On 12 April 1940, two young trainee pilots took a Royal New Zealand Air Force biplane up over the Southern Alps for a climb to altitude. Somewhere near Mount White, the Fairey Gordon spun, recovered, and then flew into the trees on a ridge. It flipped over and slid down the slope, coming to rest hanging upside down in the bush.

Both men survived. One of them, Walter Raphael, pulled his badly injured companion, Wilfred Everist, out of the wreck and got him to a shearers' hut. The aircraft, serial NZ629, was left on the mountain.

Eighty-six years later, that wreck is the only Fairey Gordon left in the world. Its restoration has now been completed in New Zealand, and the aircraft is for sale, with a sales pitch aimed squarely at one of the country's most famous film directors.

The IIIF's Last Evolution

The Gordon was not a new design so much as the final development of one of the RAF's great workhorses, the Fairey IIIF. Fairey fitted the IIIF airframe with the Armstrong Siddeley Panther radial, and the result first flew on 3 March 1931. According to Wikipedia, 178 new Gordons were built for the RAF, 154 Mark Is and 24 Mark IIs with a larger fin and rudder, and about 80 IIIFs were converted to a similar standard. The Royal Navy's version was called the Seal.

The Gordon was a product of the RAF's long inter-war policing role in the Middle East and Africa. It was fabric-covered, slow by later standards and obsolete within a few years. Production ended when Fairey switched to a new torpedo biplane, the Swordfish.

Period film of RAF Fairey Gordons on bombing training in Egypt, around 1935.

A Biplane at War in 1941

By 1939 the type had mostly been retired, but a few squadrons in Egypt were still flying it, and the Gordon had one last moment of fame. In April 1941, a pro-Axis coup in Iraq threatened the RAF base at Habbaniya, west of Baghdad. Its No. 4 Flying Training School had a mixed collection of 84 mostly obsolete aircraft, including seven Fairey Gordons, each able to carry two 250 lb bombs. When Iraqi forces surrounded the base, the training school went to war, and the Gordons took part in the defence of Habbaniya in early May 1941.

Six Gordons also went to the Egyptian air force, and the Brazilian Navy flew the type too. In April 1939, 49 Gordons were dispatched to New Zealand. They were used briefly as pilot trainers, but the Royal New Zealand Air Force found them worn out, and the last was struck off in 1943.

From a Mountainside to a Showroom

NZ629, formerly RAF K2759, was one of those New Zealand Gordons. After the 1940 crash, its instruments, guns and engine were removed and the rest was left in the bush. It was recovered decades later by Charles "Bunny" Darby, with Walter Raphael helping to locate the site. Pacific Wrecks gives the recovery year as 1976, while restorer Robert Reece told aeroTELEGRAPH it was 1972. The remains then spent many years in storage.

Reece, of the restoration firm Aviationz, came across the stored remains in 2019 and began a full restoration. According to aeroTELEGRAPH, that work is now complete. The aircraft is offered as a static display piece, not airworthy, with its original pilot's seat, a Lewis gun and a Vickers gun mount. Even an RNZAF loan form found in the gunner's compartment has been kept.

An episode of a video series documenting the restoration of NZ629, the last surviving Fairey Gordon.

A Present for Peter?

The sales pitch is unusual. Reece has named the aircraft's website presentforpeter.co.uk, a suggestion that New Zealand director Peter Jackson, one of the world's best-known private collectors of historic military aircraft, might buy it as a present to himself for his birthday on 31 October. Reece told aeroTELEGRAPH that other buyers are welcome too, and that there is no price list.

He would not say where the aircraft is kept, only that it is in a warehouse. Wherever it ends up, it will be the only place on Earth where you can stand next to a Fairey Gordon. Not bad for an aircraft that spent decades hanging in the trees.

A later episode of the NZ629 restoration series.

Sources: aeroTELEGRAPH (13 October 2026); Wikipedia (Fairey Gordon; Anglo-Iraqi War); Pacific Wrecks; faireygordon.com; Key Aero.