Belated fame for NZ's pioneering aviator

Published on Monday 31 March 2003 01:00

MONTHS before the Wright Brothers took flight into the history books, a little-known New Zealand farmer was winging his way into obscurity.

On 31 March, 1903, Richard Pearse flew his bamboo monoplane over the lush pastures of his farm. It was his first successful flight. Several months later, on 17 December, Orville Wright took to the air in the Wright Flyer over the North Carolina sand dunes.

Orville and his brother Wilbur landed to world-wide acclaim. Richard Pearse crashed unceremoniously onto a hedge, and was almost entirely forgotten - until now. It is time New Zealand’s own aviation pioneer got the recognition he deserves, too, supporters say.

The reason was the nature of the Wrights’ flight. While several others are thought to have got their machines off the ground first, the Wrights won acclaim because theirs was the "first powered, sustained and controlled flight by an airplane", said Dick Knapinski, spokesman for the Experimental Aircraft Association in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Pearse himself conceded the honour to the Wrights, agreeing that none of his flights was fully controlled - most ended in the hedges around his farm that grew high because he was too busy working on his plane to trim them.

A self-taught aviator and inventor, "Bamboo" Pearse - he also built a bicycle out of bamboo - got his plane into the air at least five times before the Wrights, enthusiasts say.

A nephew, Richard Pearse, 83, said his uncle "deserves all the recognition that’s going".

"He got airborne before the Wright brothers," Mr Pearse said from his home in Timaru, a city near his late uncle’s farm.

Pearse’s backers are pushing for more recognition for his work. The New Zealand division of the Royal Aeronautical Society has nominated him for the First Flight Hall of Fame at Kitty Hawk, but says that with only one inductee a year, the earliest he may be considered is 2005.

"He should be in there," said the society’s local vice president, Hugh McCarroll. "It will be appropriate recognition of his amazing work."

Pearse is getting attention this year from the Experimental Aircraft Association. He and other pioneer aviators will be featured before the United States group’s planned flight of a Wright Flyer replica on 17 December at the dunes near Kitty Hawk, Mr Knapinski said.

Although there is little physical evidence authenticating Pearse’s flights, some of the plane’s parts have survived and his devotees insist there is no doubt he took to the air before the Wrights.

At least 20 family members and other residents of the tiny settlement of Waitohi, near Timaru, reported witnessing the first flight of the aircraft, which was powered by an engine Pearse crafted on his forge.

Richard Pearse said his father, Warne, told of being among those present for that 31 March flight and for other flights. "My father used to help him, spinning the propeller to start the engine."

A local photographer took a picture of the plane stuck on top of a hedge, but the photo was lost in a flood, said Jack Melhopt, chairman of the Timaru Aviation Heritage Centre.

Treated as a crank by many of his neighbours and even some in his family, Pearse eventually ended up in a psychiatric hospital, where he died, on 29 July, 1953, aged 75.