A retired professor who died with his wife and a relative in a horrific head-on car crash in Australia took on the might of the Royal Air Force 30 years ago.

Prof Jerry Sherwood, 75, his wife Naomi, 74, and a cousin, Pay Beyger, 80, from Brampton, Cumbria, were killed on Tuesday when their car skidded on a highway in north Queensland and smashed into an oncoming vehicle.

Mr Sherwood, a former Fleet Air Arm engineer, was the veteran of a successful campaign to cut aircraft noise at RAF Abingdon, whose boundary hedge ran past his home in Honeybottom Lane, Dry Sandford.

After months of fruitless complaints to station bosses, Mr Sherwood solved the problem himself after a chance meeting on a train with the then Defence Minister, Denis now Lord Healey. With the support of his MP, the late Airey Neave, he went on to record on tape the sound of Andovers, and managed to prove that Abingdon-based aircraft were much noisier than similar planes operated by the Queen's Flight.

His work prompted the RAF to carry out modifications which resulted in a quieter life for families living near the busy Abingdon airfield.