Last chance to solve 60-year mystery of missing 'honeymoon flight'

Friday, 10 February 2023

The de Havilland Dragonfly aircraft that went missing on February 12, 1962 on a scenic flight to Milford Sound. It is pictured at Milford Sound several weeks earlier.

New Zealand’s biggest aviation mystery has it all: a daring pilot, a vintage plane, a tourist flight to the most beautiful place on earth, and a honeymooning couple. But what happened to Dragonfly ZK-AFB, which disappeared more than 60 years ago, remains unknown despite decades of searching. On the eve of a major gathering about the flight’s fate, Mike White looks at three competing theories, and why officials, who could help solve the mystery, don’t seem to be listening to what they have to say.

This story is featured on Stuff’sThe Long Read podcast. Check it out by hitting the play button below, or find it on podcast apps likeApple Podcasts,Spotify orGoogle Podcasts.

Brian Chadwick finished his checks on the dark blue biplane, tilted back his pilot’s cap, and squinted towards the Southern Alps.

Clouds smothered the peaks, and a southerly wind chilled him as he walked to the airport’s control centre to check the forecast and file his flight plan.

It was 8.30am on Monday, February 12, 1962, and summer was struggling to break through in Christchurch where Chadwick, 47, ran a charter service taking tourists to the glaciers and Milford Sound.

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Two days before, he’d had to cancel a trip to Milford because of the weather, and today didn’t look much better.

But Chadwick figured if he could make his way down the east coast and across to Queenstown he could sneak through to Milford, where the sun was shining.

Around 9.30am, Chadwick entered the passenger terminal at Harewood Airport, and greeted his passengers.

Louis Rowan, 25, a cabinetmaker from Australia, had been booked on Saturday’s cancelled flight, but had rescheduled, trusting the weather would improve.

His holiday in New Zealand had been a mix: The scenery was great, but, he’d informed his stepfather a fortnight earlier in a letter, “The beer over here is the worst I have ever tasted.”

Darrell Shiels, 33, also from Australia, had reason to be wary of flying, his brother having died in a plane crash in England during World War II.

But the remaining passengers, Valerie Saville, 22, and Elwyn Saville, 20, were still celebrating, after marrying in Valerie’s hometown, Gisborne, two months earlier.

The sightseeing flight to Milford was part of an extended honeymoon, with the couple due to sail back to their new home in Sydney later in February.

All had paid £25 for the return trip, which was expected to take 2 hours 45 minutes each way.

The man flying them to Milford was an experienced pilot, with Chadwick having clocked up 6000 hours behind the controls.

Originally from England, Chadwick served with the Royal Air Force in World War II, before immigrating to New Zealand.

Once here, he’d pioneered scenic flights to the glaciers and fiords with his company, Air Charter, flying the Christchurch-Milford Sound route 130 times, garnering a reputation as someone whose aerial bravado matched his entrepreneurialism.

The passengers looked outside to the 1936 de Havilland Dragonfly sitting on the tarmac, and Chadwick noted it wasn’t the newest plane, but joked it would go slowly enough they would get all the photos they wanted.

They took their seats on board, Chadwick pointed out the blankets and Barley Sugars, and at 9.52am, Dragonfly ZK-AFB began turning its wooden propellers, taxied out, and took to the sky.

In Milford Sound, the officer in charge of flights, Mike Kerr, had Chadwick scheduled to arrive at 12.37pm.

He knew Chadwick well, and would usually give him some latitude on his due time because of varying weather conditions.

But shortly after 1pm, when Chadwick still hadn’t landed, Kerr alerted Christchurch’s control centre that the plane was overdue.

An hour later, a search and rescue operation was mobilised.

In what became New Zealand’s largest aerial search, 34 aircraft flew 167 sorties, for over 400 hours, in the following week.

But the Dragonfly had vanished.

The Reeve family, who have searched for the Dragonfly for more than a decade. From left, Bobbie, Llynnelley, Simon and Adam

Chadwick's normal route was to skip over the Alps, head down the West Coast past the glaciers, and thrill passengers with the drama of flying up Milford Sound.

