Phantom jet kit includes transfer referring to him.

A Japanese manufacturer of aircraft models has immortalised Honiton man Gwynne Stephen Chinnock’s time in the Fleet Air Arm.

Not long after he led a pipe band show for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, Mr Chinnock reached the end of his service with 892 Naval Air Squadron.

“I was aboard the Ark Royal, which was on its way home from the Med. We were somewhere off Portugal,” he recalls.

“The commanding officer called me to his cabin and said: ‘How would you like to be home tomorrow?’

“They put me in the back of a Phantom and flew me home.

“When I saw the plane, it had been sign written especially and it said ‘Goodbye Mr C’.

“Recently, my son, who lives in Scotland, rang me and said he had bought a model kit of a Phantom jet and couldn’t believe what he saw when he opened the box - among the transfers was one that said ‘Goodbye Mr C’.

“They have obviously based their model on a photograph of that particular jet.”