David Mackenzie’s trilogy, ‘‘John Noble Fighter Ace’’, was inspired by the remarkable career of his father, John Noble Mackenzie, who grew up on a farm at Clydevale and later became a wartime Spitfire pilot.
‘‘It was 1938, Dad was in a paddock one day organising some sheep and a Tiger Moth flew over,’’ Mr Mackenzie said of future Squadron Leader John Noble Mackenzie, DFC.
‘‘He was fascinated. The aircraft circled, the pilot waved at him and that was it. He thought, ‘That’s what I need to do’.
‘‘The family farm was called Allan Grange,’’ Mr Mackenzie said.
‘‘My grandfather had just bought the farm next door and he wanted John at home to run it.’’
Inspired and determined, John Mackenzie applied to the RAF, got himself to England for training and was selected to fly the Supermarine Spitfire.
Mr Mackenzie’s 2025 novels Spitfires Rising and Defying the Odds follow fictional fighter ace John Noble from his father’s Clydevale farm to pre-war England and aerial combat above Dunkirk and Britain.
The third instalment, Despair and Triumph, sends Noble to lead New Zealand’s squadron at RAF Kallang, Singapore, where defeat leads to evacuation home before returning to the skies over Normandy and the liberation of Europe.
‘‘Dad and I used to talk about flying in its pure and mechanical sense, rather than about the war,’’ David Mackenzie said of his father, who died in Balclutha in 1993.
‘‘He lost a lot of friends, as they all did.
‘‘So he never brought it up and didn’t dwell on things, but because I was keen on flying, if I asked him for a story about how the Spitfire responded in a certain flight situation, he may well give me a answer, and I’ve incorporated some of that and some things directly from his logbooks . . . My mother’s not in the books, but the story is very close to my father’s.’’
The family moved to Balclutha, near Clydevale when David was 8, and his father’s stories had clearly made an impression.
He earned his first pilot’s licence at the South Otago Aero Club in Balclutha, trained as a lawyer at the University of Otago and went on to chair a major legal firm before specialising in aviation law.
He was flying, directing and consulting for large aviation organisations the Covid lockdowns.
‘‘Just like that, I couldn’t travel and my clients weren’t spending any money, so I sat at home thinking, ‘what should I do?’.
‘‘I came across this historical writing competition where you had to choose a World War 2 aviation subject. That was easy for me so I thought I’d write about my father.’’
The novice author combined stories with additional research and detail preserved by the Mackenzie family.
‘‘A lot of it is true, some of it is fictional. I sent the compulsory first 50 pages, and Sapere Books in London, who ran the competition, got in touch and said, ‘Would you like a contract to write three books?’ That’s how it began.’’
The trilogy reached the best-seller lists, and John Noble Fighter Ace is in development for an audiobook series.
Now based in Christchurch, David Mackenzie is close to publishing his latest novel, a crime thriller based in Bosnia Herzegovina.
‘‘John Noble was inspired by my father,’’ he said.
‘‘But the descriptions of what he chose to put himself through and why, is also intended as a tribute to all those wartime airmen.’’
