A woman who was among the watch which tracked the infamous Nazi Rudolf Hess on his futile peace-making flight to the UK has won her veteran's wings.

Eighty-six-year-old Joyce Whitaker was a "filter plotter" at RAF 82 Group, near Belfast, in May 1941, when Hitler's one-time third-in-command flew to Scotland.

His Messerschmitt was tracked on the last part of its 900-mile journey until Hess bailed out on to farmland south of Glasgow.

Mrs Whitaker, of Crofters Mill, Sutton, who has been presented with her veteran's badge by Skipton RAF Association, says it was only later they learned the aircraft had been flown by Hess.

"It was a very exciting time. I was only 20. We knew we were doing very important work," said Mrs Whitaker, whose job was top secret at the time.

It was so hush-hush that she and her colleagues were not allowed to have their photographs taken.

"We felt very important as well. We couldn't talk about the work - we never spoke about it to anyone. We could divulge nothing," she said.

"Obviously, it being a long time ago I have forgotten some things but the people I worked with remain vivid in my memory. I was at a very impressionable age.

"I have always said they were the best working days I have ever done."

Hess was eventually captured, interrogated and locked up in the Tower of London and then tried for war crimes at the end of the Second World War. Mrs Whitaker volunteered to join the WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force) in 1941 to make sure she got a job where she could use her brain.

And after several weeks training in Gloucestershire with Fighter Command, she was first drafted to Bentley Priory, in Middlesex, before moving on to Digby, in Lincolnshire, and then Northern Ireland.

Her work as a filter plotter involved locating data on a large map which had been collected by the primitive radar masts located around the British Isles. Filter plotters were involved in scrambling aircraft, locating enemy planes, helping to co-ordinate air-sea rescue and warning of air raid attacks.

Her late husband Sam was a Royal Engineer with the 11th Armoured Division.

She said she was very proud to be receiving her veteran's badge along with 87-year-old Malcolm Mattock, of Bradley, Jack Ward, 85, of Buckden, and Harry Ackroyd, 81, of Grassington.