HOBO Preface

THE HIJACK OF BOEING ONE

Preface

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“...if Bill Boeing could have foreseen the future of his struggling company, he would have hung on to that first airplane....”

R.J. Serling 1992

“Legend and Legacy: The Story of Boeing and Its People.”

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In late 1988 there was a joint effort between the New Zealand Government and a film maker to locate and excavate four tunnel entrances shown in historic photographs of the North Head Historic Reserve in Devonport, Auckland. The film maker was John Earnshaw who was producing a documentary film with the working title "The Search For Boeing One"; an attempt to reveal the fate of the first aircraft designed and built by William Edward Boeing.

The project was a partnership between the New Zealand Government, AKA “The Crown”, John Earnshaw and a film company, Mallard Productions Ltd, that Earnshaw had formed with two colleagues to produce the documentary. The Partnership between these three parties was reasonably straightforwardly laid out in two Contracts and a Deed of Trust signed by The Crown and John Earnshaw in 1987. (Appendix 2 – Contracts).

The 1988 project was called off incomplete after 4 weeks when the Army engineering unit assisting the investigation was withdrawn. The Government would not let the investigators proceed without the army supervising the excavation work due to the risk of unexploded ammunition being encountered in the old fort under North Head. However, apart from one brief reprise in 1989, the Army never returned to assist in the completion of the investigation and so it was never completed. (Appendix 3 – 1988 Investigation Report). There were a number of unfruitful approaches to The Crown by the Film Maker during 1989 and 1990 during which time the documentary film project remained frustrated. With the 1987 contracts still unfulfilled and frustrated by the Crown, in December 1990 the investigation at North Head was expropriated by The Department of Conservation, the Government agency in charge of reserve lands. The Department of Conservation, AKA “DOC”, conducted a number of other 'archaeological' investigations on North Head during the 1990s but these investigations failed to complete the 1988 work and failed to address a number of other anomalies recorded in 1988/89 surveys and reports of the investigation site by NZ Army engineers. (Appendix 4 – Army Surveys and Reports).

The story about the two Boeings (more accurately Boeing and Westervelts) Bluebill and Mallard being stored inside sealed off tunnels at North Head originated from NZ pioneer aviators George Bolt, Leonard Issit and Eric Paton and from Doug Patterson. The aircraft in question were the first two aircraft designed and built by William Edward Boeing at Lake Union, Seattle in 1916. They came to NZ in 1918 and were used at the NZ Flying School in Kohimarama until its closure in 1923. Then, according to research conducted in the late 1950s by Boeing Pilot George Bolt and his colleague Doug Patterson of the NZ Historic Aviation Society, the two Boeings were removed from the Flying School site at Kohimarama, barged across the Waitemata Harbour to Torpedo Bay at North head and initially stored at Torpedo Yard - a military ordnance depot. Bolt and Patterson had interviewed two old soldiers who said that the Boeings had finally been stored in a sealed off tunnel inside North Head.

This information is on record in a letter that Bolt sent to the Boeing company in 1959 (Appendix 07 – Correspondence) and in a speech that Doug Patterson gave to the Historical Aviation Soc. in the early 1990s. (Appendix 6 – Doug Patterson) The story was supported by Sir Leonard Issit, at the time the Chairman of Tasman Empire Airways Ltd. (TEAL – later merged with NAC to become Air New Zealand). Back in 1924, Issit had been the NZ Permanent Air Force Captain in charge of cleaning up the Flying School site and removing the aircraft. Isitt confirmed to Doug Patterson in the late 1950s that the two B&Ws had been taken to North Head and sealed off in tunnels accessible from Torpedo Bay. In the late 1960s Isitt gave similar information about the two B&Ws having been stored in tunnels at North Head to Minister of Defence David Thompson when Thompson raised the subject on behalf of the Museum of Transport and Technology. (Appendix 07 – Correspondence).

Neither Bolt, Patterson nor any subsequent researchers have ever been allowed to open these alleged sealed off tunnels at North Head and see what is inside them. The only determined investigation was shut down incomplete in 1988. Many attempts to have that investigation completed were stonewalled by the Government - this is all on official record including in High Court transcripts relating to breach of contract litigation that dragged on from 1996 until 2003. Subsequent investigations at North Head have been limited to inconclusive archaeological investigations conducted or supervised by DOC. The contemporary official position on the tunnels at North Head is that there is nothing there that isn't already open. However this is at odds with official documents and historic records that refer to sealed off tunnels (Appendix 8 – Maps, Plans & Misc. Documents). Its also clear from comparison of the NZ archives of records pertaining to the North Head fort to those held by the Australians pertaining to contemporary forts designed and built by the same engineer that the records in NZ have been purged and most of them destroyed - and no record kept of what was destroyed. Minister of Defence Warren Cooper is recorded in the New Zealand Parliamentary Hansards (records) admitting that this had indeed happened (Appendix 8 – Maps, Plans & Misc. Documents).

Beginning with Bolt and Patterson's effort in the late 1950s, the curious thing about the various searches for Bluebill and Mallard and the attempts to reveal their ultimate fate, is that each and every investigation has either been abandoned incomplete or shut down in curious circumstances in each instance leaving more questions than answers. The Department of Conservation will tell you that the mystery was solved in the 1990s when their investigations at North Head proved that there is nothing there that you cant visit today and see for yourself. DOC will also likely refer you to the outcome of high court litigation that dragged on from 1996 until 2001.

The Judgement of that court case, written by New Zealand's chief Justice, Sian Elias is now accepted as the “Official History” of the Flying School closure, the disposal of its aircraft and of the tunnels at North Head. The Elias judgement presumes to record proof beyond the bounds of probability that Bluebill and Mallard never made it out of Kohimarama and, instead, came to an end in a rubbish fire on the beach in 1924; an ignominious end for a couple of priceless relics of aviation history.

Is this true? This work looks in depth at the veracity of that claim against the story of “The Search for Boeing One”, an odyssey that began as an intriguing idea in 1978 and finally crashed and burned at the Auckland High Court in 2003. Along the way promises were broken, contracts were breached, lies were told, work was plagiarised and a whole lot of antics that one would not normally associate with historical research took place turning the story from a ripping 'Boys Own' yarn of aeroplanes and hidden tunnels into a darker tale about the rancorous side of human nature, duplicitous bureaucracy and the scything of tall poppies.

Jon Smyth

March 2007