RAYMOND BAXTER’s polished voice was one of the most distinctive in postwar broadcasting, belonging to a capable all-rounder whose passions were cars and aeroplanes, the latter as befitted a man who had had a distinguished wartime career as a fighter pilot. But he was equally at home covering state occasions and fronting Tomorrow’s World, BBC Television’s popular science programme.

Baxter was with the series, which was partly his suggestion, from its start in July 1965 and he became its mainstay. Aiming to explain advances in science and technology in an accessible way, it drew an audience of up to ten million viewers each week.

The programme was sometimes mocked for featuring inventions of which little was subsequently heard. Baxter once predicted that paper underwear would replace the traditional sort within three years. But he was proud of his live interview with Christiaan Barnard, hours after the South African surgeon had performed the first successful heart transplant.

During his 12-year stint with Tomorrow’s World he also gave viewers an early glimpse of the microwave, the video recorder and the credit card. Baxter left eventually after a series of disagreements with Michael Blakstad, the programme’s much younger editor, who wanted a tougher, more journalistic, treatment.

Baxter was particularly unhappy about an item questioning the economics of the Concorde airliner, preferring to emphasise its technological achievement. Blakstad described Baxter as “one of the old brigade” and explained his departure as “evolution”, adding: “The dinosaurs were left high and dry when the world evolved away from them.”

Although leaving Tomorrow’s World was by no means the end of Baxter’s broadcasting career, it had been his most high-profile job, and the manner of his departure upset him. But he belonged to a more deferential era and his sometimes unctuous delivery, particularly when describing royal occasions, was becoming dated.

A broadcaster of gentlemanly calm and courtesy, he was unsympathetic to the more confrontational style that became increasingly the norm. In a reply to a newspaper questionnaire in 1997 he singled out Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight as the sort of television that made him switch off.

Raymond Frederic Baxter was born in Ilford, Essex, in 1922, the son of a school teacher. He attended Ilford County High School, and then worked briefly for the Metropolitan Water Board. In August 1940 he joined the Royal Air Force, volnteered as aircrew and trained as a fighter pilot.

During the war he flew countless sorties as a Spitfire pilot throughout the North African campaign, over the beleaguered island of Malta, and during the Sicilian and Italian campaigns. On September 11, 1943, while flying with a forward support squadron operating from Sicily to cover the Allied landings at Salerno, he was shot down by “friendly” groundfire from American forces.

He had only seconds to choose a site for his crash landing, and opted to try to put down in an orchard. As he made his approach at 120mph he was advised forcefully over the radio by a Canadian pilot flying near by to jettison the 90-gallon reserve tank that was slung underneath his aeroplane. Without that shouted warning he would certainly have been cremated on impact, and the world would have been robbed of those well-modulated tones. Baxter was subsequently mentioned in dispatches.

After recovering from the shaking up that he had received, he spent a period back in the UK as a fighter instructor, after which he was posted to Cairo, ferrying aircraft throughout the Middle East and to India. A squadron leader when the war ended, he considered making the RAF his peacetime career but decided to try radio and in 1945, while still a serving officer, he joined Forces Broadcasting in Cairo.

After the war he was deputy director of the British Forces Network in Hamburg. He had been fascinated by motor sport since reading magazines at school, and he founded the British Automobile Club Hamburg for competition-starved Service personnel.

He also ran a weekly poetry programme, and persuaded Sybil Thorndike and Peggy Ashcroft to give readings. Joining the staff of the BBC he found his niche in the Outside Broadcast Department. He made his name as a commentator on motor racing, the Farnborough Air Show and the Royal Tournament, while more formal assignments included the 1953 Coronation and, for more than 30 years, the Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall.

A regular participant in the Monte Carlo Rally — he competed in no fewer than 14 of them — he showed his professionalism in the 1954 event when the car in which was travelling skidded into a ditch in central France. Although shaken by the incident and sustaining a cut over his eye, Baxter immediately recorded a description of what had happened. On three occasions he was a member of a winning rally team. He was also an accomplished Formula 1 commentator.

As television expanded its technological horizons during the 1950s, Baxter took part in a number of historic broadcasts. He was the commentator for the first live television relay from a submarine and later the same year, 1956, presented the first live pictures from an airborne helicopter. He was winched up to the helicopter and took over the controls.

In 1960, replacing Richard Dimbleby who was ill, he covered the opening ceremony of the Rome Olympics for BBC television. He left the BBC staff to go freelance at the end of 1966 and became director of motoring publicity for the British Motor Corporation. But the takeover of BMC by Leyland made the job superfluous and it lasted only 20 months.

In 1977 Baxter broke down in tears at an industrial tribunal hearing a claim for unfair dismissal by the former gardener of his 32-acre estate at Denham in Buckinghamshire. But the tribunal decided that the sacking was justified. Later in that unhappy year came his departure from Tomorrow’s World.

A favourite recreation was boating. He served on the management committee of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and was vice-president from 1987 to 1997. As honorary admiral of the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships he took a prominent part in events to mark the 60th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation in June 2000. Baxter was appointed OBE in 2003.

His American wife, Sylvia, whom he married in 1945, died in 1996. They had a son and a daughter, who survive him.

Baxter was an uncle of Carl André, the American minimalist sculptor, whose bricks stirred controversy when they were shown at the Tate Gallery in London.

Raymond Baxter, OBE, broadcaster, was born on January 25, 1922. He died on September 15, 2006, aged 84.