Raymond Baxter

Raymond Frederic Baxter OBE (25 January 1922 – 15 September 2006) was an English television presenter, commentator and writer.

He also provided radio commentary at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the funerals of King George VI, Winston Churchill and Lord Mountbatten of Burma, and the first flight of Concorde.

In August 1940, during World War II, he joined the Royal Air Force and trained as a fighter pilot in Canada.

On 18 March 1945, Baxter took part in a daylight raid on the Shell-Mex building in The Hague, which was then the German headquarters for V-1 and V-2 rocket attacks on southern England.

The commander of the raid, Max Sutherland, received a bar to his DFC and Baxter, along with the three other pilots, was again mentioned in dispatches.

In an interview about his wartime career, Baxter described flying over a V-2 site during a launch on 14 February 1945, and his wingman firing on the missile: "I dread to think what would have happened if he'd hit the thing!"

He later flew North American Mustang and Douglas Dakota aircraft for a year, then worked in Forces Broadcasting Service (FBS) from 1945 to 1949, based in Cairo and then Hamburg, becoming its deputy director.

He also competed in numerous Alpine, Tulip and RAC Rallies, which was satirised in the character Roland Thraxter in Peter Ustinov's Grand Prix du Rock.

He was a crew member in the New Zealand Air Race in 1953, in a British European Airways Vickers Viscount.

Following BMC's takeover by Leyland Motors, it was decided to dispense with Baxter's services in this post, and he returned to work full-time for the BBC.

Baxter died on 15 September 2006 at the age of 84 at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, close to his home in Henley-on-Thames.

Raymond Baxter on the set of Tomorrow's World in TC7