After being shot down on a raid over Germany in the spring of 1943, Matthew Gibb spent more than two years as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft III at Sagan in the east of the country (now Zagan, Poland). His aircraft had been hit over the Ruhr on the last sortie of his tour of operations, after which he would have qualified for leave.

In the winter of 1945 he undertook the PoW survivors’ march — the notorious Long March to the west ordered by the German authorities to prevent Allied captives from being liberated by the advancing Russians. Back in civilian life he became a solicitor, practising in London for 60 years.

Stationed with 4 Group, in 51 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command at Snaith in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Flight Lieutenant Gibb had acted variously as bomb aimer and navigator in a Halifax Mk 3 bomber. On the night of May 13, 1943, he was shot down over Bochum. Two of the bomber’s six-strong crew were killed.

Gibb succeeded in parachuting safely from the burning aircraft and was on the run for five days, sleeping by day and walking by night towards the Dutch border. He survived by stealing eggs and milk. Close to the border he broke cover, but his scruffy appearance aroused suspicion and he was challenged, picked up and eventually sent to Stalag Luft III.

In the camp he worked as a “penguin”, emptying earth from his trousers from the digging of the tunnel in his hut, “Harry”, through which the Great Escape took place. But ultimately he did not draw one of the lots that would have landed him a place on the attempted break-out planned for the night of March 24-25, 1944. Of the 80 who did get out of the camp on that occasion, 50 of those who were recaptured were shot on Hitler’s orders.

Matthew Gibb was born Matiozas Waytkeviczia in Holytown, near Motherwell, in 1920. His father, also Matiozas, a coalminer, and his mother, Ona, were members of the Roman Catholic Lithuanian immigrant community who settled in the region in the early 1900s.

The couple had nine children, but Ona died, aged 33, from pneumonia when Matthew was 4. He went on to win a scholarship to Our Lady’s High School, Motherwell.

There were no funds for higher education so at 18 he went to London with little more than a bag of apples and the promise of temporary work in a garage with a friend of the family. War was declared the next year and he enlisted in the RAF.

In the summer of 1942 he married Bettina Mary Dawson, then living at Edgware, North London. But their newlywed happiness was short-lived when the next year she was to receive a telegram reporting him “missing in action” and later confirmed as a PoW.

After the war in 1946 he qualified as a solicitor, changing his name by deed poll, and was offered articles with Barnes & Butler, a Holborn law firm: Pat Butler, son of Alfred Warren Butler, the firm’s senior partner, had been a fellow PoW.

In 1955 he set up his own firm in Gray’s Inn, Bax Gibb & Co; later merging with Watkins Pulleyn & Ellison, and then in later years operating first as a sole practitioner and then in a series of partnerships. He was for ten years a General Commissioner of Income Tax and trustee of the Marie Curie Memorial Fund. In his eighties he was a consultant with Howletts, now merged with Kidd Rapinet.

His family remained his first love: he and his wife Bettina spent their married life in the North London suburbs. (For the past 30 years time was divided between London and Suffolk.) After the death of a daughter, Caroline, at 9 months in 1949, they had three other children: Frances (legal editor of The Times), Katharine and Matthew.

Throughout his life Gibb was a voracious reader with a formidable intellect and depth of knowledge. He remained, however, something of an outsider to the legal Establishment that he had joined and was not averse to taking on the authorities — whether the taxman, banks or professional bodies.

An excellent lawyer, he nonetheless often preferred the excitement and dreams of business ventures which he sought to pursue — with mixed success. But perhaps because of his early PoW years, he remained, Micawber-like, an eternal optimist.

His wife and children survive him.

Matthew Gibb, RAF navigator, PoW and solicitor, was born on October 9, 1920. He died on May 3, 2008, aged 87