As commander of a squadron and then a wing of Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers in 1944-45 Kit North-Lewis played his part in the establishment of that tactical air superiority that made life on the ground so difficult for German generals trying to marshal their forces to counter the Allied advance from the Normandy beachhead after D-Day.

Designed as an air superiority fighter, the Typhoon had revealed shortcomings in rate of climb and high-altitude performance that made it unsuitable for that role. But the cannon-armed, rocket-firing Typhoon came into its own at low level in the ground attack role. Its fearsome firepower, which could include armour-piercing bombs, was sufficient to penetrate the hulls and turrets of the most heavily armoured tanks, and the appearance of squadrons and wings such as North-Lewis’s over the battlefield became the nightmare of Panzer commanders after June 6, 1944.

North-Lewis had begun his war in the Army, but transferred to the RAF, with which he was to fly more than 170 operational sorties. For his skill and leadership in “tank busting” operations, and in previous attacks on trains and transport in Northern France, flying Mustangs, he had, by the end of the war, been awarded a DSO and two DFCs.

Christopher David North-Lewis was born in 1918 and educated at Marlborough. There his performance in the Officers’ Training Corps led him to a Territorial commission in the 2nd Battalion Queen Victoria’s Rifles, when he left school to work in the City of London.

The early months of the war were ones of relative inactivity, and he leapt at the chance to transfer to the RAF, which was asking for army volunteers as pilots. After training he was posted to 13 Squadron flying Blenheims, with which he flew a diversionary raid against German nightfighter airfields on the night of the 1,000-bomber raid on Cologne in May 1942.

Later that year he joined 26 (Mustang) Squadron as a flight commander, and was soon engaged on photo-reconnaissance and attacks on rail and road traffic in Northern France. For these he was awarded his first DFC in March 1943.

In May 1944 he was given command of 181 Squadron, in 124 Wing in the 2nd Tactical Air Force. In the run-up to the Normandy landings this was engaged in disrupting troop movements and suppressing coastal radars, notably that newly installed in the strategically important St Peter Port on Guernsey, which watched over the western part of the Channel.

In the period immediately after D-Day his squadron was in action non-stop, attacking German armour and transport vehicles. By the middle of the month it was operating from an airstrip just behind the French coast near Caen, enabling it to stay airborne much longer on mission. In the first week of August it played a key role in blunting a German tank attack that threatened the US Third Army.

North-Lewis was now given command of 124 wing and awarded a Bar to his DFC. He led the wing’s three Typhoon squadrons in pounding the German divisions trapped in the Falaise pocket, and later in air support for the Guards Armoured Division as it made its way along treacherous exposed roads to Eindhoven, during the ill-fated Arnhem campaign. The wing was one of the first RAF units to operate from Dutch soil, and he was later awarded the Bronze Lion (equivalent DSO) by a grateful Dutch Government.

In December 1944 he led his wing in air operations that helped to stem the German offensive in the Ardennes, the “Battle of the Bulge” — Hitler’s last throw of the dice on the Western Front. Flying in the atrocious weather of that period, his Typhoons destroyed some German tanks that were approaching a tactically important crossing over the River Meuse at Dinant.

His final operation was in support of the British 2nd Army’s assault across the Rhine near Wesel on March 23, 1945. As 124 Wing attacked a strongpoint near the town whose artillery was holding up the amphibious operation, North-Lewis’s Typhoon was hit by flak, his engine stopped and he managed to glide down to a wheels-up landing on a small island in the middle of the river. He was briefly made a prisoner by the Germans holding out on the island. But the British advance very soon reversed this situation, and his captors became his prisoners. North-Lewis was awarded an immediate DSO “in the field” and rested from operations.

He remained with the RAF after the war. Among his appointments was one on the planning staff of Operation Musketeer, the Suez landing in 1956, for which he went out to the Cyprus HQ. The following year he commanded No 7 Squadron of Valiant V-bombers and later the base at Wyton, Cambridgeshire, where the RAF’s strategic reconnaissance force of Valiants and Canberras was based. As an air commodore he commanded the large Akrotiri air base in Cyprus, from which in 1965 a squadron of Gloucester Javelin fighters was dispatched to Zambia at President Kaunda’s request during the time of Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Goverment’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

In retirement from the RAF after 1971 he was director of the Society of British Printing Ink Manufacturers for 12 years.

His first wife, Virginia, died in 1985. he is survived by his second wife, Susan, and by the son and daughter of his first marriage.

Air Commodore Kit North-Lewis, DSO, DFC and Bar, wartime fighter-bomber pilot, was born on March 13, 1918. He died on March 25, 2008, aged 90