Britain provided covert assistance to western forces in the Vietnam War by flying secret missions over Laos, the daughter of a former Royal Air Force navigator has claimed.

Flight Lieutenant Donald Roberts, who was based in Asia with the RAF at the time, confided in his family decades later that he had taken part in flying Handley Page Hastings transport aircraft over Laos in the second half of 1962.

The alleged secret flights were designed to help close off the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a key logistics route that was used to resupply the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army fighting in the South. The RAF helped to transport New Zealand SAS personnel and other cargo to the remote and mountainous area, Roberts told his