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Jim Hickey was born in Opunake in 1923, the only one of ten children to go off to war. The poor Irish family had only just bought their first basic steel-wheeled tractor, when Jim was consigned to Ashburton, learning to fly Tiger Moths. The technology of flight amazed him.
In February 1943 Hickey was posted to Woodbourne,to begin training as a fighter pilot on the T6 Harvard, a mono-winged aluminium aircraft - for him another quantum leap in technology.
Later that year, Jim was posted overseas to join the war effort, sailing on the ‘Monarch of Bermuda’ to San Francisco. From there it was a train ride across the USA to New York, onto the ‘Queen Mary’ and across the Alantic to Scotland, then another train ride through England to Brighton and hove.
He recalls: “The English country roads were wall to wall with trucks, tanks and equipment, lining the hedgrows and hidden under trees ready for the D-Day invasion.. thousands of them. Nobody knew what was going on”. Now in England, Hickey converted to twin engined Ansons and Oxfords as a staff pilot.
January 1945 posted to the far east as a fighter pilot. Converted on to Mark V Spitfires at Petahtiqva, Israel. “The power of the things was unbelievable”. April Posted to 681 RAF Photographic Reconnaissance (PR) Squadron, Alipore, Calcutta, India. Then he was posted to Mingaladon Airfield, Rangoon, Burma.
He photographed the infamous Burma-Siam Railway, where many allied prisoners of war perished from disease, starvation and harsh treatment.
July 30 now flying the Mark X1X High Altitude Spitfire, Jim Hickey was one of just a handful of allied pilots to fly above 45,000 feet. In contrast, low level photographic sweeps were done at a mere 100 feet, at around 400 miles per hour (700kph).
September 1945 Hickey was cleared for ‘early release on compassionate grounds’ by Colin Papps, a fellow Kiwi and CO of 681 Squadron. Jim’s father had died during the war, and he was finally able to return to the family farm in Opunake.
He returned to New Zealand on a tea boat, with a group of wounded servicemen and nurses. The trip took six weeks. When the boat arrived in Auckland, there was a Watersiders’ strike, and the boat had to anchor off for a few days.
“It made you realise how little you were worth”. On the 13th December 1998 at Auckland’s Ardmore Airport, Jim went for a flight in a Tiger Moth NZ841 during which he took the controls, the very biplane he had last flown on December 31, 1942. Jim Hickey NZ427205.
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