But even before he took off, he realised the weather that Monday would probably stop him getting over the mountains, and he’d have to track south towards Queenstown, before heading to Milford.

After taking off, Chadwick made no radio contact.

However, numerous people saw or heard what they believed was the Dragonfly as it made its way south.

The woman’s boot discovered by the Reeve family in the Huxley Valley in 2015, which they believe might have come from Valerie Saville.

A series of reports makes a credible case that Chadwick flew past Fairlie and modern-day Twizel, then turned right up Lake Ōhau and carried on up the Hopkins Valley at its head, where it was seen by two separate deer cullers.

One said the plane then turned left into the Huxley Valley, which led to a low pass in the mountains Chadwick was aware of, that would have given him access to Haast and the West Coast.

And this is where Bobbie Reeve is adamant the plane crashed.

In 2008 he spied a copy of a book about the Dragonfly mystery and recognised Chadwick from when he sold the pilot a yacht, 50 years previously.

Thinking the book was too expensive, Reeve left it, but his family insisted he would regret not buying it.

The Reeve family will return to the Huxley Valley later this month to continue their search for the missing Dragonfly.

“So I went back,” remembers Reeve, “and I paid $70, which I should never have done, because about 13 years of my life have gone into this – all because of that book.”

Since then, Reeve, his wife Llynnelley, and sons Adam and Simon, from Kaiapoi, have made seven expeditions into the valleys around Lake Ōhau, often searching for six weeks.

In 2015, they found a woman’s boot high up in the Huxley Valley, which they believe may have come from Valerie Saville, given it was in an area so remote nobody else would have ever been there.

Reeve says the Huxley Valley’s terrain is too steep for the Dragonfly to have climbed out and over a pass in that weather.

“The only way out is back. And he didn’t come back out,” he says, noting the deer cullers would have heard the plane returning.

“I think he’s flown into a cloud and got lost, and he’s hit the mountain,” Reeve concludes, with the blunt certainty of someone convinced he’s found the truth.

Despite doubts about the shoe being the right age or size, and despite witness accounts of the plane in the Wānaka area, Reeve, 81, is adamant they’re very close to discovering the Dragonfly.

To that end, the family, who are making a documentary of their search, are returning to the Huxley River area in late February to continue searching.

“Will we find it? We’ve probably got a better chance than anybody has.”

The de Havilland Dragonfly, which disappeared in 1962, in Milford Sound in October 1961.

Not everyone agrees.

While nearly everybody applauds the Reeves’ efforts and determination, there are concerns they’ve become fixated with the Huxley area at the expense of plausible evidence pointing to the plane being elsewhere.

Lew Bone concurs with Bobbie Reeve’s theory that Chadwick flew up the Huxley River, but that’s where any agreement abruptly ends.

Reeve says the plane crashed here in the bush or snow, unable to climb over the mountains.

But Bone points to a report from over the ridgeline, in the Dingle Burn which leads down to Lake Hāwea, where farmer James Gillespie heard a twin-engine plane flying south after 11am.

And then around 11.30am, four people at Mt Aspiring station, near Wānaka, heard a plane in the clouds above.

Supporting Bone’s theory are reports from hunters who saw objects or disturbed trees in the Rainbow Valley near Mt Aspiring soon after; and legendary helicopter pilot Alan Duncan seeing a plane’s wing there in 1972, as the downwash from his rotors parted the bush.

Paul Powell, who led Otago’s search and rescue team at the time, and searched for the Dragonfly for many years afterwards, also believed it ended up in this area – eventually succeeding in having a nearby mountain named Dragonfly Peak.

But after 30 years of fascination and frustration, trying to solve the Dragonfly riddle, Bone says he has little interest in unprovable theories and talkfests any more.

Gavin Grimmer, who has spent many years searching for the Dragonfly and other missing aircraft.

“Prayers are good – but I’m more interested in action.”

To that end, he’s published a paper outlining his evidence, and is using it to try to get funding for a search in the Rainbow Valley.

