An RAF pilot killed in action during the Second World War is today finally being laid to rest 55 years after being shot down.
Flight Lieutenant Douglas Leitch died instantly on March 6, 1945, when his Spitfire plane flew into an explosion as he attacked a supply line for Nazi German troops in northern Italy.
Only a few fragments of his body and an identification disc were found in the aftermath of the crash near Bologna while most of the remains were left underwater when the Germans flooded the area.
But in August, the rest of Flt Lt Leitch's remains, and parts of his Spitfire fighter plane, were recovered from the soft clay of the River Po.
Today his niece, Anne Pemberton, from Hailsham, and nephew Michael Walsh, from Aberdeen, were among 200 mourners at the British war cemetery in Ravenna.
The half-hour reburial and rededication service was conducted in Italian and English and accompanied by a piper from Flt Lt Leitch's own 72 Squadron.
His coffin, containing the identification disc, was carried by pallbearers from the 216 Squadron of the Brize Norton TriStar detachment at Ancona.
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