Building site job at Ohakea leads William Fogden to Air Force career
'I have always had a passion for the Defence Force as I have seen how it has helped shape my dad's life, his discipline, work ethic and the friends he has made.
'Dad wanted me to join the Navy. I was hesitant at first but soon came around to the idea – initially, I wanted to join the communications trade or as a Navy pilot for the Seasprites.'
However, a stint working for a concrete company after he left school sparked an interest in the Air Force.
Fogden worked at RNZAF Base Ohakea on the No. 3 Squadron Hangar and the new P-8 Poseidon hangar.
'It was so cool and really reinforced my decision to join the Air Force.'
Fogden said he hoped to one day be a pilot flying the NH90s but was excited for the next part of his training as a helicopter loadmaster.
'I can't wait to start my trade training in the A109 light helicopters. I know it's still going to be a tough journey to get there but I am also excited for the challenge.'
The highlight of the recruit course had been meeting fellow aviators and creating friends and memories for life, he said.
He also enjoyed firing the Defence Force's MARS-L rifle and found his work with building computers and remote control cars helped.
'I noticed this when we took apart and put back together the MARS-L. I could do it really fast and I was used to working with small parts.
'There have been some challenges though. Time management has been hard, especially at the start – it was quite overwhelming. But it [is] a lot easier now as a lot of what we have done has become habit.'
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NZ Herald
25-05-2025
- NZ Herald
81 years after he died in World War II, a young aviator goes home
'The thought of watching his casket go in where my mom and her parents are … it's going to be something,' Kelly's niece, Diane Christie, said. 'We're all going to be a big pile of mush. 'For somebody that none of us knew,' she said. The wreckage was found in 2017 by a Project Recover team, which used the family's extensive research to zero in on the site. In 2023, elite Navy divers descended in a pressurised diving bell and over several weeks recovered Kelly's remains with those of three other members of the B-24's 11-man crew. The plane was in 225 feet of water, said Lieutenant Commander Ted Kinney, the Navy's officer in charge. The men wore dive suits heated with hot water, and breathed air that was a mixture of oxygen and helium. He said he participated in one of the dives and found a piece of a human skull as he went through the wreckage. 'It was the first piece of osseous material that we discovered,' he said. 'So we knew we were on the right spot, and we knew that we were going to be able to find people and bring them home,' he said in a telephone interview Tuesday. 'It was incredibly humbling,' he said. Kelly was the plane's bombardier. The divers recovered a ring that said 'bombardier' on it, and experts are certain it was Kelly's. Also recovered were his dog tags and the dog tags of two other crewmen. 'I'm just feeling a lot of gratitude right now,' said Scott Althaus, Kelly's first cousin once removed and a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He headed the family's quest to learn the details of Kelly's fate and did months of research on the project. 'I'm sure I will be flooded with emotions,' he said of the burial in a recent telephone interview. 'How can it be that our family is living what should be an impossible story? What made it possible was many people along the way stopping and remembering.' Another niece, Kathy Borst, said: 'I can't even begin to believe that it's truly happening.' 'Only four sets out of 11 of the remains were found,' she said in a recent telephone interview. 'What were the odds that we were going to be one of them?' Advertise with NZME. The project also produced 'hard moments,' she said. During a Government briefing about the identification, one expert showed the family an image of a crack in Kelly's skull where his head had struck a part of the plane as it crashed. 'I start visualising, 'Oh, this is what happened when my uncle died,'' she said. 'It was very, very, very painful.' 'I'm really glad my mom was not alive' she said. (Borst's mother was Kelly's sister.) 