John Reginald Nixon, the BBC's Middle East Correspondent, died when a civilian airliner en route from Beirut to Amman was shot down by an Israeli fighter near the Transjordan border on 23 September, 1948.

Nixon, 39, was a distinguished war correspondent and had risked death many times. On one occasion he was doing a live broadcast from Athens when there was a sharp crack and his voice disappeared. He came back a moment later to say a sniper on the roof opposite had just missed him.

He narrowly escaped being killed when a bomb exploded at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in July, 1946, because he was late for an appointment and was still crossing the road outside. In a letter home, Nixon said he believed his luck could not hold out much longer. ‘I have been in the firing line on sea, on land, and in the air for too many years now,' he wrote. ‘I feel someone will get me in the end.'

On 3 February, 1945, BBC war reporter Guy Byam was killed when a US bomber crashed after a daylight raid on Berlin. Byam, 26, was on board ‘The Rose of York' (named after Princess Margaret), a US 8 th Air Force Flying Fortress. The plane was damaged by anti-aircraft fire over Berlin and disappeared over the North Sea.

In the early years of the war Byam saw action with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and Combined Operations but was wounded and invalided out. He joined the BBC's War Reporting Unit in April, 1944. Two months later he parachuted into Normandy with British paratroopers on D-Day and his reports made him a household name. A listener wrote after his death: ‘All looked forward to hearing his enthusiastic and youthful voice in the 9 o'clock news.'

BBC War Correspondent Kent Stevenson died while reporting on a raid over northwest Germany on 22 June, 1944. He was on board an RAF 49 Squadron Lancaster which was shot down by a German night-fighter.

Kent Stevenson had joined the BBC in March, 1941 and transferred to the War Reporting Unit when it was established in 1943. Like his fellow correspondents, he underwent rigorous training in military survival techniques and how to work in battle conditions. The war correspondents were issued with revolutionary new lightweight recording devices known as 'midget disc recorders', which had been specially developed by BBC engineers. Because the correspondents recorded their despatches straight onto disc, they had to learn the art of ‘instant censorship'.