Accolade from Kia Ora Magazine

The Air New Zealand in-flight magazine (Kia Ora) has published an article on Wanaka in their August 2008 issue. Within that article they visit the museum.

Right on the outskirts of Wanaka, at the airfield with a magnificent backdrop of craggy tussocky hills, you'll find the New Zealand Fighter Pilots Museum, entry to which costs a very reasonable $10.00.  
 
I had expected something amateur - oddball collections of things families didn't know what to do with - and instead found a wonderful collection of memorabilia, impeccably detailed history, old photos, and aeroplanes, beautifully restored, including a magnificent Hawker Hurricane - one of only eleven airworthy examples in the world, that was flown by New Zealanders in World War II, then lent to the Russians until it was show down. It was rescued from Russia and restored 50 years after it was crashed.  
 
Most poignant, though, were the memories and stories of fighters. The story of a young Dutch woman who tried to save the life of a New Zealand fighter pilot who had ditched into a canal and had her bike stolen while doing so. And the recollections of an anonymous spotter-plane pilot of a dogfight played out far below him. "I felt", he wrote "like a man looking down into a pool watching minnows playing near the bottom".  
 
 
 
Thanks to Kia Ora for allowing us to reproduce this article.