Flt Lt Gordon Gregory

In the following years very few people heard of them from his own lips, for his was a classic case of modesty and bravery going hand in hand.

Serving in the RAF, he had risked his life on an almost daily basis so as to wreak destruction on the enemy, but after the war, he got a job as Chief Safety Officer for James Reckitt of Hull, a firm known for its pacifist philosophy.

Gordon, more usually known as Greg, was born in Amesbury near

Stonehenge, the only son of a First World War navigator in the Royal Navy. A highly-intelligent boy, Greg won a scholarship to Bishop Wordsworth School. He was also a chorister at Salisbury Cathedral, and early on showed a free spirit and daring by successfully poaching game on the local estate. He would ever afterwards think of himself as a country boy.

Leaving school, he was indentured as a trainee pharmacist, but this career was cut short by the outbreak of war. Aged 18, he and his two best friends immediately volunteered to train as pilots with the RAF.

He told an interviewing officer he wanted to serve as a pilot "because it is the only way I know of going to war sitting down".

After winning his wings, he opted to fly twin-engined bombers, but was dubious about aerobatics. He told his instructor: "Birds know a lot more about flying than I do: when I see a bird flying upside down, I'll think there is something in it."

At Catfoss in the East Riding, he learned to fly Ansons and later Blenheims, and in between times went to Sixpenny Dances for Servicemen in Routh Village Hall near Beverley, organised by an enterprising local girl, Doris Stephenson. She gave the profits to the church, and kept Greg for herself. They eventually married in 1943.

Greg joined 254 Squadron in Coastal Command, flying Blenheims from Sumburgh in the Shetlands on convoy escort duty, anti-enemy aircraft patrol and escorting top brass around the British Isles.

Joining 16 Group Strike Wing at North Cotes in Lincolnshire, he flew Bristol Beaufighters, armed with four cannon, eight machine guns, eight rockets and a rear-facing machine gun for use by the navigator. By the end of the war, the Group had accounted for half the tonnage of destroyed enemy shipping, and Greg had played a leading role in that.

In mid-August following D-Day, he flew on eight separate strikes, every one of which produced serious multiple kills in enemy shipping. The last of the series happened on the 25th when his Beaufighter took a hit, causing his port engine to fail prior to attacking two enemy destroyers in the Gironde Estuary.

His Squadron Commander, the legendary Bill Tacon, advised him to break away. But Greg was not about to give up, and under concentrated fire from land-based ack ack, devastated a power station with all eight rockets.

But now he was desperately short of fuel, and on one engine headed for an airstrip at Vannes in Brittany, not knowing if it was in Allied hands or not. All was well, and Tacon, who had followed him in, flew Greg and his navigator to Portreath at the extreme extent of his aircraft's range, landing without electronic aids from a cloud base only 200ft high.

Greg's operational record earned him the DFC, but it was 14 years before he casually mentioned it in conversation.

He never completely clarified his role in the war's closing months: he certainly ferried Beaufighters and Mosquitoes out to North Africa and the Middle East. However, following his death it emerged that he also ferried Beaufighters carrying Portuguese markings out to neutral Portugal, flying in civvies under a passport in the name of Mr Gordon Gregory, described as a "Government Official". He also trained

Portuguese Air Force pilots and was an associate member of the Portuguese Air Force.

A beacon of independence and certainty, Greg was a clever man, and chivalrous, charismatic, bold, generous, and gregarious.

Doris, his first wife, died of cancer in 1962. His second wife, Joyce Dobson, died in 2004. He is survived by his son, Tony, a retired airline pilot, and two stepdaughters, Gillie and Anne Marie.