68 African Pilot April 2015
meets the German aviator who was the victor in this dogfight. The
Nieuport which had crash landed in a tree is scrutinised by German
troops whilst the ‘mount’ of the German pilot, a Siemens Schuckert D.IV
stands in the snow a short distance away.
As a museum in New Zealand, once a British colony that contributed its
share of pilots to the Royal Flying Corps (later the RAF), it is only right that
some exhibits have a Kiwi fl avour. The remarkable story of ‘Grid’ Caldwell
lends itself well to a graphic representation. Caldwell, whilst leading 74
Squadron of the RAF was involved in a mid-air collision during a combat
fl ight in September 1918. With the left wing and ailerons of his SE5a badly
damaged he found that the only way he could maintain control was to
climb onto the offending wing and fl y the plane with the stick alone. In this
way Caldwell descended from 7000 feet to just above the British trenches
and at the last possible moment threw himself off the plane into the mud
below. Not only did Caldwell live to tell the story, but he became the top-
scoring New Zealand pilot of the war with 25 victories. He ended his career
as an Air Commodore in the RNZAF and lived to the ripe old age of 85!
The exhibit at Omaka shows Caldwell in the SE5a just before he literally
‘jumped to fame.’ Marvellous stuff!One of the dangers of a museum of this nature is that it could romanticise the
notion of the gallant ‘Knights of the Sky’ to the extent that one loses sight of
the fact that the First World War in the air was no less a deadly confl ict than
that on the ground. To its credit, this is not the case with the Omaka museum
which has at least two exhibits that are sobering reminders of the fact that once
mankind took aircraft to war there would be some grim consequences.The fi rst exhibit, positioned early in the sequence of displays, shows a
Morane Saulnier BB that has crash landed on the edge of an aerodromeAn early British fi ghter of the pusher design, the DH 2Diorama reconstructing the fate of the Red Baron at the hands of Australian troops