Bay of Plenty war veteran Malcolm Gunton, 100, on his life in the skies

Air Commodore (Retired) Malcolm Gunton OBE ahead of his 100th birthday today.

It all started in 1928 when, as a 5-year-old, Malcolm Gunton saw a plane over Ōtamarākau, near Tauranga.

The experience set Gunton, known as Mal, on a life of flying in which he has piloted more than 50 different types of aircraft, amassed over 7000 hours of flying time and enjoyed a career in the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

Air Commodore (Retired) Malcolm Gunton, OBE, is 100 today.

He was brought up on the family’s dairy farm and attended Ōtamarākau School.

“It was the most easterly of the farming areas. The dairy company was at Te Puke and we supplied cream to the dairy factory,” he recalls.

He remembers there were 28 pupils at the school.

“The teacher taught everything from the start of primary school to standard six.”

In 1936 he went to board with his aunt in Auckland and was a student at Takapuna Grammar School for three years.

He completed his schooling at Te Puke High School, travelling from Ōtamarākau by bus with his sister Dorothy.

Te Puke High School, seen here in 2020, was where Malcolm Gunton completed his schooling. Photo / Stuart Whitaker

“We would ride our bikes to the start of [Ōtamarākau] Valley Rd where the bus used to come and take us to Te Puke.”

On May 5, 1942, he joined the army.

“It was after Pearl Harbour and all the fit 18-year-olds were called up for the army,” he says.

But his desire was to be a pilot and at the end of November 1942, he joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

Once he got his wings, after training in New Zealand and Canada, he was intent on serving in Europe.

“A mate of mine, Len Crotty, he and I decided the only way we could get to England was to join the Fleet Air Arm, [the Royal Navy’s aviation component], so we applied to do that. We were hauled up in front of an Air Force group captain and had a big strip torn off us for wanting to go to ‘an inferior service’.

“He said we were definitely going to the Pacific, which is what happened.”

Gunton joined No 23 Flight Squadron, flying a Corsair. He flew air-to-air and air-to-ground missions against the Japanese.

Kittyhawks and Corsairs, a type of aircraft Malcolm Gunton was familair with, in a field at Rukuhia aerodrome waiting to be scrapped. Photo / Air Force Museum of New Zealand

“It was mostly air-to-ground attacks because the Japanese had withdrawn their aircraft back to Rabaul [in Papua New Guinea]. We were ready to take them on if they came out, but they didn’t.”

Although he had plenty of close shaves, he was never shot down, saying he felt no fear at the time.

“I had a degree of luck and quite a degree of skill – although I say it myself, I was a good pilot.”

After the war, he spent a year in Japan with the occupation squadron, stationed 13km from Hiroshima.

“I decided to stay in the Air Force and make a career in the Air Force, eventually making it to Air Commodore.”

He was an instructor at Wigram for “quite a long time” and also spent time in the UK learning to fly Sunderland flying boats, which were based at Pembroke Dock, West Wales.

He flew Sunderlands around the Pacific, a plane he says was about as different to a Corsair as you could get. It was while in this role that, in 1958, he piloted a Sunderland on a life-saving mission that contributed to him being awarded the Air Force Cross.

A woman in Niue in labour was in danger of dying and he successfully flew her back to Auckland.

“It was more or less an open sea take-off and landing and that was quite dangerous in a Sunderland flying boat. We had to be very careful.”

Back training pilots, he became Group Captain and then Commander of New Zealand Force South East Asia, based in Singapore, before being made Air Commodore.

He also headed up the Orion training team sent to the US, learning about the Air Force’s then-new Lockheed Orions, before piloting one of them to New Zealand in 1966.

He can trace his love of flying back to his childhood in Ōtamarākau in the Western Bay of Plenty.

“It was probably due to me seeing the first aircraft I saw when I was a 5-year-old. There weren’t many aircraft in New Zealand then. I thought they looked pretty neat and I’d like to do that myself.”

Gunton attributes his long life to keeping fit.

“I played a lot of rugby. I played for Auckland senior B and played for the Air Force every year. I was quite good at rugby and played quite a bit of tennis too.”

He says being a pilot always kept his mind sharp and that “probably had an influence too”.

In 1998 he and Lyn, one of his daughters, travelled to Europe for the Anzac Day commemorations, as Gunton’s father had served at Gallipoli.

It was on that trip, after Lyn began asking Gunton about his medals, that they decided he should write a book documenting his life.

The book, simply called My Story, was finished when he was 85.

Gunton, who now lives in a rest home in Bethlehem, Tauranga, was married to Margaret. They had four children, Lyn, Ian Gunton, Christine Coppersmith and Susan Gifford.