FRANCE’S highest-scoring fighter ace during the Second World War, Pierre Clostermann, came to Britain from America, joined the Free French Air Force and from 1943 flew on operations with RAF squadrons, first in Spitfires — in both the fighter and ground-attack roles — and later in Tempests, supporting the Allied advance in northwest Europe.

He set down his experiences of air fighting and the RAF’s aircraft in a memoir Le Grande Cirque (1948, tr. The Big Show, 1951). This vividly captures not only the spirit of air combat, but also the technical challenges of flying the last generation of high-performance pistonengined aircraft in the count-down to the jet age.

How many enemy aircraft Clostermann actually accounted for is today a matter for some debate. The famous picture of him sitting in the cockpit of his faithful Tempest, Le Grand Charles, in 1945, shows 32 Luftwaffe crosses on the fuselage, signifying that number of kills. The 1966 edition of that bible of fighter operations in the Second World War, Aces High, adds one more, crediting him with 33 kills. Subsequent editions of the work have revised those figures downwards considerably, and the total of aircraft he destroyed in the air is regarded as being somewhere nearer 18.

This is not to say that Clostermann was not a brave man and a skilful air fighter. But the French Air Force tended to adopt different criteria for combat victories — each pilot could make a claim for a shared kill — and there was a tendency to admit aircraft destroyed on the ground to totals.

Clostermann was certainly regarded by his RAF superiors as a first-class pilot. He, in turn, had a great affection for what he described as “the clean, frank, open atmosphere of the RAF”. His wartime service, in which he flew a colossal 420 sorties, earned him two DFCs, the Croix de Guerre avec Palme, the American Silver Star and a Belgian decoration.

Pierre Henri Clostermann was born in Curitiba, Brazil, where his father was a French diplomat. He was educated in Paris after which he returned to Brazil and obtained his private pilot’s licence there in 1937. He subsequently studied aeronautical engineering at Ryan Flying College, Los Angeles, and did some commercial flying in California. When war broke out he volunteered for the French Air Force, but was turned down, so he remained in America until 1942 when he came to Britain and joined the Free French Air Force.

His first posting was to No 341 “Alsace” Squadron. This had originally been formed from those Armée de l’Air aircraft which had escaped after the fall of France and joined British forces in North Africa, as the Free French Flight. As the numbers of French-built aircraft dwindled they were replaced by British fighters, and it was operating Spitfire IXs as an RAF squadron when Clostermann joined it as a sergeant at Turnhouse, near Edinburgh, early in 1943. After working up, the squadron went south to join the Biggin Hill Wing from where it was soon involved in escorting daylight raids by American bombers on targets in northern France, a region thickly populated by veteran Luftwaffe fighter squadrons able to operate from a wellorganised network of airfields.

For some months, merely staying alive against this formidable opposition was a priority for 341’s pilots, but on July 27, 1943, Clostermann had his first two combat victories when he shot down two Focke-Wulf 190s in a single sortie. This was a debut which gave a huge fillip to his confidence, and he followed it up with further combat victories over the next few months until, in October that year, he was commissioned and posted to 602 Squadron in the 2nd Tactical Air Force. During the period leading up to the Normandy landings, 2nd TAF strove to paralyse the German capacity to react swiftly to the forthcoming invasion, and Clostermann was involved in a variety of operations ranging from fighter sweeps and bomber escorts to dive-bombing attacks on V1 sites.

On D-Day itself he flew two fighter sweeps over the Normandy beachhead, and a few days later crossed the Channel to touch down on home soil, among the first French pilots to do so. As he recorded in The Big Show, the reception from a British commando who helped him to get down from his Spitfire was: “Well, Frenchie, you’re welcome to your blasted country!” This, as the Clostermann and his comrades were to learn, was not simply good old British xenophobia, but a reference to the whole beachhead area being bombed incessantly by the Germans as soon as night fell, causing a stream of casualties.

In the following weeks he had a number of combat victories operating from Normandy airstrips against a German air force which was desperately trying to counter Allied air superiority. Then, in July he was awarded the DFC and rested from operations. He was sent to the Free French Air Force HQ, but the atmosphere grated on him, and he was soon agitating to be back on operations.

After initial resistance from his French superiors, he was eventually released to a conversion course on Typhoons and Tempests, aircraft in a different league in weight and power from the dainty Spitfire. In January 1945 he joined 122 Tempest wing, with which he was continuously in action in northwest Europe until the end of the war. Although the powerful Tempest was the RAF’s last word in interceptors — it could catch a V1 in level flight — it was also a superb ground- attack aircraft. The rest of Clostermann’s war was a mix of air combat and patrolling — some of it in the hope of catching the Luftwaffe’s Me262 jets — and shooting up surface targets including trains and shipping, in his trusty Le Grand Charles. He was awarded a Bar to his DFC.

Having survived the war, he almost came unstuck only a few days after it ended in Europe. On May 12 he was leading a victory flypast at Bremerhaven when he collided with another aircraft. At low level he took to his parachute, which opened in the nick of time.

After the war he had a varied career. Having caught de Gaulle’s eye during the war as exempifying the best of the Free French spirit, he entered the Chamber of Deputies as a Gaullist in 1946, serving for 20 years. He re-enlisted in the French Air Force to play a role in the air campaign during the Algerian war.

He was also a successful aeroengineer and businessman, helping to found the Rheims Aviation Company and representing the Cessna company. A keen game fisher, he was the first president of the Big Game Fishing Club of France, and in 2001 he was inducted into the International Game Fish Association’s Hall of Fame, in Florida, where it is based.

He wrote a number of other books on air warfare, in addition to Des Poissons si Grands, an account of his Hemingway-esque fishing exploits across the world.

He is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and by three sons.

Pierre Clostermann, DFC and Bar, wartime fighter pilot and politician, was born on February 28, 1921. He died on March 22, 2006, aged 85.