A WOMAN was shocked to see a picture of her father appear in a photography exhibition highlighting the flying heroes of the First World War.

Betty Garvey, 81, of Edenfield, knew her father, Herbert Monks, was a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, but was pleasantly surprised when she found a picture of him was on display at South Ribble Museum, Leyland.

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It forms part of an exhibition entitled ‘Those Magnificent Men: The Air Photography of Capt W. G. Chambers RFC (1897-1918)’ which will run until October 1 and has previously been on display at Haworth Art Gallery in Accrington.

Mrs Garvey said: “We knew my dad had been a pilot in the air force but he never spoke about it, so it came as quite a surprise when his photograph appeared in this exhibition.

“It does make you quite proud to see it. I remember my dad well but he was a quiet man and very modest, so to us he was just dad, not a war hero or anything like that.”

She said it took exhibitions like this to realise the magnitude of what pilots such as her father did during the war.

“When you see his picture up with all the others you realise what amazing things they all did,” added Mrs Garvey. “We had only just crossed the channel in an aeroplane, so to go to war in one was very new and very dangerous.

“There were no parachutes and the technology was very basic, they used to throw bombs over the side of where they were sitting.”

Monks, born in Bury 1895, entered the Royal Flying Corps – the air arm of the British Army which preceded the Royal Air Force – while he was still a teenager and was first posted to France as an engineer in 1915.

He soon progressed through training to become a flying observer before qualifying as a pilot in 1916, flying bombing missions across northern France against the Germans.

He earned his commission in 1918 and, after spending time as an engineering officer in the Middle East, left the RAF in 1920 as a lieutenant.

Monks worked as an engineer for Bury machinery firm Bentley and Jackson for much of his life.

He died aged 87 after enjoying his retirement in Fleetwood.

The exhibition has been put on by an award-winning amateur photographer after the nephew of another WWI observation pilot came to him with undeveloped photographs