1970: Skyhawk
April 1, 2022
By AHNZ
On 17 May, 1970, New Zealand’s first 10 Skyhawk attack aircraft were wheeled from the port of Auckland through the CBD and down the Western Motorway to Hobsonville Airbase. It’s the sort of scene we’re used to seeing put on by some foreign country, probably Communist, trundling its arsenal of various missiles down Main Street. For the newly re-elected Keith Holyoake’s National 2.0 Government it must have been a welcome publicity parade.
This was the same year that President Richard Nixon’s VB, Spiro Agnew, had visited New Zealand. Then, as when the Skyhawks rolled out, the new anti-authoritarian youth politics resisted. The young Boomers would not let their senior New Zealanders take measures to provide a protection that they themselves took for granted as having always had. One of these seniors, Charles Upham, had already remarked that he feared New Zealand’s Pioneer Spirit would be dark within a generation.
The anti-Skyhawk Boomers paraded slogans such as “Now RNZAF can burn babies too,” “No Skyhawks for N.Z,” “US Keyhawks kill in Indo-China.” Ref. Air Force Museum of New Zealand Photograph Collection, Digital NZ
When those protesters came to power with Labour 5.0 they finally had their way. They scrapped the air combat No. 75 Squadron in 2001 entirely and left the Skyhawks to decay on the tarmac for 10-odd years. Minister of Defense during this time, Phil Goff, achieved Boomer revenge at last for the parade of 1970. In parliamentary opposition Heather Roy, of the Generation X cohort, furiously resisted Goff’s humiliation of the Skyhawks. When in power as Associate Minister of Defense, however, Roy found Goff’s knot very hard to undo.
“The National 2.0 Government (Dec 1960–Dec 1972) certainly were an energetic gang when it came to Statist projects! They gave us decimal coins, Rotorua Museum, and the aluminium smelter at Tiwai Point. Did you know they were also planning a nuclear power station?” – 1966: Kaipara Nuclear Power Station, AHNZ
“I was a member of the WRNZAF at this time and was posted from Base Woodbourne to Base Ohakea, to type the hand written Skyhawk manuals, brought back from the USA, before they were sent off to the Government Printers.” – Jo Gullery, comment to NZH&H, Facebook (2019)
“Now NZ is a free-rider that barks at its allies and empathises with their enemy”- LibertyScott
“On 1 October 1987 the RNZAF marked the squadron’s 50th anniversary by painting up a Skyhawk and a 1981 Ford Falcon in gold with RAF stripes…Labour 5.0 disbanded the No. 75 Squadron on 13 December 2001.” – 1937: No. 75 Squadron, AHNZ
After many years of service it was time for an upgrade. National 4.0 ordered 28 F-16s, dirt cheap replacements for the Skyhawks to keep our airforce combat capable. Labour 5.0 cancelled the deal when it came to power which came as a surprise. The only indication was a bit of fairly small print in their election campaign manifesto that they had not seen fit to advertise. Having been elected though, Labour played the usual political trick of saying that they had a mandate to make the change now since voters had elected a party that had intimated that this would happen.
NZ’s strike aircraft capability, something we had had since the beginning of the age of aircraft, had now been abandoned altogether.
From an Anarchist political point of view it’s obvious that Helen Clark’s Government, Labour 5.0, would not keep to someone else’s deal. The F-16 order was National 5.0’s scheme and political cynics (ie the rational) assume it was paying off or gathering favors to National friends and campaign contributors not Labour’s. By keeping the deal, Labour would only have been helping the old regime they had overthrown in that case while having no frills of their own attached to cash in on. Schemes and scams take talented Ministers years to cultivate. A Minister of Defense always puts what nourishes his Ministry before what nourishes New Zealand’s defense (Anarkiwi 101.)
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Image ref. New Zealand’s combat aircraft over Auckland, Paul Benton; Pintrest
Image ref. Skyhawk in the CBD with Auckland University Clocktower in background, Air Force Museum of New Zealand Photograph Collection, Digital NZ
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