He’s approached the de Havilland company; a US entrepreneur with interests in Wanaka; an Australian billionaire; New Zealand companies and prominent individuals.

“To date, no success,” Bone says ruefully.

But he’s not giving up, and stresses the urgency of beginning a search before snowfall overwhelms summer this year.

A de Havilland Dragonfly, like the one that disappeared in 1962, at Croydon Aviation Heritage Centre in Mandeville, near Gore. This is one of only two Dragonfly aircraft still flying in the world.

“Everyone’s dying off, people’s memories are dying off, relatives of the victims are no longer young.”

Bone says many people have overthought and overcomplicated the events of February 12, 1962.

Instead, he relies on 20 witnesses whose reports create a logical trail all the way from Christchurch to Mt Aspiring, and says commonsense makes the answer to the Dragonfly mystery obvious.

“I’m 98% sure there’s aircraft debris lying on the eastern slopes of the Rainbow Valley.

Normally thousands would make this trip each day — now it sits empty. But not for long (video published April 2022).

“I could be wrong. It could be on the West Coast.

“But there’s only one way to find out.”

Gavin Grimmer, the third of the main Dragonfly searchers, used to think its wreck was on the West Coast, somewhere up the Jacobs River, south of Fox Glacier.

But he now admits he was wrong, and concedes the plane flew over Aspiring National Park, where Bone believes it went down.

However, Grimmer thinks it went even further south, and got close to Milford Sound before crashing.

He won’t say exactly where, wanting to reveal his theory at a major gathering about the Dragonfly’s disappearance in Christchurch on Sunday, February 12..

Grimmer, 69, from Hawke’s Bay, began searching for the Dragonfly in “2003 or 2005 – I’ve lost track – the old memory is getting a bit knackered.

“It’s like looking for a needle in the haystack. But the problem is, you’ve got to work out where the haystack is first.

“Eventually I think we’ll get there, but it’s a long slow process. You’ve got to spend the time and eliminate one thing after another.”

As for Reeve and Bone with their differing theories, “basically I wish them well – at least they’ve got off the couch and are doing something”, says Grimmer.

“I don’t care who finds it, just as long as the blinkin’ thing’s found.”

Ironically, less than a fortnight after Sunday’s Dragonfly gathering that will air the three main theories about where the plane could be, a huge search for it will take place – but not where any of the three groups think it is.

Operation Dragonfly, organised by police, will scour an area in South Westland near the Jacobs River, following the discovery by whitebaiters of what appears to be an aircraft harness, and a piece of carpet, believed to have been washed down from the mountains.

While an overseas expert suggested the harness could come from a Dragonfly, many others are far less sure.

Captain Brian Waugh, who knew the Dragonfly pilot Brian Chadwick better than anyone, was the first to search for his colleague when the Dragonfly disappeared en route to Milford Sound. He continued searching for years afterwards.

Among them is Rev Richard Waugh, New Zealand’s foremost aviation historian, whose book on the Dragonfly mystery, Lost … Without Trace?, galvanised interest in the plane’s disappearance.

Waugh’s father, Brian, was a good friend of Chadwick, and a fellow pilot, and searched for the crash site for many years after the accident.

Brian always believed the most likely scenario was that Chadwick never made it over the Alps, but flew down through the Mackenzie Country, as Bone and Reeve believe.

Richard Waugh says all but one of his father’s flying contemporaries shared the same view.

To that end, he is frustrated police will pour enormous resources into searching on the West Coast, based on a seat harness that Waugh says is “clearly not from the Dragonfly” – something he has told them.

“I don’t think the police have listened at all.”

Police insist they have worked closely with “subject-matter experts”, but haven’t consulted any of those who’ve searched for the Dragonfly, says a mystified Waugh.

“I wish the New Zealand police would be a little bit more attentive to people who have been working for years, and interviewing people, and following leads.”

Police remain tight-lipped about their operation, despite having done preliminary reconnaissance last year, and won’t say exactly where the search is (“to protect any possible scene”), or what scale it is.

However, Stuff understands more than 100 people will be involved, accompanied by a television film crew.

