Sam Bennett visits plane modeller
James Mills, the man undertaking a
commendable tribute to Royal New
Zealand Air Force pilot Maxwell
Nicholas Sparks.
We’ve had responses to the first
issue of the Carterton Crier that have
pleased us no end. One of these was
an email I received from James Mills
of Swinbrook Road, in relation to Max
Sparks – the Crier’s first Carterton
Great (see page 84 of Issue 1). James
and his family currently reside in
Max’s old house, something they
realised after discovering an NHS
prescription of his stuck to the back
of a kitchen cupboard.
James did an online search to find out
about the man who once lived in his
home and his involvement in the WW2
mission known as Operation Jericho,
and even extended his research by
ordering a copy of Sparks’ marriage
certificate. “I have decided I would
like to pay tribute to Max,” James’
email read, “and the best way I could
think to do this was to build a fully
operational, flying scale model of the
aircraft he piloted on the mission to
bomb Amiens prison in February of
1944 (Operation Jericho)”.
I went to the home of this, in his own
words, “aviation enthusiast” to discuss
his tribute to Sparks and see the
model’s progress thus far.
“I’ve never built a model of this
complexity before.” James said of his
testament to Max, his replica of the De
Havilland Mosquito HX982 EG-T. “I’ve
built helicopters that just bolt together
– there’s not a lot of cutting. This is
craft work; I’m not a woodworker at
all.” Despite this James intends to
manufacture a model that looks as
similar as he can make it to how Max’s
aircraft would have done when it left
Oh my goodness!
What have I committed to?
Mosquito FB.VI KA114 (similar to what Max’s plane would have looked like)
Image by wallycacsabre (moz15fine) [CC BY 2.0 (
licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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