an aircraft carrier below with support ships, the deck crewman stretched over the wing as the pilot failed to land first time, pen and black ink with body white on buff card, 310 x 250mm., signed lower right, date stamped on verso, 25 March 1943, with a stamped serial number below, framed and glazed with a note on the backboard identifying the aircraft carrier as HMS Dasher, 1943. Russell Partridge Brockbank (1913-1979) served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve during World War II. He had already worked for Punch in 1939, and continued to publish through the war, as well as for many years after, focussing on his great passions of aviation and, in particular, motoring. HMS Dasher was converted from a US merchant ship in 1941, and entered service in the Royal Navy in July, 1942. She was home to Sea Hurricanes and Swordfish of several squadrons the Fleet Air Arm. Tragically, she sank in the Firth of Clyde, in 1943, following a large explosion below decks, for which the Americans and the British blamed each other, for bad practice and bad design. Despite, or perhaps because of, the huge number of fatalities, the event was hushed up in the interests of morale, with the supposed burial of many of the victims in an unmarked mass grave.