Editing Liverpool John Lennon Airport (section)

===Civil airport===
Normal civil airline operations resumed after [[Victory in Europe Day|VE Day]] and passengers increased from 50,000 in 1945 to 75,000 in 1948, remaining ahead of [[Manchester Airport]]. Ownership by the [[Ministry of Aviation]] proved to be a drag on the airport's progress thereafter, and Manchester gained the lead from 1949, resulting in Liverpool's loss of the only [[Ground-controlled approach|ground-controlled radar approach]] unit available to [[North West England|North West]] airports, further hampering operation.{{citation needed|date=October 2015}}

During the post-war years, Speke Airport hosted an annual air display in aid of the [[Soldiers, Sailors, and Air Force Association]], a charity for veterans. The displays were immensely popular and attracted a huge crowd. On one such occasion on 21 May 1956, tragedy struck with the death of [[Leo Valentin|Léon Alfred Nicolas "Léo" Valentin]], billed as the Birdman, when his [[balsa wood]] wings struck the opening of the aircraft from which he was exiting and he was hurtled into an uncontrollable spin. He attempted to deploy his emergency parachute, but it became entangled and 'Roman candled', leaving Leo to fall to his death. The local newspaper headlined the story with "The world has been robbed of a daring personality." Ironically, a few years earlier Valentin had been attributed with discovering the free-fall stable position still used by sports parachutists today for safe deployment.{{citation needed|date=October 2015}}