It's about time! Nuke test hero finally gets his medal

Pete, 93, is honoured Oyrs on

- SUSIE BONIFACE

THE last hero of Operation Bagpipes has finally been honoured with a medal, thanks to the Mirror.

Squadron Leader "Pete" Peters flew secret missions though the clouds of US hydrogen bombs in 1954.

Seventy years on, with a shiny medal pinned to his jacket at last, he vowed to parade at Remembrance Sunday and said: "This is just wizard.

Thank you so much for arranging it."

Sqn Ldr Peters flew through the radioactive detritus of the deadly weapons three times.

Their combined yield of 13.8 megatons was equivalent to 920 of the weapons that had destroyed Hiroshima less than a decade earlier.

But in July, Sqn Ldr Peters, 93, was told he was not entitled to wear the Nuclear Test Medal. After the Mirror highlighted his story, the new government pushed fresh criteria through Whitehall, and the King signed them off on Wednesday.