Reginald Turnill

Reginald Turnill began his career at the age of 15 as a reporter's telephonist at the Press Association, the British news agency, becoming a reporter by 1935. After war service as a machine gunner in the Middlesex Regiment, and as a warrant officer reporting courts martial for the Judge Advocate General's department in Naples, In 1958 he became the Corporation's Air and Space Correspondent, with a brief to include defence as well. In April 1970, he was the first journalist to report on the Apollo 13 catastrophe via the BBC World Service when based at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center on 13 April 1970. After retiring from the BBC staff on his 60th birthday he continued working as a freelance broadcaster, writing many books and continuing as Newsrounds Space Editor until the mid-1980s. In 1990 he presented Return Ticket, a five-part Radio 4 series about the Apollo 13 mission. In 2006 he won the Sir Arthur Clarke Award Lifetime Achievement Award. ==Writer==

He contributed to books, including the ''Observer's Book Book of Manned Spaceflight and the Observer's Book of Unmanned Spaceflight in the 1970s, published by Frederick Warne & Co. In the 1980s he edited Jane's Spaceflight Directory. He was disappointed by the cancellation of the Black Arrow British space programme in July 1971, at the moment that it was providing results. In 2003 he published The Moonlandings, An eyewitness account'', in which he recounted how and why the first men landed on the moon. Turnill wrote obituaries of people involved in aerospace and other figures for The Guardian, The Times and The Daily Telegraph, the last to appear during his lifetime being of James Arnot Hamilton, who helped design Concorde's wing. It appeared in The Guardian in May 2012. ==Personal life==

He married Margaret Hennings in 1938 in Westminster. They had two sons. He lived in Sandgate, Kent. ==Publications==

• The Moonlandings: An Eyewitness Account (foreword by Buzz Aldrin), 2002, Cambridge University Press, • Celebrating Concorde, 1994, Ian Allan Publishing, • Farnborough: the Story of the RAE (with Arthur Reed), 1981, Hale Publishing, • The Language of Space: A Dictionary of Astronautics, 1970, Littlehampton Book Services, • ''Moonslaught: The full story of Man's race to the Moon'', 1969, Purnell and Sons • ''Jane's Spaceflight Directory'' (edited by Reginald Turnill), various editions during the 1980s, • Astronautics, 1970, Littlehampton Book Services, • ''Observer's Book of Manned Spaceflight'', 1972, Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd, ASIN B0055OFWQ8 • ''Observer's Book of Unmanned Spaceflight'', 1974, Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd, , ==See also==