Commando Comic #235 'Flying Flea' (1966)
 
FUNNY looking little crate, ain't it? A sort of motorbike with wings.
 
Eighteen-year-old Willie Onslow built it himself, and flew it, too!
 
A Frenchman invented the Flying Flea and Do-it-yourself" kits to build it were offered for under £100. Young Willie, flying mad, saved up and got one sent out to the island of Silau, southeast of New Guinea, where his dad, Pop Onslow ran an air-freight business with an ancient string bag of a Vickers Virginia bomber.
 
When war came and an Aussie fighter squadron took over Silau to hold back the invading Jap hordes in the South Seas, the pilots laughed themselves sick at the two freakish-looking planes already operating there. Willie had to take the Flea up and run rings round the latest Tomahawk fighter before they began to consider letting Pop and his son-and the Flea-join the war effort.