Martin Aitchison

He was deaf, excluding him from active service in the Second World War, but he worked for Vickers Aircraft as a technical illustrator.

He produced drawings for the bouncing bomb designed by Barnes Wallis for the Dam Busters air raid.

He also drew spy series "Danger Unlimited" and adaptations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World and C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower stories for the Eagle, and "Arty and Crafty", written by Geoffrey Bond, for Eagle's junior companion paper Swift.

The consistency, naturalistic style and attention to detail of the artist made him a favourite with the prolific British publisher and over a period of a quarter of a century, he illustrated at least 100 different titles.

He left Ladybird in 1987, and retired - apart from drawing a new comic strip, "Justin Tyme - ye Hapless Highwayman", written by Geoffrey Bond, and later his son Jim, for the fanzine Eagle Times from 1998 to 2004.