The destruction of the Thunderbolt

The beautiful car looked like something from the future.
Long and sleek with a huge fin at the back, it didn’t look like anything anyone in New Zealand had seen before.
It was called Thunderbolt and between 1937 and 1939 it had broken the world land speed record driven by Captain George, E. T. Eyston.
On November 19, 1937, on the Bonneville Salt Flats it went 312.00 mph - 502.12 km/h. Within a year Thunderbolt returned with improved aerodynamics and raised its record to 345.50 mph or 556.03 km/h on 27 August 1938.
That record was broken in a week but Eyston took the Thunderbolt out again reaching 357.50 mph or 575.34 km/h.
The car had been brought to New Zealand to be displayed in the British Pavilion at the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition in 1939.
The exhibition was held in Rongotai in Wellington and thousands came to see the car.
Then in the early morning of September 25, 1946, bales of wool stored in the largest of exhibition buildings caught fire.
Stored with them was the famous car which was destroyed.
Along with the car, the air force lost five planes in the blaze - two Tiger Moths, a Harvard and two instructional machines - and 18 Gipsy aircraft engines.
The airmen sleeping nearby had to get out, leaping from windows.
Fire crew rushed to the scene but all they could do was prevent the flames from spreading to other buildings.
The blaze could be seen across the city and even days later, the wool was still smouldering.
In today’s money, the loss was over $55 million.
Because of the loss, police began an investigation, trying to pinpoint the cause of the fire. There were theories of spontaneous combustion as wool was prone to it, but there were no signs of that.
Nearly two years later, seven former Air Force personnel were charged with arson over the fire.
Four pleaded guilty while the other three were later acquitted.
The group had been members of the fire patrol team at the time and they knew their jobs were to be disestablished once the station closed. They conspired to start the fire which they would then put out and demonstrate how indispensable they were. They were even wearing pyjamas under their uniforms to give the impression of how sudden it all was.
When the fire got wildly out of control they were unable to put it out.
Captain Eyston died on June 11, 1979 and is buried at St Mary’s Roman Catholic churchyard in Oxfordshire, England.​