Cheltenham Beach

This guide to Cheltenham Beach in Auckland starts with a 1956 sighting at nearby North Head, when a sailor shone a torch down a narrow shaft and saw what looked like the wooden struts of an old aircraft wing. It follows the rumor that grew from there, of two historic Boeing planes supposedly sealed inside the headland's tunnels since 1918, and the believers, including one of the country's earliest aviators, who kept the story alive for decades. You'll hear about the 1983 search for that original shaft and what later investigators found when they went looking with modern equipment. Best listened to looking out at Rangitoto across the calm water, with the tunneled headland at your back.