AS A pilot in 236 Squadron flying Beaufighters in the celebrated North Coates Strike Wing from the autumn of 1942 to January 1944, David Munson took part in a series of sorties harrying enemy shipping from Norway to the Channel ports. Munson was a member of the wing at a time when it was perfecting the anti-shipping tactics that were to make it the most formidable unit of its type in Coastal Command.

David Whitworth Munson was born in Harrow, Middlesex, in 1917, and educated at Harrow Grammar School. After he had held a number of routine jobs the Second World War brought him the opportunity he sought, and he joined the RAF in the ranks in March 1940. A number of ground jobs, such as tending the barrage ballooon defences of Scapa Flow in Orkney, followed.

Desperately wanting to fly, he volunteered as a telegraphist/air gunner as soon as the opportunity arose, simply to get airborne. Eventually his persistence paid off, and he was accepted for pilot training. After qualifying as a pilot in the US, he went through an operational training unit in England as a prelude to joining 236 Squadron, part of the RAF’s first Beaufighter strike wing at North Coates, in Lincolnshire. By then he had been commissioned.

In the early years of its existence, Coastal Command’s strike force had suffered from under-performing aircraft such as the Blenheim and Beaufort. With their slow speed and meagre provision of .303in machinegun armament these had been completely outgunned by the efficient flak defences of German coastal convoys, many of which mounted 37mm and 88mm guns. They sustained higher percentage losses at that point than than those of any other RAF command.

But soon after Munson joined No 236, new tactics were introduced to the North Coates Wing under the energetic leadership of Wing Commander (later Air Chief Marshal Sir) Neil Wheeler, who was also the new CO of 236.

These were based on the introduction of the powerfully armed Beaufighter with its forward-firing battery of four 20mm cannon, six machineguns and eight 25lb rockets, which could strike a merchant ship with the force of a salvo from a destroyer.

The three squadrons of the wing were now able to deliver concerted attacks against convoys. Nos 236 and 143 saturated the flak defences with cannon fire and (in No 236’s case) rockets from 1,000ft while the torpedo-armed Beaufighters (Torbeaus) of 254 Squadron were able to come in straight and level at low altitude while the German gunners had their hands full.

With operations ranging along the European littoral from the Bay of Biscay to Norway, the wing’s units were frequently posted as far apart as Thorney Island on the Sussex coast to Tain on the Dornoch Firth.

Munson took part in six strikes on shipping and eight anti-submarine patrols: off the French coast in the Channel, the Friesian Islands and the Norwegian fjords. In a ten-month period the North Coates Wing accounted for 27,000 tons of enemy shipping, and Munson was awarded the DFC and mentioned in dispatches.

After being rested from operations Munson was posted as an instructor to the Central Gunnery School at Catfoss in Yorkshire. At the end of the war he was offered a permanent commission.

But instead he returned to civilian life to join a small firm of engineering agents in Ealing, West London, which he subsequently bought and ran as his own company.

He is survived by his wife Irene, whom he married in 1946, and by their two daughters.

Squadron Leader David Munson, DFC, wartime Beaufighter pilot, was born on June 8, 1917. He died on July 7, 2006, aged 89.