Mosquito : WOODEN WONDER

Edward Barry " Ted " Bishop ( May 24th, 1924 ) was born into a family with strong Indian Army antecedents. He went to Clifton ( Bristol, South West, England ) but left early when the school was evacuated to the West Country. He found a job with the Evening Argus at Hastings ( Sussex, England ), then joined the London Evening News. 

After volunteering for the Fleet Air Arm, he was sent to the United States, where his flying career came to an ignominious end. He was taken up over Lake Michigan by a Finnish instructor, who explained that he would put their plane into a spin and his pupil would take it out. Because of his thick accent, Edward Bishop could not understand him. The subsequent row over the near - disaster convinced their Lordships of the Admiralty that Edward Bishop was safer in a ship. He was posted to Victory where he had to touch up Nelson's bloodstains with Stephens red ink. 

Just before the Normandy invasion, he was in the Hunt class destroyer Stevenstone, searching for E - boats off Le Havre ( Normandy, France ). Although only a navigator's yeoman, he was regularly called up to the bridge to provide a commentary on the action for the crew below. 

Shortly after D - Day, when Stevenstone bombarded Boulogne - sur - Mer ( Pas - de - Calais, France ), Edward Bishop was sent out to join S.E.A.C. Newspaper, the tabloid of Lord Louis Mountbatten's South East Asia Command. He covered the first hangings of war criminals at Changi Jail ( Singapore ) and visited Sarawak ( Malaysia ), where he ordered the release of all inmates in the local jail who had been imprisoned by the Japanese. He also " liberated " Singapore Cricket Club, which had been the headquarters of the Japanese secret police. 

After the war, he then became a roving Commonwealth Correspondent for the Kemsley newspaper group at the request of its foreign manager, Ian Fleming ( 1908 - 1964 ). With a family to support, " Ted ", as he came to be known on the sub - editing tables of Fleet Street, returned to daily journalism. 

As an author, there were some more popular books, including A life of Emma Hamilton, The story of Sir Archibald McIndoe's burns unit at East Grinstead, The story of the Hurricane and The Debt We Owe, about the R.A.F. Benevolent Fund. Edward Bishop next ran a paper in Kuwait for a year, and was writing diplomatic stories for the Saudi news service in London when he was asked to write some obituaries for the Telegraph. 

He died on Sunday, the same day as Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Foxley - Norris whose obituary, published the next day, " Ted " had written in advance. 

( source : www.telegraph.co.uk )