Fred Ladd
Ladd, Frederick Patrick 1908 - 1989
Carrier, civilian and military pilot, tourism and aviation promoter
Frederick Patrick Ladd was born on 27 October 1908 at Warkworth, north of Auckland, the eldest child of Thomas Joseph Frederick James Ladd, a locomotive engineer, and Christina Pepper, an Irish waitress, who married in 1911. After periods in Auckland and Wellington, the family shifted to Hamilton in 1918 where Fred attended Hamilton High School for one year. When attempts at several professions proved unsuccessful, he joined his father’s carrying business in 1925. On his father’s death in 1926, Fred managed the company and continued to do so for the next 15 years. He married Mabel Agnes Green, a typist, on 7 January 1933 in Hamilton, and their 56-year marriage was a remarkable working partnership. They had one daughter.
As a child Fred Ladd had hero-worshipped his father and later attributed an early determination to fly to a desire to outdo him. In 1932 he became involved with gliding, but could not afford powered flying lessons until 1939. His late start in aviation meant he had to battle for the rest of his career against age discrimination, which was not helped by his hair turning prematurely grey.
Nearly two years after the outbreak of the Second World War Ladd joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force. He was told he was too old to be a pilot, but after much study he graduated to pilot training, at the Elementary Flying Training School, Whenuapai, and gained his wings on 11 June 1942. He served with No 15 Squadron in Tonga and at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands until early 1943, when he was posted to No 30 Squadron. His first operational sortie was in March 1944, when his squadron attacked the Japanese at Kavieng, New Ireland. His aircraft was hit by ground fire and shrapnel on several occasions. Ladd’s 33rd and final mission was on 22 May 1944.
Fred Ladd stayed in the RNZAF to continue flying for as long as possible, serving in Fiji and Western Samoa. He survived a crash landing at Ohakea in late 1944 and attributed his ability to open the jammed canopy of the burning aircraft to God giving him superhuman strength. During his long flying career he was involved in many serious forced landings and these experiences deepened his active Christian faith.
Ladd joined the recently established New Zealand National Airways Corporation in May 1948 and for the next three years was a senior route captain on the Dunedin–Invercargill scheduled service. In August 1951 he became the first chief pilot for the new Fiji Airways. Pioneering a new airline best suited Ladd’s extroverted, confident and gregarious personality as well as his ambitions. However, he resigned in late 1954 when a court of inquiry found that his negligence was responsible for an emergency landing.
In December that year Ladd commenced work for a new amphibious airline, Tourist Air Travel, at Mechanics Bay, Auckland. His 13 years there made him a household name in New Zealand. He was not only a pilot, but the chief promoter of the airline, and in this capacity was instrumental in its success. Ladd loved encouraging passengers to experience flying as fun, and to counter their unease at the surging water around the Widgeon’s windows he coined his famous phrase, ‘a shower of spray and we’re away’, and many other rhyming couplets. The company pioneered non-scheduled services to all parts of the Hauraki Gulf and performed ambulance, charter, freight and scenic flying.
Fred Ladd flew the duke of Edinburgh in February 1963 – the same year he was appointed an MBE. In 1965 he received the international Brackley memorial trophy in England for his services in the gulf. He flew his last Widgeon aircraft for Tourist Air Travel on 31 March 1967, having developed a legendary rapport with the people of the Hauraki Gulf. On his last day he broke the law by flying under the Auckland Harbour Bridge, but was discharged without conviction.
In 1967 he qualified as a helicopter pilot at Fort Worth, Texas, but was unable to secure a licence to start a new service in Auckland. In January 1969 he began a tourist amphibian service in Rotorua, and by 1971 had formed another new scenic flight charter operation, Captain Fred Ladd’s Volcanic Wunderflites. He joined Air Central in Taupo in April 1976 after Civil Aviation began pressuring him about his age, health and fitness. On 8 July 1977, with 21,109 flying hours, he grounded himself because of dizziness, and Civil Aviation withdrew his commercial pilot’s licence. Ladd then embarked upon a fitness regime and four-year unsuccessful campaign to get this returned. In the process he set national records for the over-70s in swimming and became a strong advocate for the rights of older people.
