ARMY MAJOR JAILED OVER CHILD PORN

A decorated Army hero who had 4,658 child porn images on his laptop has been jailed for 18 months.

Major Nicholas Charles McKeown MBE, who was in the Army Air Corps, said he was simply exploring his sexual curiosity and fetish for girls in uniform.

But the helicopter pilot and trainer, who was based at RAF Waddington, had downloaded explicit pictures of babies.

More than 50 pictures were considered at the most serious level of child pornography, Lincoln Crown Court heard.

Major McKeown (48), who had led the Blue Eagles helicopter display team, served in Northern Ireland and Bosnia.

He once ran across a minefield to try and save three servicemen in a crashed and burning Lynx helicopter, the court was told.

Yesterday he admitted 14 charges of possessing and making indecent photographs of children.

These ranged from babies to girls aged up to 10 and children in their early teens, prosecutor Phil Howes said.

McKeown, based at the station's Air Warfare Command, kept the computer at his home in Chichester Road, Bracebridge Heath.

Lincolnshire Police searched the house on advice from German police, finding child abuse images alongside McKeown's adult porn, he said.

Michael Fowler, in mitigation, said child pornography was not alone in McKeown's collection.

"He puts the volume of his adult pornography at gigabytes, which puts into context the number of images in this case," he said.

Judge Michael Heath said: "You have explained what you did by saying you were exploring your sexuality.

"In doing that, you downloaded images of young children and those young children were grossly abused."