'I don't think that would have made this a worthwhile thing for her.' Now they can rest together, she said: 'They couldn't be reconnected ever in life, but they could be lying in the same ground.' Kelly's remains arrived Friday at the San Jose Mineta International Airport from the DPAA's laboratory in Hawaii, where they were officially identified via DNA in November. The plane was greeted by relatives, an honour guard and a water salute from airport fire equipment. He is to be buried in St Michael's cemetery in Livermore, about 40 miles east of San Francisco, after a religious service at St Michael's Catholic Church. It's the same church where a requiem Mass was said for him after he was declared dead in 1944, according to his family and an old newspaper report. Kelly's B-24 was nicknamed 'Heaven Can Wait'. (The name probably came from the title of a 1943 movie starring the actor Don Ameche.) Painted on the nose was a racy image of a woman with angel's wings. On March 11, 1944, the plane was shot down during a bombing mission off the north coast of the island of New Guinea, just north of Australia. A crewman on another plane saw 'Heaven Can Wait' catch fire. Three men jumped or fell out. The tail section broke off. The bomber plunged into water and sank near a remote bay off the Bismarck Sea in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. There were no survivors. The 11 men on board were declared killed in action, and their bodies were ruled unrecoverable. Four months earlier, Kelly and three of his buddies had attended a Thanksgiving dinner for 23 people at his parents' home on South L St in Livermore. On a lighthearted guest register the four signed in as crewmen on a 'Big Ass Bird'. After that Thanksgiving, Kelly's family never saw him again, his relatives said. But two weeks after his death, they got a letter addressed 'Dearest Mom, Dad & Betty'. He had written it two days before his final mission. He talked about sleeping late, getting cigarettes and ice cream, and watching movies at his base. There was no word about combat. 'Give my love to everyone & please be happy & take care of yourselves,' he wrote. 'All my love always, your loving son, Tom.' Kelly's two nieces and nephew, Tom Borst, said they knew little about him while growing up. Christie said they knew only that he hadn't come home from the war. She knew that their mother, his sister, hated the song 'I'll be home for Christmas,' because Kelly had hoped to be home by Christmas 1944. When they visited their grandparents' house, 'we'd go into his bedroom', she said. 'It was a little bit of a shrine. And we all remember it … I can see it vividly. It was always a little bit dark.' Kathy Borst said she remembered visiting the cemetery 'most Memorial Days of my childhood'. She said she was too young to know why. In one of his final letters home, Kelly told his family: 'I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I'm just telling you to appreciate what you have … The men fighting here for everyone, they're doing it for your freedom.'
RNZ News
24-05-2025
- RNZ News
Sunken Manawanui listed as $77m write-off in Budget
The HMNZS Manawanui ran aground on a reef off the Samoan island of Upolu on 5 October last year, before catching fire and sinking, however all 75 passengers and crew were rescued. Photo: New Zealand Defence Force A $77 million write-off of the Navy ship Manawanui, which sunk off Samoa last October , is contained in the Budget papers on defence. These also show $32m in costs booked in for 2024-25, for the clean-up, salvage, and "other remedial activities" at the shipwreck. The dive-and-seafloor-survey ship, which the navy had had for five years, was insured for salvaging operations but not replacement. It is not being replaced, and the Budget noted that its loss would reduce "warfare support" by the NZDF in coastal zones. The decrease in the expected level of "readiness" for this type of support, which is set by the government, consequently has dropped from 98 percent to 85 percent: "The decrease ... is a result of the loss of the HMNZS Manawanui," said the defence vote. Before it sank, the ship had cleared unexploded bombs in Tuvalu and surveyed for them in Fiji, Niue and Vanuatu, as well as giving humanitarian support during the tropical cyclone season. That aid gap now might have to be plugged by the ship Canterbury , defence papers said. Budget 2025, under the sub-head "significant trends", also stated the sinking featured as the reason for an increase in output expenses in 2024-25. A military-led inquiry in April found a dozen weaknesses aboard and onshore contributed to the sinking, including around training, leadership and preparation, and that the ship was not up to the task. Over 60 people were on the ground in Samoa within days to clean up, with another 30 in reserve, in October 2024. Salvors took off fuel, though 600,000 litres went unaccounted for - with some of that burned off in a fire after it hit the reef. They then removed other debris, finishing up in early May. An independent report about the wreck by pollution experts has been underway, and Samoan authorities have also got testing done since October. RNZ in March requested the release of environmental test reports, but the NZDF said in May: "Unfortunately your request of 21 March 2025 was missed", and it would now consider it Previously, the Manawanui was held up by defence as a lesson of what to do. It had "demonstrated that the delivery of defence capabilities can be undertaken in a fiscally responsible manner, while