Fred Ladd was of average height with a stocky, strong build and a friendly, open face. In his younger days he represented Waikato in the New Zealand diving championships, and at indoor basketball and gymnastics. He made his first parachute jump in 1968 and became the president of the Sulphur City Skydivers Club shortly after. He was also a member of the Rotorua Aero Club and the Muscular Dystrophy Association of New Zealand. In 1976 he was appointed an OBE for his services to the tourist and aviation industries. In December 1983 he commenced gliding and in 1987 reflected, ‘Flying is a way of life that I couldn’t and wouldn’t be without’. One of New Zealand’s best-known aviators, Fred Ladd died of cancer in Taupo on 22 January 1989, survived by his wife and daughter.
RICHARD WAUGHKing, J. Famous New Zealand aviators. Wellington, 1998
Ladd, F. & R. Annabell. A bit of a Ladd. Auckland, 1987
Ladd, F. & R. Annabell. A shower of spray and we’re away. Wellington, 1971
Obit. New Zealand Herald. 23 Jan. 1989: 9
Obit. Taupo Times. 24 Jan. 1989: 14
FRED LADDISMS
A shower of spray and we're away!
Now is the hour to give her the power.
Down the ramp and into the damp.
Greeting shepherds with your sheep,
Here's your friend Fred just roused from sleep.
The sun is shining and I can't stop,
But here's the news down your chimney pot.
It's nice up here,
looks nice down there.
Hello down there,
From us up here.
If you're wondering what's the latest caper,
Read about it in the morning paper.
Although t'was rather risky
She hit the ditch and then the air,
There's proof my Mabel's frisky.
What a privilege this flight dimension,
Although at times some apprehension.
Halcyon days just after the war,
With fun in Fiji-couldn't ask for more.
An airline was born and has risen to fame,
Air Pacific its now christened name,
From city of Suva to countries and isles,
With hostesses exotic and tropical smiles.
When an airline is born,
It's quite an arrival,
But the powers of the elements,
Make it fight for survival.
The cosmic forces
Are there to be tapped,
A quick prayer to God,
And he'll when you're trapped.
With a shower of spray and we're away.
Come fly with me my chickadee,
Such wonders to be sighted,
You'll surely be delighted.
Why leave a plane when it can fly?
But this we did. oh my, oh my!
The day was fine and sunny,
'Twas such a lovely flight,
When bang went the motor,
And not a drome in sight.
One is enough
To do this sort of stuff.
If we'd foreseen that flight
We wouldn't have started,
We're not given to know when the end is charted.
Oh dear, my head's in a spin,
Please check me out from cap to chin,
The doctors said, "There's nothing found,
but Pilot Ladd, stay on the ground."
High in the sky,
No motor's roar,
All so silent
I'm thrilled to the core.
OFF TO GREAT BARRIER IN 1971 by B.Harvey
At last the moment has come. We are down at Mechanics Bay watching the amphibian being loaded, The air is filled with the rowdy buzz of the city. There are twenty or so people and a great conglomeration of stuff piled all around the Grumman Widgeon which perches heavily above the slipway. Freddie Ladd gradually organizes people and their possessions and shows them to their seats. The passengers seem to know him and each other and there are cheerful directions and cheeky comments flying around. Loading is a co-operative, noisy affair with one pile of maybes that might be on the next flight, or the next. Even the aisles of the sea plane are stacked. A final very long, thin, circular corrugated cardboard package is gingerly threaded through the window after its owner and lies right across his lap and over his fellow passengers across the aisle. Plants and pets are put in last and passed into their owner’s care.
Freddie climbs in through his window in practiced fashion (it’s the only access still available), the engine leaps into life, we taxi down the slip and slide seamlessly onto the sea. With revving engines, swooshing water and the baby howling in my ear we plough over the sea until, with a mighty roar, the plane tears itself into the air. We do the futile waving gesture as we gain height.
The engines settle to a steady drone and we level out. Freddie’s voice comes through the sound system welcoming the passengers on board. He introduces us to everyone as the new schoolteacher and his wife and prospective pupil and gives them our names.
“How did he know all that?” I wonder. He even has the baby’s name. He tells us all, the route the plane is taking and how long each leg of the trip will take.
“Great, we get off at Tryphena, the first stop. That’ll be enough time for struggling with a frightened baby and wondering what it’ll be like over there,” I think to myself. He summarizes his tale with likely arrival times. So we’ll be there in our new world in just three quarters of an hour.
