Brothers Leo and Vivian Walsh built a Howard Wright biplane in 1910, named the Manurewa, and first successfully flew it in February 1911 at Glenora Park (modern-day Takanini).

[citation needed] The school began operating out of a shed in Ōrākei in October 1915, and by 28 November had moved to Mission Bay.

[1] Due to the difficulties in obtaining suitable training aircraft, the Walsh brothers decided to build their own trainers, initially based on the Curtiss pattern.

Over the next four years they produced a series of four flying boat designs, evolved from, but bearing little resemblance to, the original Curtiss model.

The survivors are believed to have been burnt on the Auckland waterfront, however there are "lost treasure" stories that these and some of the other machines used by the flying school are stored on a defence force base at Devonport in tunnels bricked up after the Second World War.