For 60 years NZ has searched its ‘Bermuda Triangle’ for the Dragonfly a plane that got lost in the clouds – ABC News – ABC News

Before the 1960s, tourism in New Zealand was still a fledgling industry and one enterprising young pilot knew the country's natural beauty was best seen from the sky.

Brian Chadwick had been in the Royal Air Force in World War II and by the 1950s he was ready to leave Europe.

He took his young family to New Zealand where, he believed, he could build a business that would become a major player on the South Island tourism scene.

Chadwick was the first pilot to run non-stop scenic flights from Christchurch to Milford Sound apioneer who improvised and innovated his way to success.

For 25 pounds per person, tourists could sit in the back of Chadwick's Dragonfly or Dominie planes as he flew through the peaks of New Zealand's Southern Alps.

A precious home movie made more than 60 years ago reveals what it was like onboard.It would alsobecome a significant piece of evidence.

Sitting in a war-era plane made of mostly fabric and wood, the film shows how passengers weaved through ancient peaks of more than 3,000 metres elevation.

They would get close to the snow-topped mountains that would be impossible to climb and the glaciers that had carved a path between them.

Often with a full load of passengers and full tanks of fuel, these small machines would go up against the conditions of the day.

Chadwick would clear the mountains before heading down the west coast.

The view was spectacular, but as with so many tourism experiences in New Zealand, it came with risk.

On February 12, 1962, Chadwick and his guests set out on a journey that would go down in New Zealand aviation history.

Normally, Chadwick would land at the spectacular Milford Sound and his guests would have lunch and enjoy the scenery before making the return trip.

Chadwick had flown this route more than 100 times before and he knew the limitations of his aircraft.

He'd cancelled flights over recent days due to weather, but on this Monday morning, he met his passengers at Christchurch Airport, took off and headed for the hills.

But later that day, a voice on the end of a phone line would say: "Your cobber Chadwick is an hour overdue at Milford Sound. We are a little worried."

The person receiving the call was fellow pilot Brian Waugh, who would go on to spend the rest of his life wondering what happened to his friend.

Chadwick and his passengers had set off from Christchurch in his Dragonfly plane, but they never made it to Milford Sound or any of the other airstrips dotted throughout the Southern Alps regions the Dragonfly was missing.

Because thevast and rugged landscape that makes the perfect backdrop to a scenic flight becomes treacherous in the wrong conditions and impossible in a search-and-rescue operation.

Chadwick, his passengers and the Dragonfly have now been missing for more than 60 years in what is widely considered New Zealand's greatest aviation mystery.

There were three Australians on board that day and, from across the ditch, their families have never stopped hoping they'll be found.

One family is appealing to the New Zealand authorities to again look for Chadwick and his plane and to listen to those who have been most dedicated to finding it for decades.

Because despite their best efforts, time is very much running out.

It was in the 1950s that Chadwick convinced his former colleague and friend Brian Waugh to also leave the United Kingdom and raise a family in Aotearoa.

The two Brians spent years working for smaller airlines, pioneering routes across the South Island, butChadwick would eventually launch his own charter flight business.

His grandson Mark Chadwick now lives in Australia and told the ABC how Chadwick was trying to establish himself.

"With a whole lot of others that came across to Australia and New Zealand, post World War II, he wassetting up a new life," he said.

"He was very entrepreneurial, a good pilot, he was a good engineer."

Mark was born after the Dragonfly went missing, but the story of his grandfather and his place in New Zealand's history has long been part of the Chadwick family.

By 1962 there were a small group of pilots darting across the South Island, ferrying tourists back and forth, stopping to refuel, and forging friendships along the way.

Chadwick's fleet included a Dominie and Dragonfly. On the morning of February 12, the larger Dominie plane was out of action, so a flight plan was prepared for the Dragonfly.

A detailed first-hand account of that morning has been preserved in Brian Waugh's memoir.

Chadwick's plan was to fly directly from Christchurch to Milford Sound, but there were several airstrips across the region where he might have gone if he got into trouble.

Waugh recounts that as he entered the metrological office at Hokitika on February 12, the forecaster warned him: "Bit unusual this morning, Brian."

"Sunshine for you almost all the way 10 miles inland. Raining like hell in the ranges and rotten weather in Canterbury."

"Just over an hour later I landed in Haast in sunshine, picked up six passengers and headed home for the return trip," Waugh wrote.

He noted the forecaster was right, "while the coast weather was good, it was pitch black in the ranges".

"I smiled smugly. 'Chaddy will not be carrying any scenic passengers to Milford today' I thought."

Hours later, when Waugh picked up that phone call, he learnt Chadwick did take off from Christchurch, but never made it to Milford.

He also hadn't been seen at airstrips at Franz Josef, or Fox Glacier and now his pilot friends, and an official search and rescue effort, were scouring the region for his dragonfly.

It would later emerge that Chadwick probably decided to take a different route.

He had reportedly intimated to the duty forecaster at Christchurch that because of the weather he would probably fly to Milford by way of "Mackenzie Country" a region to the east of the Southern Alps that includes the small townships of Twizel and Fairlie.

To this day, there is debate over whether Chadwick and the Dragonfly made it over the mountains.

Brian Waugh's son Richard was just five when the Dragonfly went missing and says this story has been part of his life ever since.

"I do remember as a child people coming to our house and sitting around the oak table, these sort of deer stalkers, outdoorsy sort of guys, talking to dad about the inhospitable terrain of the Southern Alps, South Westland, the bush, the mountains," Richard told the ABC.

He said his father Brian would constantly ask: "Where is Chadwick? Where is the Dragonfly?"

Every day for the following five years that he remained on that route, as he flew over a ravine, or down a valley, Brian Waugh would look for his friend.

