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Norman Reginald Davenport. This photograph, from the Royal Aero Club's records, is identical to the one which would have appeared on Davenport’s Aviator’s Certificate.
Image kindly provided by the Royal Aero Club Trust.

Norman Davenport

Flight Sub-Lieutenant Norman Reginald Davenport was one of 60 New Zealanders and two Collegians known to have served in the Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS) during the First World War.1

Born in May 1893, Davenport was the second of Samuel and Mary Davenport‘s six children.2  The family lived in Epsom and Davenport attended Auckland Grammar School and Kings College where he was a member of the First XI in 1908 and 1909.3

Davenport studied law as an undergraduate at Auckland University College (AUC) in 1912 and 1913.  The University's Calendar reveals that in 1912 he kept terms and passed mental science and 'constitutional history and jurisprudence'.4  The former, taught by Joseph P. Grossman, included the study of logic, psychology and ethics.  In 1914, Davenport worked for the legal firm of Nicholson and Gribbin, but returned to university in early 1915.5

In addition to his studies, Davenport was also a member of the New Zealand Forces Motor Service Corps, a territorial unit which from mid-1915 operated both motor-cars and motor-boats.6  In June 1915, Davenport left Auckland aboard the SS Makura bound for London with the intention of `offering his services to the War Office in order to join the flying corps’.7

Davenport’s Royal Aero Club index card shows that he qualified as a pilot on a Grahame-White Biplane.
Image kindly provided by the Royal Aero Club Trust.

The Royal Navy Air Service defended Britain from German aircraft and Zeppelins, such as this one which raided eastern England in 1915. It was shot down by anti-aircraft fire over Revigny, France on 21 February 1916.
© Imperial War Museums (Q 58481)

Learning to fly

In 1915, flying was still a new and exciting pastime and aeroplanes a rarity, especially in New Zealand.  Perhaps Davenport had been entranced by the sight of the Bleriot monoplane, Britannia, which flew over Auckland early 1914 or seen local aviation pioneers Leo and Vivian Walsh launch their Curtiss flying boat near Bastion Point? This is just speculation but Davenport was obviously keen to learn how to fly, which until the establishment of the New Zealand Flying School in late 1915 meant a self-funded trip to Britain.8

In Britain, however, the military had been investigating the use of captive balloons, kites, dirigibles and aeroplanes for reconnaissance and had established the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) by Royal Warrant in April 1912.  At first the Corps comprised a Military Wing, a Naval Wing and a Central Flying School, funded jointly by the War Office and the Admiralty but in July 1914 the smaller Naval Wing became a separate entity and was renamed the Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS).  From September 1915, the RNAS was assigned responsibility for British air defence and would play an important role in preventing attacks by German aircraft and airships known as Zeppelins.9

Davenport’s progress towards becoming a military pilot was covered in the Auckland press.  In  October 1915, it was reported that Davenport had received a lieutenant’s commission in the `War Aviation Corps’.10  Then in November, the New Zealand Herald included this description of his training:

‘Flight Sub-Lieutenant Norman R. Davenport, R.N.A.S., of Auckland, has spent the past month in training at the Navigation School, Portsmouth, where he went through a course of instruction in aeroplane engineering and gunnery.  He is now stationed at Hendon flying grounds, and is being trained at the Grahame-White School of Aviation for his pilot’s certificate.  He expects to be able to pass the test and to obtain his flying ticket in the course of the next few weeks’.11


Davenport in flying gear next to a RNAS Short 184 Seaplane.
Auckland Weekly News, 27 July 1916, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19160727-42-2

Davenport gained his pilot or aviator’s certificate on 25 November 1915 and was transferred to the Naval Flying School at Eastchurch in Kent to fine-tune his flying skills. 12 There Davenport met fellow New Zealander Donald Harkness, an engineering student from Canterbury University College.13 Harkness mentions Davenport a number of times in his wartime diary, describing him as a `very nice fellow’.  This entry, dated 29 December 1915, reveals the trials of cross-country flights in fragile planes with limited navigational equipment:

‘Davenport did not return last night as he had lost his way and come down near Canterbury.  Today he left there, but owing to engine trouble came down again near Chatham.  He turned up here again tonight, but without his machine.  He landed near a camp, where a crowd of soldiers gathered round, the great majority of whom he said had never seen an aeroplane before and just gaped open-mouthed’.14

‘His main duty while on patrol is to watch for the approach of hostile aircraft, and to intercept and attack them whenever possible. It is this part of the coast that the Zepps generally make for when raiding England; consequently most of the work of driving them off often falls to this particular station and is at times very exciting’.

From an article about Davenport by ‘Our Lady Correspondent’, Auckland Star, 10 June 1916.

