An American pilot who volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force as a way of getting involved in the struggle against Hitler more than a year before his country was drawn into it by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war on the US, Donald Blakeslee became one of his country’s leading pilots of the Second World War and a master tactician.

For the first months of his service in the European theatre he fought with an RCAF squadron before transferring to an “Eagle” squadron, one of those set up in the RAF especially for those Americans who made their way to this country to volunteer. With this he took part in the intense large-scale air battles that were fought in the skies over the Dieppe raid of August 1942 and was awarded the DFC for his RAF service and three combat victories.

Thereafter, with American aircraft arriving in force in the European theatre he transferred to the US Army Air Forces and from mid-1943 flew fighter escorts for the US 8th Army Air Force’s bombing raids on targets in occupied Europe and Germany. He ended the war in command of a fighter group, having flown the colossal total of around 500 sorties, and with 15 combat victories and numerous US decorations to add to his Royal Air Force DFC.

Donald James Mathew Blakeslee was born in Fairport Harbour, Ohio, in 1917. Watching Cleveland National Air Races as a boy fired an enthusiasm for flying and after leaving school and starting work with the Diamond Alkali Company, he and a friend together went to buy themselves a light aircraft, which they flew from Willoughby Field, Ohio.

When the friend crashed the aircraft there was no money for a second one. The year was 1940, and a serious flying career seemed to offer itself across the Atlantic in Europe where France had just been defeated by Germany, and Britain was relying on its air force to stem the Nazi onslaught. With his own country not yet a combatant, Blakeslee enlisted in the RCAF in Windsor, Ontario. After pilot training he was dispatched to an operational training unit in the UK from where he joined 401 “Ram” Squadron, RCAF, equipped with the Spitfire V, late in 1941. He was soon in action against the Luftwaffe, flying fighter sweeps over occupied France. He gained his first combat victory over a Messerschmitt 109 in November.

In the early summer of 1942 he transferred to 133 “Eagle” Squadron, the third all-US volunteer fighter unit in the RAF, and continued to be in the thick of the action not only against Me109s but also against the powerful and heavily armed Focke-Wulf 190 which had proved itself a formidable opponent when it first encountered the Spitfire in the skies over northern France. Blakeslee nevertheless claimed one of these fighters over Cap Griz Nez on August 18, 1942.

The next day, the Dieppe Raid, was the RAF’s most intense day of air fighting since the Battle of Britain, as its fighter squadrons escorted bomber raids and took on the German air defences, while a 5,000-strong army and commando force consisting very largely of Canadians, assaulted the beaches and attempted to hold strongpoints. Blakeslee flew numerous sorties that day, shooting down a Dornier D217, claiming an FW190 and damaging two more. His combat record contained many “probables” and it is likely that his final confirmed claim of three kills while flying under the aegis of the RAF was in fact a conservative one.

Dieppe was his last sortie flown with the RAF. He transferred to command 335 Squadron USAAF, which was converting to the dumpy-looking, but surprisingly (to its German opponents) fast and manoeuvrable P47 Thunderbolt fighter. With this he led his squadron in action in the spring of 1943 and gained his first combat successes with it, shooting down two Fw190s in April and May.

Later in the year he was attached to the 354th Fighter Group, newly arrived in the European theatre, and equipped with what was eventually to prove the superlative escort fighter in the skies over Europe, the P51 Mustang. Blakeslee had further combat victories during the process of introducing the 354th to operations.

On being given command of the 4th Fighter Group (the equivalent of an RAF wing), he pressed for it, too, to be re-equipped with P51s, and led it in escorting the first American bombing raid on Berlin in March 1944. For this he was awarded the American Distinguished Service Cross by the Allied Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, having been previously promoted to colonel.

Although he was not reckoned by some of his contemporaries to be the greatest shot among fighter pilots, Blakeslee established himself as a fine fighter leader, whose tactics were highly effective against the Luftwaffe. His practice of positioning his P51s at quite some height above the bomber stream meant that the German pilots who dived down to attack the bombers could always themselves expect attack from above, out of the sun, a frustration that is echoed in many Lufwaffe memoirs. The US 8th Army Air Force was well served by its Mustang escorts on its daylight raids; on one raid in April 8, 1944, Blakeslee’s group shot down 31 enemy aircraft — a record for the theatre.

He remained in command of 4th FG until October 1944, when he was rested and returned home to the US. After the war he remained in the USAF (as it became in 1947) and served two tours in Germany and one at HQ Tactical Air Command in Korea. He retired in 1972 and went to live in Florida.

His wife Leola, whom he married in 1944, died in 2003.

Colonel Donald Blakeslee, DFC, US air ace, was born on September 11, 1917. He died on September 3, 2008, aged 90