"That's quite powerful isn't it, every day a friend searching for years and still found nothing," Richard said.

In the years since Brian died, Richard has kept the Dragonfly story alive.

He became a historian, with a particular interest in New Zealand's aviation history. And he authored the definitive book on what the world does know about what happened to the Dragonfly.

In Lost Without a Trace, Richard documents five other aircraft that went missing in the same area, calling it "New Zealand's Bermuda Triangle", a label he knew would get attention.

Since publishing, a helicopter has been found, but the others remain missing.

Together with those on the Dragonfly manifest, 21 people have vanished in the area between Haast on the West Coast, Mt Aspiring and down to Milford Sound.

"I describe this lower area of the South Island as New Zealand's Bermuda triangle," Richard said.

It is a vast area where a small plane could slip beneath the forest canopy with very little left visible to search-and-rescue professionals.

After 60 years, one Australian family wants authorities to use take the technology available to them the devices that can see what is hidden to the naked eye and put some of the most popular theories about the location of the Dragonfly to the test.

On that February 12 flight were three Australians Louis Rowan, 25, Darrell Shiels, 33, and Elwyn Saville, 20.

Elwyn boarded alongside his New Zealand-born wife Valerie, 22, as part of their honeymoon.

Adventurous Sydneysider Louis Rowan had just spent a year in New Guinea and had decided New Zealand was next.

But by the end of January, in a letter sent home to his family, he said he would be making his way back across the ditch sooner than expected, just as soon as he finished the tours he had already booked.

One of those tours was a scenic flight to Milford Sound.

On the day the Dragonfly went missing, Louis's brother John Rowan was at school, but as he approached home, he knew something was wrong.

He was 15 years old then, but as life has gone on and his own family has grown older, larger too, the memory of that day has not faded.

"It is a very vivid memory. I remember I was coming home from school and I rounded the corner and a neighbourhood kid told me he's missing."

Even now, when John talks about Louis he describes him as "lost".

He has a letter from the New Zealand coroner that says Louis is deceased, but that document also says: "the cause of death being unknown".

John has never been able to do thethings families do when someone dies.

"There was no funeral. We've got a plaque on mum and dad's grave for Louis and if he was ever found, if there were remains of any description, we would bring them home and put them in that grave," John said.

"So in that way the mystery is still ongoing and there is no closure.

"I really hoped for closure when mum was alive, but that didn't happen. Mum died in October 1997."

Elwyn and Valerie Saville were the honeymooning couple who went missing on the Dragonfly. Their photos were front and centre in media coverage at the time.

They were married in Valerie's home country of New Zealand, but Elwyn's Australian family has long waited for news from across the Tasman.

Elwyn's brother Barrie Saville told the ABC he remembered the disappearance of the Dragonfly "very clearly".

"It was a poor day, they should not have flown, but it's easy to be wise in hindsight," he said.

For Barrie, even if the dragonfly is found, he would like his brother to rest in peace in the mountains, as he has done for decades.

"I wish they'd found them in the first place," he said.

Valerie Saville grew up in a big family, and her great niece Debbie McGarva said they still hoped she would be found and the mystery solved.

"I grew up in a family who always talked about Valerie, and [asked] when is this plane going to be found," she said.

"The family did really miss her. She was a topic of conversation for many, many years.

"I just hope they find the plane. We just want an answer of where it went down."

The families of those who were lost on the Dragonfly are part of a community of people who exist around the mystery of it.

For John Rowan, his grief is a present and enduring thing.

But for another man, the Dragonfly is a story of a near miss.

Just weeks before the Dragonfly disappeared, a young man from Southend-on-Sea on England's east coast sat in the back of a Chadwick flight.

Robin Fautley and his family were on holiday in New Zealand and spent weeks documenting their adventure on a 8mm Bell and Howell video camera.

On that film, they captured one of the last flights Chadwick would ever take and one of the routes that would be traced hundreds of times in the search for the Dragonfly.

Robin was 13 at the time. Now, as a 75-year-old man, he can still remember the feeling of being up in the clouds.

"It was exciting and I felt at times we were so close to the snow, I could just reach out my hand and pick up a few snowballs and sort of pelt them at the pilot," he said.

The Fautleys were on an epic adventure. They'd travelled across the Atlantic on the Southern Cross, a ship built for the mid-century Europe to Australia and New Zealand service.

The family travelled through the Panama Canal to Tahiti, Fiji and then New Zealand when their path crossed with Chadwick.

That holiday would have a lasting impact on Robin's life.

Not just because that's what grand adventures tend to do, but because the family would forever be part of an enduring mystery.

Robin estimates it was about two weeks between when his family made the now-treasured film of Chadwick flying above the Southern Alps and February 13, the day they were walking through Auckland Airport preparing to board a flight to Sydney when they saw a newspaper billboard about a missing plane.

"It was a little bit scary because my father and mother said to me, 'crikey, we were on [a] previous flight. Aren't we lucky'," he said.

"It has always been in the back of my mind, subconsciously, that I was a lucky boy to escape something like that."

As Robin's father chopped up the film to make a show reel of the Fautleys' tour of the Pacific, his son picked up everything left on the cutting room floor.

Even as a child, he knew those slices of film were precious mementos.

Nearly 60 years later, in the depths of the pandemic, Robin found a website about the search for the Dragonfly with an open call for any images of Brian Chadwick or his plane.

"I said, 'well now, I haven't got any photographs, but I've got some videos, would that be any good?' Within five minutes of posting that I had a phone call," he said.

What happened next thrust Robin into the modern era of the Dragonfly story.

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For 60 years NZ has searched its 'Bermuda Triangle' for the Dragonfly a plane that got lost in the clouds - ABC News - ABC News