Joining the RAF on a short service commission in 1938, and training as a bomber pilot, Barry Barrett was posted with 226 Squadron to France in September 1939, and the following year found himself catapulted into action when, after eight months of the “Phoney War”, the German Blitzkrieg erupted against France and the Low Countries on May 10, 1940.

Flying a single-engined Fairey Battle bomber, a type already obsolete by the start of the war, Frederick Oliver (known universally as Barry) Barrett found himself, like his fellow Battle pilots, pitted from day one not only against the 100mph-faster Messerschmitt Me109 fighter but also the formidable 20mm and 37mm mobile flak defences of the German mechanised columns.

It was a hopeless task. Ordered to attack bridges and communications at low level in a vain attempt to halt the Wehrmacht’s onrush, the Battles perished in droves. Of 32 dispatched into action on the first day, 13 were lost and the remainder severely damaged. Over the next few days the attrition continued at a frightful rate – on May 14, 40 out of 71 aircraft were lost while attacking pontoon bridges around Sedan. Two VCs were awarded posthumously to Battle pilots in attacks on the bridges over the Albert Canal in Belgium. When the “real” war had begun Barrett was seventh in seniority in his flight. Within a short time he was commanding it.

Barrett’s own participation in the one-sided Battle of France came to an end on May 13, when aircraft of his flight were attacked by Me109s, as they emerged from cloud cover. Barrett’s Blenheim was hit by cannon fire and he was severely wounded in one of his arms. His engine cut out but he managed to bring his aircraft down to wheels-up crash-landing in a field, near a column of French troops.

Bleeding copiously, he was taken to a French field hospital, where an orderly patched him up well enough for him to be able to join the headlong flight to the coast in an ambulance driven by a resourceful young Englishwoman. He was to remember her name – Penny Otto (obituary, Penny Phillips, March 16, 2007) – for the rest of his life.

After many vicissitudes, including interception by a German column, from whose clutches he and other wounded escaped thanks to the quick-thinking of their female ambulance drivers, he was eventually evacuated to Britain via La Baule-Escoublac near the mouth of the Loire.

He spent six months in hospital, after which he was passed fit for flying and posted to a flying school in South Africa where he spent the next three years. Returning to the UK in 1944 he was posted to a Mosquito squadron, No 613, in which he undertook bombing and strafing operations in north west Europe both before and after the Normandy landings.

He was subsequently posted to 305 Squadron, a Polish bomber unit (which had some British crews) also flying Mosquitoes. On one occasion over the Low Countries he carried out a low-level attack with his cannon on a train carrying munitions which blew up with a huge explosion that badly damaged his aircraft with debris. With engine power lost, he ordered his navigator to bale out, but at that moment the Mosquito’s engines picked up, and Barrett hauled him back into the cockpit. They limped back towards friendly territory, and Barrett was able to bring the aircraft down to a belly landing on a Dutch airfield. He was awarded the DFC.

Barrett was offered a permanent commission after the war. Among his early roles were chief instructor to the Royal Canadian Air Force’s Central Flying School, 1947-48; chief administrative planner at HQ, Technical Training Command, 1953-55, during which time he was principal planner for the RAF side of the Coronation; and planning at Nato’s Norway HQ, 1956-57, involved in studies on the future size and scope of the Norwegian and Danish Air Forces in the context of Nato deployment.

He went on to become chief instructor, 1963-66, at the Joint School of Warfare, where he led lecture teams to Nato Countries and to the staff colleges of India and Pakistan. After commanding RAF Colerne, 1966-68, when he was appointed CBE, and senior appointments in 38 Group, 1968-71, he retired in 1973 as Director of Flight Safety for the RAF and Army Air Corps.

In retirement he was successively managing director of Air Gregory, an aircraft charter company; general manager of GKN’s aviation department (later running its London office); and an aircraft broker in Africa and the Middle and Far East.

Barrett is survived by his wife Gay, whom he married in 1976, and by the daughter of his first marriage, which was dissolved.

Air Commodore F. O. (Barry) Barrett, CBE, DFC, wartime bomber pilot, was born on December 2, 1918. He died on October 23, 2007, aged 88