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Joining the RAF on a short-service commission in 1938, Paddy Barthropp flew Spitfires during the Battle of Britain, and later took part in sorties over occupied France. It was during one of these that he was eventually shot down over northern France in the spring of 1942, and spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner.

A redoubtable character — one of the RAF’s most notably insurrectionary spirits — he spent much of his time engineering audacious escapes for himself and others, eventually ending up in Oflag XXIB in Poland. From there, along with other PoWs he was marched out in the bitter winter of 1944-45 on the long trek westwards, away from the advancing Soviet armies. After the war he was granted a permanent commission in the RAF, converted to jets and led the Waterbeach Wing of Gloster Meteors during the 1950s.

Born in Dublin in 1920, but brought to England after his mother’s death in childbirth, Patrick Peter Colum Barthropp was educated at Ampleforth and began his working life as an engineering apprentice at Rover Cars in Coventry. In 1938 he obtained a shortservice commission in the RAF.

At the outbreak of war in September 1939 he was at the School of Army Co-Operation at Old Sarum in Wiltshire. From there he was sent in October 1939 to 613 Squadron, an army co-operation unit flying obsolescent Hawker Hind and then Hector biplanes. The squadron received Lysanders in time for it to participate in co-operating with the British Expeditionary force in France in May 1940, up to the end of the Dunkirk evacuation.

During the Battle of Britain the squadron flew coastal patrols and air-sea rescue sorties. But in August, with mounting losses in pilots, Fighter Command appealed for volunteers. Barthropp immediately stepped forward and after passing through an operational training unit, in September he was posted to 602 (Spitfire) Squadron at Westhampnett near Chichester. There it was in the thick of the fighting and Barthropp was soon in action over the South Coast, gaining several shared combat victories.

When Fighter Command went on to the offensive early in 1941, Barthropp was serving with 91 Squadron with which he carried out hit-and-run attacks across the Channel. Later in the year he was appointed a flight commander with 610 squadron, with whom he scored more combat victories and was awarded the DFC.

After a period “resting” as a flying instructor he was posted to 122 Squadron which was involved in escorting daylight cross-Channel bombing raids. On one of these, on May 17, 1942, his squadron was jumped by a number of Fw 190s, one of which wrecked his controls with its cannon shells compelling him to bale out near St Omer.

He was sent to Stalag Luft III at Sagan, in Upper Silesia, where an immediate attempt to escape with a fellow officer did not endear him to the authorities. As a consequence he was sent to the less salubrious environs of Oflag XXIB at Schubin in Poland, a Straflager for persistent escapers. He immediately took up the challenge, organising a breakout through a 30-yard-long tunnel. Of the 32 who got out four were murdered by the Gestapo and two were thought to have drowned trying to cross the Baltic to Sweden in a stolen sailing craft.

Barthropp was to make contact with the Polish underground in Warsaw with a view to getting away to Yugoslavia through a partisan escape line. Travelling by night in the bitter cold he was on occasions given harbourage in their barns by friendly Polish peasants. But in the end exhaustion overpowered him and he was captured while asleep in a horsebox in a railway station yard.

He was returned to Oflag XXIB, where at the end of January he was with other inmates assembled for what became known as the “Long March” westwards. In temperatures of 20 degrees below zero, with little food and less water, the sufferings of the PoWs on the march were acute. It is estimated that around 10 per cent of the quarter of a million Allied PoWs who set out from camps all over the Greater Reich perished on their march towards freedom. Barthropp reached Lübeck where he was liberated in May.

Granted a permanent commission after the war, Barthropp passed through the Empire Test Pilots School, and was then given command of “A” Fighter Test Squadron and sent to Sudan to conduct trials of the Meteor in conditions of extreme heat.

In 1952 he was appointed to command the Waterbeach fighter wing of Meteors, and led a formation as part of the Coronation celebrations in June the following year. He was awarded the AFC in 1954, but admin and red tape, more frequently encountered in the peacetime RAF as he rose in rank, irked him. It was said that he “obeyed only those rules he agreed with”. In 1957 he was happy to take his “golden bowler” and return to civvy street, where for a number of years, he ran a highly successful luxury car hire business.

He was a stalwart supporter of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association, especially of those members who had become PoWs, for whom he fought to get them the back pay they had not received in captivity.

His marriage in 1948 to Barbara Pal was dissolved. He is survived by his second wife, Betty, whom he married in 1962.

Wing Commander Paddy Barthropp, DFC, AFC, wartime fighter pilot, was born on November 9, 1920. He died on April 16, 2008, aged 87