A Dundee veteran has been posthumously awarded the Arctic Star for his service on the convoys during the Second World War.
Ian James Norman, who died in 1995, served in British convoys to Archangel in 1943 and 1944, took part in the liberation of Hong Kong and saw the horrors of Nagasaki while stationed in the Pacific in 1945.
The Arctic Star is a medal issued to British, Australian and New Zealand veterans who took part in the Arctic convoys to deliver aid to the Soviet Union.
Mr Norman volunteered in 1942, when he was 16, for an apprenticeship in the Fleet Air Arm and served this in active service at sea.
As an aero engineer he worked on Hellcat fighters flying from HMS Trumpeter, protecting the convoys from air attack by German warplanes stationed in occupied Norway.
An Avenger bomber serviced by Mr Norman sank a German support ship during Operation Judgement when allied aircraft attacked German U-boat pens in the Baltic.
Following the liberation of Denmark, the ship was refitted and continued service in the eastern fleet, taking part in the liberation of Hong Kong from Japanese occupation.
After the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki he went ashore as part of a group to organise Japanese prisoners of war.
His son Martyn described how he only spoke about this part of his service recently.
He said: “One of my children was doing a project for history class on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and this was when we learned he had visited Nagasaki just two weeks after the Japanese surrender. In the confusion he thought he was going to Hiroshima. We had no idea until he started to talk about it.”
Some of the terrible things Mr Norman witnessed during the conflict were difficult for him to discuss.
Martyn said: “He described seeing the shadows of people burned on to the walls by the atomic blast and the level of devastation.
“In the convoys he once talked about witnessing a freighter being sunk next to his ship and not being able to stop and pick the survivors out of the water.”
Mr Norman’s service is part of a long military tradition in the family.
His father and both his brothers also served, and it is believed his grandfather served as a soldier in what is now Pakistan.
The military service continues as Mr Norman’s grandson is an aircraft engineer, like his grandfather, at Lossiemouth, working on Typhoons that were once stationed at Leuchars.
He has been to Afghanistan twice and Iraq twice and has served for almost 20 years. The family describes their military service as a “proud tradition”.
Martyn said: “My sister Lesley and I are very proud of them both.
“My father was a keen angler he also passed on a lot of his skills in art and archaeology to nieces, nephews and grandchildren who still talk of him fondly.”