Reginald Turnill

Reginald George Turnill (12 May 1915 – 12 February 2013) was the BBC's aviation (and space) correspondent for twenty years during the beginnings of crewed space exploration and the early jet age in aviation, including the breakthrough in supersonic passenger flight represented by Concorde. He covered NASA's space missions and all the Apollo program Moon missions for the BBC. Turnill's connection with the BBC, as a freelance, continued for some years after his official retirement.

Career

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.

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, ,