Suddenly, the aircraft floor is really vibrating, the sea is directly ahead and we are headed at it. We swoop straight down as Fred has spotted a whale and is zooming us down to check it out, whilst giving us a knowledgeable description. He’s in his element and volubly sharing it all, just doing his thing.
Now we see blank blue sky and feel the backs of our seats as we bank steeply up to horizontal. Our ears are popping, baby’s cries harder. Again the engines pound as we climb and then settle. All around us the sea is blue, the sky is blue and so is the long, thin smudge on the horizon that is slowly growing bigger.
Thoughts of the wood stove, a power generator, shopping by letter from Auckland, having to bake our own bread, crank handle party- line telephones all spin through my keyed up mind. Memories of my remote, far north childhood came flying back to reassure me. I grew up with some of these ways. That razor back skyline materializing actually looks vaguely familiar. Beef, bread and beer; these are the things we have told would be visitors they must bring. Teaching just twenty kids through all the primary school levels, now there’s an interesting challenge. And there’ll be no-one we know there, absolutely no-one.
There far below on the vast, shiny sea I recognize the tiny barge with the bright green McGregor’s van that holds all our worldly belongings. Our brilliant blue, newly acquired, old Volkswagen is jammed up against it. They are Matchbox Toys afloat. All the things vital to me are here with me now, my baby, my man and my photograph album.
“This is a good thing to keep in mind for the rest of my life,” a savage flash of insight tells me. I am grimly smug to have excluded the recipe book my mother in law recommended should travel with me, little knowing quite how much I would need it. Life is feeling quite fragile right now.
The long, distant island is growing bigger and becomes dark green, and now all the greens and greys, as details come to life. The outline becomes jagged and inhospitable even as it lies motionless in the shining, silver sea.
The seaplane zooms gently lower and lower as we enter the wide outreaching arms of the Tryphena Harbour. We seemed to skim the water, flying ever inwards. Inwards toward the two or three tiny houses on the innermost central bay, flanked by all its bays. The hills rise steeply up from the sea all around.
“The school is right on the water,” they told us. So that must be it, just two tiny pre-fab class rooms behind a rocky sea wall. And that must be our house across the road, the black creosoted place. They all look so small. It’s the second house they sent. I remember now, they tipped the first one into the tide on its way over from Auckland. I didn’t pay that much attention at the time.
Soon the water gushes from our sides as we contact the sea. Gradually the splashing of the water eases as we lose speed. With a great roar the seaplane lurches, heaving itself out of the sea and up onto the beach. It twirls to turn around, spraying drops of water from its flanks, and taxis to a stop. The engines cut to reveal total silence, then gentle birdsong.
There somewhere in the small knot of greeters, I am hoping, will be the chairman of the School Committee. How to summon a public persona with a fraught baby, rumpled body and gob-slammed brain? Yet, there it is, the kind, quiet, tentatively smiling face,
“Welcome to Great Barrier. Let’s walk over to the school. We’ll have afternoon tea and we can get to know each other. Afterwards we’ll walk over to the school house and the barge will come up on the beach here with your things. We’ll give you a hand to get set up.”
All organised. Just like that.
'Up and away in a shower of spray'
Longtime island resident Colin Martin recalls the decades when an amphibious Grumman Widgeon and a flamboyant Captain Fred Ladd ruled the gulf skies.
Formed in late 1954, Tourist Air Travel’s aim was to service the islands of the Hauraki Gulf.
Flamboyant Captain Fred Ladd was the heart of the company, and the Grumman Widgeon was the amphibious aircraft of choice.
(A Grumman Widgeon with Captain Fred Ladd at the
controls on oneroa Beach, 1957. On the beach is
Arthur (Boy) Day of Day's Waiheke Motors.)
To readers of Gulf News 35 years ago, the Grumman was a familiar sight, touching down in Oneroa Bay or Surfdale, or wherever required, taxiing across the water and roaring up the beach a short way to collect or disembark passengers.
Doreen Burns recalls the Grumman and Captain Fred Ladd, and the value of Tourist Air Travel’s service to her. In the 50s through the 70s Oneroa shops were closed on Wednesday afternoons, which allowed them to open on Saturday mornings to cater for the weekenders.
Doreen ran a hardware store in with her husband Bob, and later a clothing business. On many Wednesday afternoons Bob would drop Doreen at Surfdale ‘airport’ at 1pm where she boarded the Grumman and headed for Auckland. On arrival at Mechanics Bay, TAT’s base, a waiting taxi would take her to Parnell to meet with a traveller who would have clothing samples laid out for her to make selections.
