When Pan Am came visiting…

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Mechanics Bay, Auckland, March 1937....when Pan American came visiting on the first trans-Pacific survey flight to New Zealand....



(click on the photograph to view the source)

[dogsbody]

Nice one. Thanks.



Chris

[seawings]

Hi All,

Agreed, a lovely 'period' image and from a 'perfect' source; the Leo White collection housed at the National Library of New Zealand. Click on the link to the source, as mentioned in the post and it takes you to the NLoNZ pages; you will see there are over 17,000 images in this collection!

It takes hours to go through them all (ask me how I know..!) but persevere, as there are absolute aviation gems in there, highly detailed aircraft images of a whole range of types; you just have to find them. (There is a search facility but you have to know what you are looking for).

One of the fascinating - for me - series of images are the shots featuring the Avro Lancastrian in it's various forms - the civilianised Avro Lancaster bomber - and here there are detailed images I have never ever seen before, stuff like that.

All images are downloadedable in their original - large - size which is a real treat (!) and makes a nice chnage from the usual 'fare' dished out by other Library archives around the world.

So, thanks Kiwithrottlejockey for this post as it leads to so much more.......

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

There are literally hundreds and hundreds of flying-boat photographs archived at the National Library of New Zealand, with many of them in other collections than the Whites Aviation collection. A large proportion of them are available “full-size” with the freedom (permission granted) to post them on websites or blogs, just so long as you acknowledge the source (I usually do that by making each image a clickable hotlink back to the source page at the NLNZ website); with info on many more photographs which aren't yet available online.

But as already posted, you can waste hours (days/weeks/months) trawling through that vast resource using different keyword combinations in the built-in search engine, locating more photographs.

I have spent the past couple of years gradually searching that website for historic flying-boat photographs and downloading the full-size images, and have been gradually putting together a number of photograph features covering various eras and sub-topics, such as the early survey flights to NZ by Pan American and Imperial Airways, and later, BOAC; operations by TEAL of the two Empire boats on Trans-Tasman services, operations involving the four Sunderland Mk.III transports by both the RNZAF and NZ National Airways Corporation, operations by TEAL of the Sandringham 4 flying-boats; and operations by TEAL of the magnificent Solent Mk.4 flying-boats and the sole Mk.3 Solent. Plus, I've been searching out the numerous photographs of Grumman Widgeons operated by Amphibian Airways and NZ Tourist Air Travel. It has been a long project and is still ongoing and most likely will be for some time yet. But eventually, when I feel I have managed to locate as many as I possibly can, I will start posting a few photograph essays to this group, with each image hotlinked back to its source page at the National Library of New Zealand website. You will already be aware of the thread I posted about Short flying-boat operations on Evans Bay, Wellington. When I eventually sort out all of those other photographs, the photo essays will be of a similar format. I'll get there eventually....it is a long project.

And just as a wee teaser, here are some photographs at Mechanics Bay, Auckland, taken in December 1937, when Pan American came calling on a second survey flight, followed by Imperial Airways the next day. As with the previous photo, click on each image in turn to reveal the source....

[seawings]

Oh, how I wish they were colour.......

[MrWidgeon]

Looking forward to seeing those Widgeon photos, I might find something new.

Bill