Lieutenant Commander Reginald Derek Taylor died in a flying accident off the English coast in 1954.

The son of a Royal Navy pilot who was stationed in Malta after World War II is searching for records of the daring deeds his father pulled off in the air while patrolling the Mediterranean Sea.

Londoner Derek Taylor hopes to find evidence of his father, Reginald Derek Taylor – a navy pilot – and his aerial feats when patrolling the Mediterranean Sea after World War II.

Lieutenant Commander Reginald Derek Taylor served on HMS Falcon and was stationed in Ħal Far between June and December 1949.

While his son Derek, who is now 72 and lives in London, never met his father, he hopes to find evidence of the navy pilot’s aerial feats, which he knew only as stories recounted to him by his mother.

“I never knew my father. He and my mother were not married and he deserted her before my birth,” Taylor told Times of Malta.

“He also died in a flying accident when I was very young, so I never got to know him at all.

“However, my mother had always told me a story about how he managed to land a plane on an aircraft carrier seconds before running out of fuel completely. It was a big deal and seemed to have made the papers at the time.

“She said she once had a newspaper clipping of the incident but it has since been lost.”

According to Taylor’s research, his father was performing a flying operation in a single-seat fighter aircraft together with a colleague in another aircraft when they became lost while running dangerously low on fuel.

It must have been quite a feat since he had probably never landed on an aircraft carrier before

“The other aircraft ditched in the sea and my father considered that he might have to do the same,” Taylor said.

“However, he suddenly spotted a US aircraft carrier below, on which he was able to complete a successful landing.”

“I think it must have been quite a feat since he had probably never landed on a carrier before.”

The Royal Navy pilots stayed for the night and, the following morning, they took off from the carrier escorted by US aircraft.

The lieutenant commander died in 1954 in a flying accident off the coast of England and his son is looking for records and details of the incident that could also help him shed some light on his father’s military career.

“Unfortunately, as my father was married to another woman at the time, I do not have access to his flying logbook as this presumably went to his widow when he died,” he said.

“While that would be the best place to look it up, as the landing seems to have made the newspapers at the time, I am hoping that someone might have recalled or even kept a record of the incident.”

An accountant by trade, Taylor hopes he can give the gift of family history to his son, who also enlisted in the navy.

“Since my father was a navy pilot and my son has now enlisted in the fleet as well, I thought that it could be interesting if I were able to pass on our history to him,” Derek Taylor said.