The mystery of the Dragonfly in the Rainbow (Wanaka SAR)

Grey and gloomy cloud hugged the granite mountaintops, and choked the high passes.

Streams rushed from melting glaciers and vaulted into freefall, before hitting the valley floor.

 

 

In the bush, four teams from Wānaka’s Search and Rescue tried to make their way through a tangle of tree trunks and undergrowth and mossy rocks on 45 degree slopes.

They were hunting for any signs of a de Havilland Dragonfly that went missing in February 1962 – vanishing somewhere between Christchurch and Milford Sound on a scenic flight.

It sparked the country’s largest air search in the days that followed, pilots repeatedly scouring the Southern Alps, turning up nothing.

But the mystery never disappeared, the fascination with the Dragonfly’s fate never fading.

So here they were, more than 60 years on, more than 40 volunteers zeroing in on a string of clues that suggested the plane may have crashed on the tussocked tops or bushed flanks of the Rainbow Valley.

As they clawed and crawled through their way up from the valley, the thought that there were easier ways to spend a Saturday inevitably crossed searchers’ minds.

But you don’t find missing planes by talking about them.

And mysteries don’t get solved by sitting at home.

 

 

When pilot Brian Chadwick took off from Christchurch Airport on February 12, 1962, he knew he would be flying into similar conditions.

Cloud was smothering the Alps, making getting across to the West Coast difficult.

But Chadwick, a pioneer of scenic flights in New Zealand, had 6000 hours of flying experience, and a variety of routes he could try to get his four passengers to their destination of Milford Sound, where they were due at 12.27pm, in time for lunch while gazing at Mitre Peak.

On board were Louis Rowan, 25, and Darrell Shiels, 33, both from Australia.

Alongside them in the 1936 biplane were Valerie Saville, 22, and Elwyn Saville, 20, who 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 that month.

 

 

At 1pm, when Chadwick and the Dragonfly hadn’t reached Milford Sound, the alarm was raised that they were overdue.

And in the week that followed, 34 aircraft flew 167 sorties, for over 400 hours, but nothing was found, the Dragonfly swallowed somewhere on its route south.

Debate over where it might have crashed has continued for decades.

And in recent years, three very different views have emerged, each put forward by people who’ve become obsessed with solving the Dragonfly riddle.

Bobby Reeve and his family believe the plane never made it out of the Huxley Valley, near Lake Ōhau, and have spent years meticulously combing the country there.

Gavin Grimmer was initially convinced Chadwick made it over the Alps, but crashed near the Jacobs River, south of Fox Glacier. But now he thinks Chadwick stayed east of the divide, and came down much closer to Milford Sound.

 

 

Lew Bone says the Dragonfly is somewhere in between.

For more than 30 years the former cop and Mapua businessman has pored over reports from those who said they saw or heard the Dragonfly that day.

He’s interviewed every witness still alive, and eventually pinpointed a small valley in Mt Aspiring National Park where he’s certain the plane went down, after trying to sneak through a cloudy col to the West Coast.

Bone’s efforts and evidence eventually made their way to Bill Day, renowned entrepreneur and businessman, shipwreck hunter, and Wānaka Search and Rescue (SAR) chairman.

 

 

Day was a sucker for solving a mystery. He’d spent nearly 40 years and five expeditions trying to find the wreck of the gold-laden General Grant in the Auckland Islands.

And when he read what Bone had come up with, he figured he might be able to help.

So he suggested that if Bone could isolate an area within Rainbow Valley where he thought the Dragonfly might be, the Wānaka SAR team could combine a search for it with a training exercise.

Bone, who’d spent years trying to get funding for a physical search, couldn’t believe the serendipitous chain of events.

So, on November 3, he flew to Wānaka, walked into a room of elite searchers, and handed over everything he knew.

 

 

This is what Bone knew.

A series of witnesses had reported hearing a plane that day, all the way from Canterbury to the Mt Aspiring region.

Two people at Mt Aspiring Station heard a plane circling, around the time the Dragonfly would have been in the area.

Six weeks after the Dragonfly’s disappearance, two hunters spotted something metallic on the Kitchener Glacier above Rainbow Valley.

The following year, two other hunters saw something shiny high on Rainbow Valley’s east side, and broken treetops in the area.

And in 1972, helicopter pilot Alan Duncan was hovering in the Rainbow Valley when the downwash from his rotors revealed what he described as an aeroplane wing.

 

 

Others, including mountaineer and chief Otago search and rescue officer Paul Powell, also believed the Dragonfly was in the Rainbow Valley, and made numerous searches for it.

