In the annals of valiant but doomed enterprises there are few more moving stories than that of the desperate sortie of No 825 Fleet Air Arm Squadron in its attempt to halt the “Channel Dash” of the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on February 12, 1942. In an attack pressed home with great courage against the formidable anti-aircraft batteries of the battlecruisers, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and their escorting destroyers, all six of the squadron’s Swordfish were shot down.

Pat Kingsmill, the pilot of one of the Swordfish, was among only five survivors who were rescued from the waters of the Dover Strait. Lieutenant-Commander Eugene Esmonde, who led No 825 into the attack that day, was awarded the posthumous Victoria Cross, his crew being one of the four lost to enemy flak and fighters.

The genesis of the stirring events of February 12 was the determination of the German naval high command to get its valuable but vulnerable commerce raiders out of Brest harbour, in Brittany, where they were being subjected to constant attacks by RAF bombers, to the safety of a German port.

Since both the heavy ships had suffered bomb and torpedo damage the decision was made not to hazard an Atlantic Ocean route but to charge straight through the narrow seas under the noses of the Royal Navy and RAF. Though the Channel might have been regarded as virtually British home waters, this was far from being the suicidal undertaking it seemed, since the passage from Brest to Jade Bay and the mouth of the Elbe would be entirely along the coast of German-occupied Europe, under the umbrella of powerful land-based air forces.

Nevertherless, Vice-Admiral Ciliax, who commanded the German force, cannot have imagined that his ships would so long remain undetected by British air reconnaissance. Slipping out of Brest at 10.45pm on the overcast night of February 11, he was not, thanks to a catalogue of errors and sheer bad luck, spotted until 11.09am the following day, by which time his ships were well into the English Channel. Before this, however, increased German air activity over the narrow seas had indicated that something untoward was afoot, and at Dover Lieutenant-Commander Esmonde brought the six serviceable Swordfish of 825 Squadron to readiness for action.

Shortly after midday Esmonde and his Swordfish took off, having been promised an escort of five squadrons of Spitfires, three for close escort and two for diversionary attacks. In the event, only one of these — 11 aircraft — made the rendezvous. As it happened the Spitfire was not to prove an ideal escort aircraft for the slow-moving Swordfish, and the fighters soon found themselves in a series of confused dogfights with the German fighters which were covering the enemy’s escape.

Though under constant attack from Me109s and Fw190s, the first flight of Swordfish — led by Esmonde and including the aircraft piloted by Kingsmill — were able to elude the fighter screen and launch their torpedoes at the German heavy ships. In this at least the cruising speed of the Swordfish — 87mph — was its great asset as the German fighter pilots found themselves repeatedly overshooting their would-be victims. Esmonde was hit by flak just after releasing his torpedo, and crashed.

Kingsmill was not satisfied with his first run, at the Prinz Eugen, and turned for a second before releasing his torpedo. He, too, was shot down by anti-aircraft gunfire, but ditched safely. Miraculously he and his two aircrew, his observer “Mac” Samples and his airgunner, Don Bunce, were picked up by motor torpedo boats that had witnessed the action. All three aircraft of the second flight were shot down with total loss, and of the other Swordfish of the first wave which managed to ditch, one crew member was dead before it hit the water. Only five out of 18 naval airmen made it back to Britain.

Meanwhile, aided by continuing luck, a heavy fighter cover and bad weather, Ciliax continued on his passage, eluding further attacks by bombers and MTBs. By early next morning all three of the heavy ships had gained the shelter of North German harbours, though not without severe mine damage to both Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

Nevertheless, to the British press and public, the Channel Dash seemed a most impudent demonstration of naval daring under Britannia’s very nose. Abandoning the loyal restraint customary in wartime, The Times thundered: “Vice-Admiral Ciliax has succeeded where the Duke of Medina Sidonia failed . . . Nothing more mortifying to the pride of sea-power has happened in home waters since the 17th century.”

In a somewhat more rational estimate of the escapade the German high command recognised the episode for what it surely was — “a tactical victory, but a strategic defeat”. The threat to the Atlantic convoys from Brest had been eliminated and thereafter the German surface navy was effectively to be always in search of a hideout. In that sense, at least, the heroic sacrifices of the aircrews of No 825 were justified.

Kingsmill was awarded the DSO, for his bravery on that day, as was Samples; Bunce was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal.

Charles Major (universally known as Pat) Kingsmill was born in Canada to English “homesteader” parents in 1920. The family soon afterwards returned to England and he was educated at Dulwich College.

At the outbreak of the Second World War he volunteered for the Fleet Air Arm and trained as a pilot. He sustained serious burn injuries after ditching in his Swordfish and required months of plastic surgery to correct them, becoming in the process an honorary member of the Guinea Pig Club, associated with the pioneer work done on countless young airmen by the legendary Sir Archibald McIndoe. Kingsmill’s injuries prevented him from flying operationally again and he spent the remainder of the war in staff appointments and at the Admiralty.

Demobilised in 1945, Kingsmill continued in the Reserve and was awarded the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Officers’ Decoration (VRD).

Immediately after the war he worked for an engineering company, before embarking on a career in hospital adminstration. He worked for the NHS, first as outpatients’ administrator at the London Hospital and then as a capital planner at area health authority and regional health authority level. He spent some years in the Middle East on an NHS secondment, working on the planning of a number of hospitals in such countries as Abu Dhabi. He eventually retired in the mid-1980s.

Kingsmill’s first wife, Connie, whom he married during the war, died in 1956. He is survived by his second wife, Unity, by their son and daughter and by two sons and a daughter of his first marriage. A daughter of his second marriage predeceased him.

Lieutenant-Commander Pat Kingsmill, DSO, VRD, naval aviator, was born in Edmonton, Alberta, on September 19, 1920. He died in London on January 1, 2003, aged 82.