North American Harvard NZ964

This site is dedicated to all those families of the people that have tragically disappeared on flights in and around New Zealand. I only hope that from all the effort in building this site and from all the effort of those taking part in this venture, that it will bear fruit in bringing ‘closure’ to their memories!
Gavin Grimmer

Email: gavin@findlostaircraft.co.nz

This aircraft departed Woodbourne at 7.55 am on an Airforce training exercise
to practice aerobatic maneuvers - for a one hour period.
The outer boundaries these exercises were meant to be carried out in was at
approximately a 12 mile radius from Woodbourne.
This aircraft never returned.

North American Harvard NZ-964

18 August 1942

Missing: John Ronald Scott Orbell - age 24

A piece of aluminum wreckage with what appeared to be ribs (made of wood) was found in 1994 in a stream not far from the Hopewell Guest House, in Double Bay, Kenepuru Sound.

This sighting is currently being checked out as it turns out that some of the training Harvards in WW2 had wooden ribs, so this could quite possibly be from Harvard NZ964!

There is another possible sighting of this aircraft and this is mentioned in the “Sighting Report” section

We have heard of a Harvard crash site in the Golden Downs Forest area.

If you have any knowledge of this, please contact Andrew Mackie via his site mentioned above.

Andrew Mackie in Nelson, has a particular interest in this missing aircraft and to date has done very extensive research into the likely whereabouts of the crash site of this aircraft. He has a website on this link:

http://www.nz964.org.nz/