A later search in 2003 discovered a piece of wood just below the bushline which appeared to be manufactured rather than natural.

While there’s no doubt some components from the Dragonfly will still survive – engines, metal cables, wheels, etc. - much of the wood and fabric that made up the plane would have rotted or degraded.

Moreover, anything that remained would likely now be covered by moss, swallowed by undergrowth, scattered by gales, or washed down flooded streams.

 

 

But as Wānaka SAR searchers gathered at 7am last Saturday, fuelled by coffee and fresh pies from early-opening bakeries, there was optimism something could be found.

As well as the evidence accumulated by Bone, scans of the area had identified 10 objects of interest that appeared to be human-made.

“It’s really solid evidence,” exercise coordinator Jean Kenney told the teams at the briefing. “We just need to go and find it.”

“Best SAR team in New Zealand,” Bill Day hollered, as gear-laden groups in fleece and Gore-Tex filed out. “Good hunting.”

 

 

By mid-morning, three teams had been dropped by helicopter to scour the steep bush on several of the valley’s spurs, along with a swift-water/canyon team that would descend a gorge bordering the search area.

On the valley floor, Kenney coordinated movements from advance base, where another team lifted off to carry out a close search of the hillside from a helicopter.

For six hours, the teams picked their way up and down the search zone, through saturated vegetation, and near-vertical streams that quickly soaked them.

 

 

At advance base, Day fed wood to a portable pizza oven, which in turn fed troops and warmed their hands while they waited for reports from the field. He made coffee, and produced a fruit cake baked by his wife, Karen.

Day, who flew his own helicopter to the site to help with the exercise, was fascinated by the Dragonfly’s story, but also an utterly ardent supporter of the SAR members searching for it.

“They’re quintessential good bastards, who get out of warm beds on stormy nights, and go and look for strangers.”

 

 

One by one, the teams reported by radio they’d found nothing.

Some were lifted to new areas by helicopter, but the results were the same.

The Dragonfly either wasn’t there, or was simply too well hidden.

On the valley floor, Kenney, Bone, and Sergeant Darren Cranfield from Wānaka police bashed and pushed their way through unruly bush to the coordinates of a site of interest.

But when they got there, it was so overgrown, even using an ice axe to hack at the surface proved pointless.

Whatever secrets there might have been – an old hunters’ ammunition dump, or a piece of plane – had been concealed by time and tree roots.

 

 

Kea drifted down the valley.

Teams were extracted by chopper or walked out.

Everyone agreed it was dead tough country to search. To find something, you’d almost need to fall over it, and then scrape away six decades of decay.

As searcher Ian Evans put it: “It’s a needle in a haystack. And you’re not even sure where the haystack is.”

 

 

Back at SAR base in Wānaka, gear was slung in the sun to dry, stories were swapped, and there was an inevitable air of disappointment they’d not uncovered any clues as to the Dragonfly’s location.

Safety officer Aaron Nicholson, a stalwart of more than 20 years in Wānaka SAR, pointed to the positives: They’d all come back safe from very tricky terrain, and it had been a very real tune-up of their skills.

“Train hard, fight easy.

“And sometimes what you don’t find is a big clue to where you might search next. I don’t know if that’s of some consolation, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.”

 

 

Darren Cranfield, who was new to his police SAR role, described it as “a good eye-opener to the backcountry on a shit day”.

But everyone knew the days got a lot more shit than that, the mountains more angry, and often they’d be thrust into the midst of it.

For Lew Bone, who’d spent years, decades, hoping for a search in the Rainbow Valley, there were mixed emotions.

“I feel frustrated, in that all the evidence continues to suggest that scenario.

“But it’s a difficult task. And it’s going to have to involve more people and more effort – it’s not a simple thing to do.

“But am I disappointed? No. Especially having met all the people here and seen what they put into it.

“I’m convinced there’s aircraft debris up there – and by sheer elimination, it can’t be anything else but the Dragonfly.”

 

 

Bone said he’d done as much as he could, and now had to leave it to others to assess his evidence, and carry on searching if they wanted.

But he couldn’t just leave something that had seized him for so long.

Days later, back watering his garden in Mapua rather than getting soaked in Mt Aspiring, Bone was already thinking about possible next moves.

For him, the underlying premise was unchanged: All the evidence said the Dragonfly ended its flight in the Rainbow Valley that thundery morning.

The hard bit was finding it.

The even harder bit was that every year that slipped by, the task got tougher.