A MEMORIAL service for the Second World War fighter pilot cremated in a plane-shaped coffin will be held on Tuesday, May 29.

Earlier this month the family of Terry Prendergast, 85, paid their final tributes by sending him off in a £300 wooden and cardboard coffin decorated as a Hawker Hurricane.

The camouflage plane boasted wings, a propeller and even Flight Lieutenant's Prendergast's flight number 8608.

Mr Prendergast's daughter Sue Hay said: "The cremation was for family only.

"But there is a much wider circle of people who loved Daddy so we thought we should have a memorial service."

Mrs Hay said anybody was welcome to go to the service at St Mary's Church in Bradford Peverell where Flt Lt Prendergast had been a bell ringer.

Flt Lt Prendergast's cremation, first reported in the Dorset Echo, captured the imagination of the country and reappeared in almost every national newspaper.

His son Andy Prendergast, 53, a community film maker, said: "Some people might think it is disrespectful to put your father in a cardboard coffin but he was 85 and would have liked it.

"He was great fun, generous, thoughtful, very intelligent and very creative.

"I can tell you, the funeral director was a bit taken aback when he arrived."

Flt Lt Prendergast's youngest son Ian, 49, made the coffin with his two children Otto, 12, and Octavia, 15, and niece Hannah Hay.

He said: "He was a very self-sufficient guy. Every single bit of cardboard we used to make the plane was cardboard he stored religiously for future use.

"When we were all kids he put wings on a big box and we used to pretend to fly around the garden. So I suppose this was our plane for him."

During the war Flt Lt Prendergast joined the RAF and was posted to Burma where he was shot down in 1944 during a dogfight with five Japanese planes.

Although his right arm was badly injured he was a keen flier and was still paragliding at the age of 82.

Tuesday's service starts at 2.30pm and the family have requested the congregation make donations to the West Dorset General Hospitals NHS Trust Community Fund instead of flowers.