On patrol

By March 1916, Davenport was on active service, based aboard a seaplane carrier ’somewhere at sea’ or at ‘X.Y.Z. Air Station on the East Coast’ patrolling for enemy aircraft and Zeppelins. Davenport’s plane, described as ‘one of latest things out in the way of aircraft’, was probably a Bristol Scout like those pictured below.15


RNAS Bristol Scouts lined up at Eastchurch in 1915. Note early Union Jack markings.
© Imperial War Museums (Q 58422).

In June, off the coast of Belgium, Davenport’s plane engine failed not long after take-off and his plane fell some 150-200 feet into the sea.  Luckily, neither the bombs Davenport was carrying nor his plane exploded and he was found alive but suffering from exposure, shock and severe bruising.  He was taken to Alexandria Hospital, Dunkirk and then to Netley Hospital, Southampton for a lengthy convalescence.16

Davenport never returned to active duty after his accident; instead he was put on home service testing aircraft engines for the Aeronautical Inspection Department of the Ministry of Munitions.17  He was invalided home to New Zealand in August 1917 and arrived in Auckland in the October.18

Portrait of Davenport taken in April 1946 by Whites Aviation.
Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, WA-02178-G.

Post-war years

Davenport married Kathleen Brown of Whangarei in October 1919; his best man was fellow Collegian Athol Ohlson.19 The couple settled in Auckland and had four children.20

Davenport worked as an estate agent but retained his interest in flying and during the Second World War served as an officer with the Auckland Wing of the Air Training Corps.21  Norman Davenport died in Auckland in 1979, aged 85.22

Katherine Pawley, Special Collections

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  1. David Allison, Raymond Richards & Fleet Air Arm Museum of New Zealand,Flying navy: the story of New Zealanders who flew in the Fleet Air Arm in World War I and World War II and the Roll of Honour of those who died in action and on active service, Auckland, 2009, p.13; Collegian Samuel Jackson Hanna was in the RNAS armoured car unit.
  2. Births, deaths and marriages online, Department of Internal Affairs.
  3. King's College Old Boys' Association, King's College register, 1896-1984, 1987, p.213.
  4. Calendar, Auckland University College, University of New Zealand, Auckland, 1913, pp.141, 152-153; ‘Davenport, Norman Reginald’, A.U.C. roll of honour, 1914 - 1920. MSS & Archives E-2, Special Collections, University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services.
  5. Auckland Star, 19 May 1916, p.4, accessed via Papers Past.
  6. New Zealand Herald, 10 November 1915, p.8; New Zealand Herald, 11 June 1915, p.9, accessed via Papers Past.
  7. Auckland Star, 15 June 1915, p.4, accessed via Papers Past.
  8. R. L. Williams, 'Walsh, Austin Leonard and Walsh, Vivian Claude', from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1 April 2014, accessed 25 September 2015; 'Royal New Zealand Air Force', available online at NZHistory http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/rnzaf, updated 20 December 2012, accessed 25 September 2015.
  9. Royal Air Force Museum, ‘Royal Flying Corps Centenary’, online exhibition 2013, http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/rfc_centenary.aspx, accessed 20 September 2015; Fleet Air Arm Officers Association, ‘Fleet Air Arm History’, http://www.fleetairarmoa.org/fleet-air-arm-history-timeline, accessed 20 September 2015.
  10. Auckland Star, 5 October 1915, p.6, accessed via Papers Past.
  11. New Zealand Herald, 10 November 1915, p.8, accessed via Papers Past.
  12. New Zealand Herald, 30 March 1916, p.4, accessed via Papers Past.
  13. Harkness taught engineering at Auckland University College from 1925 until his death in a flying accident near Devonport in 1929. Bruce W. Harkness, A World War 1 adventure : the life and times of RNAS Bomber pilot Donald E. Harkness, Bloomington, 2014, p.157.
  14. Harkness, p.149.
  15. Auckland Star, 10 June 1916, p.16, accessed via Papers Past.
  16. Auckland Star ,19 July 1916, p.9, accessed via Papers Past; The Kiwi: Official Organ of the Auckland University College, 11, 1916, p.33.
  17. Harkness, p.149.
  18. ibid; Auckland Star, 22 October 1917, p.2, accessed via Papers Past.
  19. Auckland Star, 3 November 1919, p.7, accessed via Papers Past.
  20. New Zealand Electoral Rolls, 1853–1981 [database online], 2010, accessed via Ancestry.com.au; Auckland Star, 24 July 1941, p.1, accessed via Papers Past.
  21. New Zealand Herald, 15 Dec 1941, p.3; Auckland Star, 20 April 1944, p.7, accessed via Papers Past.
  22. Births, deaths and marriages online, Department of Internal Affairs.