From there she would visit warehouses downtown, such as Sargood Son and Ewen, L D Nathan, Bing Harris and Co and other fashion sources where Doreen would place orders. The orders would then be delivered by scow (Subritzky?) to Waiheke. Doreen was meant to swot up on fashion magazines to make her selections, but says she relied as much on the travellers and warehouse staff to keep her up-to-date.
On her return to Mechanic’s Bay, the Grumman would be waiting to fly Doreen back to Waiheke. The cost was one pound ten shillings return, or $3 in decimal currency. Doreen says it was a great experience flying with Captain Ladd. Often there were other passengers, local people, or those en route from Great Barrier and even an occasional load of crayfish.
Crayfish from Great Barrier was the making of TAT, according to Captain Ladd. It was a time when large quantities of crayfish were being caught on Barrier and TAT provided an ideal service to deliver them fresh to the markets.
Doreen recalls crayfish bagged and in the aircraft cabin, and the occasional one slipping out leaving passengers anxious and fearful of their clothes, especially such items as stockings, being snagged on the sharp claws and rough bodies. Captain Ladd liked to tease and make most of the situation.
Even more unusual was his sometimes unorthodox service. As he flew over Waiheke, on occasions it was known for him to toss Herald newspapers on the lawns of people he knew. Many residents on other islands received the same delivery service, though it was not ever regular.
If he had time, Fred would land on Oneroa Beach and bound up the path of Bob and Doreen’s house to join them for a quick breakfast.
On other occasions, with little notice, he would arrive with guests for Bob and Doreen to look after. One day it was Mrs Musick, in New Zealand to trace her husband’s last steps, and where his plane went down. Musick Point was named after him.
Another day it was the first Lady Hillary, her three children and Sherpa Tensing’s wife, all to be entertained by Bob Burns – being an entertaining host was something Bob excelled at.
Other users of TAT’s Grumman Widgeon service were Noel and Judy Smith. From the 1980s the Smiths lived on the island, and on a Friday business often took them to Auckland, from where they then faced the boat trip home.
In the 80s this meant the Baroona, the Iris Moana or Ngaroma. Noel says the Ngaroma and Iris Moana were relatively quick and steady, but the Baroona was a slow old boat and very uncomfortable in rough weather. When the Baroona was on the run and the seas heavy, Noel and Judy caught the Grumman and landed at the Surfdale airport, a much more comfortable trip altogether.
Surfdale airport was a specially prepared, tar sealed pad above the beach. Many readers will recall using this service to by-pass the boat trip.
An account of the early days of TAT is the publication A Shower of Spray and We’re Away written by Fred Ladd with Ross Annabel (A H & A W Reed 1971); well worth a read. The shower of spray was what passengers got as the Grumman took off. The spray was so dense it seemed more like they were facing a submarine dive than a take-off.
One time when I flew with Captain Ladd to Great Barrier, my first trip in the plane, we had hardly taken off when he pointed out something below us. Being a keen photographer, I had my camera round my neck, and leaned in to the window to see what it was.
At that point Fred rolled the plane on its side and I had the frightening sensation of facing a tumble into the sea. It took a while for me to regain my equilibrium and I was a little wary of Captain Ladd for a while. However, the rest of the trip was delightful and it was some thrill to touch down in magnificent Port Fitzroy.
At times the Grumman Widgeon provided an emergency air ambulance service for quick deliveries of the ill and wounded to Auckland. In short, Captain Ladd made the TAT service fit many purposes, and no doubt readers can add to these stories. Captain Ladd retired from TAT in 1967, at a point where he and the other directors had different views of the company’s future. Fred moved to Rotorua where he set up Rotorua Aerial Charters. His farewell to the Hauraki Gulf and TAT was to fly a Grumman Widgeon under the Auckland Harbour Bridge, an action that landed him in court charged by Civil Aviation with flying below the minimum safety level. He was relieved that it was not the more serious charge of dangerous flying.
After what was to him a harrowing trial, he was reprimanded severely by the magistrate and then to his surprise, discharged without conviction and simply required to pay the costs of prosecution.
TAT continued to work for the islands of the Hauraki Gulf into the 1980s but eventually succumbed to the efficient service offered by the arrival of the fast ferries and other catamaran when Fullers took the service to Waiheke and other islands.