HOBO Preface

“...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.”

In late 1988 there was a joint effort between the New Zealand Government and a British film maker to locate and excavate four tunnel entrances that had been identified in old aerial survey photographs of the North Head Historic Reserve in Devonport, Auckland. The tunnels were part of old coastal fortifications and an ordnance depot that had been decommissioned in the 1960s.

John Earnshaw, the film maker, was producing a documentary with the working title "The Search For Boeing One". Conceived by Earnshaw in 1979, this was an attempt to recover the first aircraft designed and built by William Edward Boeing. The partnership between Earnshaw and Government, AKA ‘The Crown’, was necessary to gain access to the Historic Reserve and to clarify ownership issues arising from any artefacts retrieved from the decommissioned fort. The terms of the Partnership were straightforwardly defined in two Contracts and a Deed of Trust signed by The Crown and John Earnshaw in 1987 with the expectation that the work would be completed within 12 months . (Appendix 2 – Contracts)

But the work, referred to here as ‘The 1988 Investigation’, which began in June that year, ceased only four weeks later when the Army engineering unit tasked with the excavations was withdrawn. Although the work, which for a number of reasons explained in this book, had not gone to plan and was far from complete, the Government would not let it proceed with the Army absent. Military supervision was required for the excavations due to the risk of old ammunition being encountered in the sealed tunnels. Apart from one brief reprise in 1989, the Army never returned and so the investigation was never completed. (Appendix 3 – 1988 Investigation Report). The partnership remained unfulfilled; the contracts frustrated. During 1989 and 1990 Earnshaw made a number of unfruitful approaches to The Crown and his documentary film project remained in limbo.

Finally, abandoning its responsibilities under the 1987 contracts, in December 1990 The Crown unilaterally dissolved its partnership with Earnshaw when his investigation at North Head was expropriated by The Department of Conservation, the Government agency in charge of reserve lands. During the 1990s the Department of Conservation, AKA ‘DoC’, went on to conduct a number of further archaeological surveys at North Head but these investigations failed in every respect to complete the 1988 work or address a number of anomalies recorded in surveys by NZ Army engineers conducted in 1988 and 89. (Appendix 4 – Army Surveys and Reports). Understandably a dispute arose from this train wreck and, in the absence of any sincere mitigation by The Crown, in 1994 lawyers became involved and the tattered remnants of reason quickly fled the scene .

The story of the first two Boeings Bluebill and Mallard (more accurately Boeing and Westervelts) having been stored inside sealed off tunnels at North Head originated from NZ pioneer aviators George Bolt, Leonard Issit and Eric Paton. Bluebill and Mallard were the first two aircraft designed and built by William Edward Boeing and his partner Conrad Westervelt 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, 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 a similar confirmation of the story 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 the sealed tunnels at North Head and see what is inside them. Official records dating back to the 1960s, including High Court records relating to breach of contract litigation that dragged on from 1994 until 2003, reveal that attempts to have any investigation completed have been discouraged or stonewalled by influences within Government, in particular the NZ Defence Force, AKA ‘NZDF’, and DoC. Subsequent investigations at North Head have been limited to inconclusive archaeological surveys 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). It is also clear by comparison of the NZ Archive records of the North Head fort to those held by the Australians of forts designed and constructed by the same engineer that the NZ records have been purged and most of them destroyed. Apparently no record was 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 one constant in all investigations into the ultimate fate of Bluebill and Mallard is that they have all been abandoned or shut down in curious circumstances each time eaving more questions than answers. Should you inquire, DoC will advise 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’; they will also likely refer you to the outcome of the High Court litigation as further evidence that there is nothing to find.

The High Court Judgment , given 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 judgment 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

THE HIJACK OF BOEING ONE