empennage –ZX-AYZ’s tail section – about 100 metres directly below the port wing and memorial plaque on the cli face. “I was sitting on the horizontal stabiliser when Philip Brewster called out he had found the engine.”

Grant Horn rang Andrew Gormlie at Classic Flyers.

“I told him the engine was going home to Tauranga or it was going nowhere. He only needed to think about it for ve seconds.” e team of ve was there when the engine, slung beneath a chopper, was own out of the Kaimai Range. e men were also there earlier this week when the engine and the ‘remembrance room’ were dedicated by Steve Lowe, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland and an aviation historian.

“Memories must be kept alive,” says Grant. “It’s not an exhibit, it’s not a display.

“It will have special meaning for a lot of people.”

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