A Jersey man has written a book about an uncle he didn’t know he had.

Phil Le Brocq discovered photographs of a young man in an RAF uniform hidden in a cupboard in his parents’ house.

“I asked my dad who he was and he said he was his brother,” Phil said.

Pete Le Brocq had never been talked about because his mother was very upset by his death during World War II, shortly after his 21st birthday.

Phil set out to trace his uncle’s story and 35 years later retold it in his book No Time.

Pete Le Brocq dreamed of being a pilot when he was a student at Victoria College in Jersey.

Before the German occupation of the Channel Islands, he convinced his mother to evacuate to the United Kingdom and joined the RAF before his 16th birthday.

Within a year he had qualified as a pilot sergeant and flew 39 missions, mostly to the Middle East, in Wellington bombers over the next two years.

That tour of duty should have allowed Pete a break from flying, but Phil said he simply moved on to planes carrying out torpedo attacks on German ships, during D-Day and beyond.

In the field, he drew to distract himself from the stress of his missions. As a child, he had been taught by Jersey’s most famous artist, Edmund Blampied.

In July 1944, Pete took his sketchbook home. She told her mother that she feared her time was near and not to cry if he was killed in action.

The day after returning to service and undertaking another mission, Pete’s Bristol Beaufighter lost an engine and crashed on a Lincolnshire runway when its landing gear collapsed.

Pete’s boater was dragged out of the flames, but was trapped in the cockpit and no one could reach him.

“He was very young,” Phil said. “I felt like I had to tell his story.”