The prospect of an extensive search far from where most think the Dragonfly ended up is dispiriting for Lew Bone.

“I just wish they’d divert that 100-man search effort into the Rainbow Valley.

The Rev Richard Waugh, who has taken up his father’s search to discover what happened to the missing Dragonfly and those on board.

“If they did, they’d find something.”

But Mark Chadwick, a grandson of the Dragonfly’s pilot, is fully supportive of the police effort and has been kept informed of their plans.

His father, Tony, one of Brian Chadwick’s two sons, was always sceptical of the private searchers and questioned their motivation, and Mark Chadwick says his family prefer to leave any investigation to professionals.

“It’s a mystery that’s waiting to be solved, isn’t it?

“We’ve always thought that one day there would be hunters or trampers who’d just stumble over it, and I think that’s inevitable at some point in time.”

But just when is a question John Rowan has been asking for years.

The brother of victim Louis Rowan, John was 15 when the Dragonfly disappeared.

He was on his way home from school when a neighbour came out and asked him if he knew about the crash. By the time he got home, police and press were already there.

More than 40 years later, he visited the South Island and passed through the mountains that swallowed his brother, and wrote: “To be lost in this country is to be lost forever.”

Rowan fully supports and is incredibly grateful to those who have spent years searching for Louis, and has had considerable contact with Gavin Grimmer, Bobbie Reeve and Richard Waugh.

A de Havilland Dragonfly, like the one that disappeared in 1962, at Croydon Aviation Heritage Centre in Mandeville, near Gore.

And he and family members have flown from Australia to be at tomorrow’s public event, organised by Waugh, which will mark the 61st anniversary of the tragedy, and bring together most of those who have researched the Dragonfly’s disappearance.

Rowan says Louis’s death knocked his mother badly.

“Not knowing what happened, and where he was, weighed very heavily on her.

“Our family is all of the consensus we would like to put this to rest, and if there are any remains of Louis, to bring them home and put them in the family grave where Mum and Dad are, and it would put an end to this ongoing mystery.”

In the wake of the Dragonfly’s disappearance, questions began to be asked about Brian Chadwick and whether he should have been flying to Milford Sound that day.

It emerged the plane was overloaded (though Richard Waugh points out the extra weight in fuel would have burnt off in the first hour).

Chadwick’s maintenance records for the plane had been improperly altered.

And the weather was marginal, in many people’s minds.

Money was tight as Chadwick established his new tourist business, and the fact he’d cancelled a trip two days before hadn’t helped that.

When Bobbie Reeve asked a pilot what might have caused Chadwick to fly through cloud in the mountains that day, the pilot replied: “His bank manager.”

But Richard Waugh says a more fundamental problem was that the Dragonfly simply wasn’t an appropriate plane for alpine trips.

Chadwick usually used another better-suited aircraft, but it was out of action, so the back-up Dragonfly was brought into service.

Its carburettors were known to ice up in cloud, causing the engines to stall. And if it lost one engine, it struggled to maintain altitude.

“He was a pretty darn good pilot,” says Waugh, “experienced in that area.”

“But he took risks, he lived on the edge, and the aircraft was 1930s vintage.”

Waugh says Sunday’s gathering is probably the last realistic chance to get people together with living memories of the crash, and hopefully solve what happened to the Dragonfly.

At the very least, it allows differing theories to be canvassed and critiqued.

As Bobbie Reeve says, “Prove us wrong – prove us wrong. We don’t mind.”

Waugh remains confident the plane can still be found – there will be engines, mountings, tyres that will have easily survived six decades.

But the key to the riddle is to launch searches, he says.

“The reality is, we’re all talking about theories, because until the wreckage is found, who knows?”

A public event to mark the anniversary of the Dragonfly’s disappearance will take place on Sunday, February 12, from 11am until 5pm at the Canterbury Aero Club, 25 Aviation Drive, Harewood Aviation Park, McLeans Island, Christchurch. Presentations from searchers begin at 1.15pm. For more details, contact Rev Richard Waugh: 022 533 9400.