AS Wales First Minister hes never far from the headlines.

But Carwyn Jones has opened up on his normally private family life to reveal the story of his great uncle.

Leading Aircraftman Edgar Hopkin, from Gwaun Cae Gurwen in Carmarthenshire, was killed while in Alabama in 1942 during World War II. He was Mr Jones great uncle on his fathers side.

Now Mr Jones is uploading photographs of the RAF pilot to historical website Peoples Collection Wales, an archive of reminiscences, photographs, video and audio in the hope that others can learn his history.

Mr Jones told the Echo: When my great aunt died in 1993 all the family heirlooms came to me photographs, Edgars service card from the RAF.

We knew a lot of his story already, he was one of five siblings, which included my grandmother, and he was the first in the family to be accepted to university.

He was a colliers son going to read medicine at Edinburgh University but he never went.

The First Minister and his family discovered that Edgar, who was just 19 when he died, had been sent to the US for warm weather training and didnt when his aircraft got into difficulty.

We knew he was buried in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, near other family members, and we even had a cine film of the funeral, said Mr Jones.

I decided to put his name into Google and it found pictures on a website. I decided to contact the site administrator who told me Edgars instructor was still alive.