By David King –
After 60 years of service RNZAF C-130H (NZ) Hercules NZ7001 has retired in style with its final touch down at the Air Force Museum of New Zealand at Wigram in Christchurch.
NZ7001 – the very first Hercules to serve in the RNZAF – pulled off the last of more than 20,000 landings on a shortened airstrip outside the museum – 30 years after Wigram closed as an operational base.
Air Force Museum Director Brett Marshall thanked the RNZAF crew for a spectacular send-off for the aircraft.
“It was a perfect landing and a fitting end to the service life of these extraordinary aircraft. NZ7001 bowed out in style – and we can’t thank the RNZAF enough for delivering it safely.’’
The aircraft was the first of the RNZAF’s five Lockheed Hercules to be built and it will be preserved as an example of the extraordinary fleet that clocked up more than 155,000 accident-free flying hours and nearly 100,000 landings since 1965.
From Antarctica to Afghanistan and through droughts, floods, cyclones, earthquakes and civil wars around the globe, the Hercules were there to help.
They have also been the backbone of military flying in New Zealand, and a huge support for the NZ Army, Police and Civil Defence wherever and whenever they were needed.
Now the aircraft is safely retired the museum is hoping the New Zealand public will take the chance to pay the Hercules back for its service.
Measuring 29.8m from nose to tail, with a wingspan of 40.5m and a tail soaring to just under 11m high, the Hercules is too large for the museum’s exhibition halls.
So, the museum has launched a campaign to raise the more than $16 million needed to build a new home for the Hercules and its sister aircraft – the Lockheed P-3K2 Orion.
