WW1 / WW2 Pilot - 2nd Lieutenant / Squadron Leader - C N Prentice - 2nd Battalion Artist Riffles OTC -Royal Flying Corps - Royal Air Force - Murdered after the war.

2nd Lieutenant C N Prentice - R A F - 762911 -  2nd Battalion Artist Riffles OTC  - Royal Air Force - Courtney Napier Prentice, Also Royal Flying Corps: Born. April 1899, Stow market, Suffolk, and was murdered in Menton in the south of France in 1975. founded Sun Petroleum & Prentice Aircraft and Cars Ltd. which at one time leased Ipswich airport. He inherited his father's scientific and pioneering gifts.  The plane in the picture is on card and was a plane that Lt Prentice would of flown.  Not the Actual plane.  WW1 British war medal & Victory Medal also WW2 War medal.As a young pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, going out on anti-submarine patrol in 1917 in a Morris Farman fitted with a 'pusher' air screw. Like his wife, Ethel Mary (Joy) Gosling (born 1st. March, 1900), whom he married on 14th. September, 1917 in Stow market, he had enjoyed flying ever since. After 1924, when they owned a Blackburn Bluebird, they became the first lessees of Ipswich Airport and had to meet King Edward, later Duke of Windsor, whenever he arrived on his journeys to meet Mrs. Simpson, and who spent six months at Felixstowe before the abdication crisis.Squadron Leader Courtney Prentice founded a firm, Sun Petroleum Company, which imported petroleum products into Lowestoft (the tanks he built at Oulton Broad with his own hands and those of a few other men are still in operation), and he later founded Prentice Aircraft and Cars Ltd. at Ipswich and the Suffolk Aero Club. In the 1939-45 War he was the RAF's chief technical officer at Calshot at the time of the Battle of Britain.When his father died in 1931 he was living at Kelvedon in Essex and was a Company Director. He was granted Letters of Administration for the estate of Susan Bloss Prentice in 1948 when his address was Seagull, Undercliff Road, Felixstowe. They owned Seagull Cottage, Undercliff Road East from 1933 and they both enjoyed sailing, once taking their motor yacht 'Jean' from Felixstowe Dock to the Mediterranean by way of the French inland waterways. He was murdered on 18th. October, 1975 in his caravan in Menton having driven there from England on his own as his wife had said that she was not feeling very well and would go on her own by train. The murderer was never apprehended and his motive remains unclear.He and Ethel Mary spent a lot of time each year in Menton, or otherwise travelling in order to avoid paying unnecessary taxes and his son, Eugene, had been Manager of the family businesses for most of his adult life leaving Courtney considerable freedom to do what he wanted. It is significant that he did not mention his son, Eugene, in his will: they had a difficult relationship and Eugene felt extremely hurt by this absence of a mention and apparently the same thing happened in his mother's will where she was considering excluding Denise as well.He m. Ethel Mary Gosling in Sep 1917. She was the youngest of eleven children and seems to have been rather spoiled as a child. When she married Courtney he continued to indulge her whims which may have been part of the reason why she was unkind, even cruel, to her only son and other family members and friends. Nevertheless, she could be very nice and sometimes quite generous. Courtney seemed to take the easy way out and never openly disagreed with her despite her elaborate 'bending of the truth' and fictitious additions to the stories she told. She died on 19th. September, 1984. Their only child was:

1. Eugene Prentice, b. 23 Oct 1918 in Stow market. He was quite starved of love as a child and in later life by his parents. He was not particularly academic despite, or perhaps because of being sent away to a selection of boarding schools from the age of seven including Beaumont College near Windsor. After school, he learned to fly and soon became an instructor with light aircraft. He worked for the Air Transport Corps with the RAF during the war, flying bombers etc. from different stations around the UK, taking them from one location to another but not actually fighting. He passed his certificate to join the Royal Aero Club on 15th. April, 1937 at Ipswich Aero Club flying a D.H. 60 Gipsy III 105hp plane. His address at the time was The Seagulls, Undercliffe Drive, Felixstowe and he gave his profession as an Oil Representative. He became a Director of Prentice Aircraft and Cars from its outset and though he worked there until retirement he never really enjoyed the business side of things. He would have much preferred to be round at the back working on the car and lorry engines himself. He always had a passion for boats and sailing. Generally messing about with them was very important in his life. The family actually lived on board for three years when his daughter Jem was very small. At the age of seventy six he still has a little sailing/cabin cruiser.

Also, having not done any flying for many years he started to have lessons in a Micro-light. After a while he decided that they were not really right for him at his age. Consequently, during 1993 he took up gliding at a club near Norwich. This he loves and is getting on very well.He married Constance Mary Quant in September, 1939. She is very long-suffering with her husband's hobbies even though she doesn't really share his enthusiasm for them. Denise Wendy Prentice, b. 1940, Woodbridge. She m. Kenneth Stringer in 1961. They divorced in 1977 when she changed her name back to 'Prentice' and in 1994 she is living in Felixstowe but, sadly, is blind. This is the result of an attempt to kill herself with a gun after her marriage had broken down and following a very unhappy affair afterwards.