also enhancing those capabilities to better meet the demands of the future", the 2019 Defence Capability Plan (DCP) said. The 2025 DCP forecast that the "future fleet" would need dive and survey support, but that this would be by using "other platforms" and would have to wait as the immediate focus was on sea drones. However, Budget 2025 does not list sea drones among the 15 DCP projects it would fund. All up, the Budget puts $2.7 billion of capital and $563m operating funding for these 15 "priority" projects; the amounts were mostly blanked out for "commercial" reasons (Defence now must negotiate to actually acquire the various systems, in an international arms market where demand is spiralling as many countries increase military spending). While sea drones are missing in Budget 2025, aerial drones feature, along with communications and anti-tank missile upgrades, plus the pre-announced largest capital outlay of $2 billion-plus to replace naval helicopters. A relatively tiny $30m is going on small-scale projects, including to do with space. Fleet replacement would have to wait till the next phase, the DCP said in April. "This will allow for the adoption of new and emerging technology to achieve transformational change for the Navy, including across training, trades, and infrastructure." Budget 2025 also set aside large sums for more naval and other operations, plus training - $150m a year - and to maintain the three services' capabilities: $39m for the navy, $50m for the army and $60m for the air force. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Scoop
21-05-2025
- Scoop
RNZAF NH90 Formation Flight: A Maintenance Success
Seven of the Royal New Zealand Air Force's fleet of eight NH90 helicopters have taken to the Manawatū skies in a rare large formation flight. Tuesday's flight was a testament to the hard work of No. 3 Squadron's maintainers at RNZAF Base Ohakea, who ensured the helicopters were available for the flight, NH90 Training Section commander Squadron Leader Andrew Stewart says. There was also an element of the stars aligning with all aircrew available and only one of the fleet undergoing scheduled maintenance, he said. 'It was planned a few days in advance. Duties were delegated and it all came together.' Contingency planning played an important role in the flight and on the day, low cloud meant a last-minute change of route away from the built-up areas of Palmerston North and Feilding. Instead, it was over rural areas where the aircraft could fly at a lower height. For many of the crew it was their first large formation flight and was valuable training for this year's Australian Exercise Talisman Sabre, where they will be flying in formation alongside different nations' aircraft. 'It's not often we have seven helicopters available, and the formation flight opportunity was due to the hard work by maintenance staff - you've got to take your hat off to them,' Squadron Leader Stewart said. The aircraft have recently been fitted with updated software with improved navigation and radio features. The NH90s are the first fleet in the world to have the upgrades installed and the maintainers completed it well before deadline. Avionics technicians Corporal Ben Crowley and Corporal Rory McLachlan were part of the team to install the new software, and it was gratifying to see it used, they said. They said it was great to see the fleet flying in formation – the first time in their memory that so many had taken to the sky at once. 'It's not very often we have so many serviceable aircraft flying at the same time,' Corporal Crowley said. It was a testament to their tight team that the flight was able to happen, he said. 'Everybody chipped in and to get all seven up is a big win for us.' 'We always try to have as many aircraft as possible serviceable, but we have to work around scheduled maintenance as well.' No. 3 Squadron maintainers have an enviable international reputation of having the highest NH90 serviceability rate in the world, with the fleet so far clocking up 18,250 flying hours and availability to fly sitting about 70 per cent. The next goal for the team was to get all eight helicopters flying at once, but 'the stars definitely need to align for that', Corporal McLachlan said. One of the roles for helicopter loadmaster Sergeant Evan McKenzie was keeping an eye on the distance between the aircraft in the formation. 'I was working with the pilots to make sure we were at a safe, but appropriate distance. 'It was pretty special; it's not often you get to fly in a seven-ship formation.' Co-pilot Flight Lieutenant Jason Anderson was also keeping a close eye on the gap between each helicopter, which was about 40-50m apart. 'The main outcome of the flight was a thank you to the hard work done by the maintenance team who made the fleet serviceable. To have them fly with us in the back while we worked on training outcomes in the front was epic.'
