JOINING the RAF in 1937 on a short-service commission, Peter Ward-Hunt participated in the valiant fledgeling attempts to mount an effective strategic bombing campaign against German industry. Before to the German invasion of France and the Low Countries in May 1940, Bomber Command had been restricted to attacking shipping in harbour, seaplane bases on the island of Sylt and dropping leaflets on German cities. Actually to attack the German mainland, a timorous Chamberlain Government reasoned, might involve “damage to private property” and invite reprisals.

After May 10, 1940, all this changed. Churchill took the reins of government, Britain thence had a hands-on war leader and the RAF did something it had not previously been allowed to do — it dropped a bomb on Germany. On May 15, 1940, flying a Hampden of 49 Squadron, Ward-Hunt was one of a force of almost 100 aircraft that initiated the strategic bombing campaign, attacking targets in the Ruhr, in the belief that to assail the enemy’s industrial and oil producing heartlands was one way of slowing down his tanks, which were racing into France.

In the event few bombers found their targets that night and, as Denis Richards records in Royal Air Force 1939-1945: “whatever delay was inflicted on the German Army was insignificant; not a single German fighter or anti-aircraft gun was withdrawn from the Western Front . . . and not a single bomber was diverted from attacking the French armies”.

As Richards concedes: “The conception had been admirable . . . the available means utterly inadequate.” It was to be a long hard road before Bomber Command was forged into an effective weapon to achieve the goals it sought.

After a few more such raids, the pace of events in France drew the Hampdens back into the battle that was raging on the ground, and 49 Squadron reverted to a tactical bombing role. In the days before the Dunkirk evacuation Ward-Hunt flew a dozen sorties against German troop concentrations and airfields.

Born the son of a naval officer at Gibraltar in 1916, Peter Ward-Hunt was educated at the Imperial Service College, Windsor. After his RAF flying training he joined 106 Squadron (Hampdens) before transferring at the end of 1939 to 49 Squadron (one of whose pilots, Flight Lieutenant R. E. A. Learoyd, was subsequently to win Bomber Command’s first Victoria Cross).

After the end of the Dunkirk evacuation Bomber Command resumed its attacks on Germany. On the night of August 25-26, 1940, Ward-Hunt participated in the first raid on the German capital, undertaken in retaliation for the (accidental) German bombing of the City of London the day before. Though at that distance such a raid could not be expected to cause great damage it undoubtedly played a part in Hitler’s fateful decision to throw Luftwaffe’s aircrafts against London, a target beyond the range of effective fighter cover, which had to turn back, leaving the bombers defenceless.

A few nights later Ward-Hunt was back over Berlin. These raids doubly infuriated Hitler, who was trying to impress upon the Soviet leadership that “England was finished”, prompting the famous riposte from the Russian Foreign Minister Molotov as he and Hitler took refuge from one of them: “If that is so, why are we in this shelter, and whose are these bombs which fall?” Ward-Hunt next went with No 49 to raid the Baltic port of Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), a long flight in the cramped Hampden, and one at the extreme limits of its range. After a further sortie to Berlin he was awarded the DFC and stood down from operations.

He now spent some months as a instructor before returning to operations, this time with 207 Squadron, flying the Manchester, ill-starred precursor of the Lancaster. The airframe had many of the admirable qualities of the Lancaster, but its Rolls-Royce Vulture engines were notoriously unreliable. Its pilots hated it, but Ward-Hunt was sent in the Manchester on operations to mine the Baltic in September 1941. The redesign of its airframe by Avro to accommodate four engines was to produce the outstanding bomber of the war.

In the meantime No 207 was stuck with the Manchester, and in it Ward-Hunt took part in one of the most successful raids of the early part of the war. The dynamic Arthur Harris had succeeded Air Marshal Sir Richard Peirse as head of Bomber Command early in 1942 with the aim of building up a force of heavy bombers to strike smashing blows at Germany’s main cities.

Making do, meanwhile, with what he had, and taking advantage of a War Cabinet decision to allow attacks on industrial targets germane to the German war effort yet lying outside Germany, on the night of March 3-4, 1942, Harris laid on a raid on the great Renault works at Billancourt near Paris. The Manchesters of 207 Squadron were in the third of three waves of bombers which totalled 235, and inflicted more damage on a target than had been achieved to that date.

Ward-Hunt was again rested from operations, for a further period as an instructor. That, however, did not exempt him from operations. Harris’s ambitions for his bomber force were now expanding exponentially and for the first of his “1,000 bomber raids”, against Cologne in May, training crews were pressed into service to make up the four-figure total. Ward-Hunt was one of a number of instructor pilots who flew on the raid, which destroyed 600 acres of the city.

Early in 1943 he was appointed a flight commander of 106 Squadron (Lancasters), which was commanded by Guy Gibson, who was later to lead the celebrated Dambusters raid. No 106’s other flight commander was another fine airman, John Searby. For the next few months Ward-Hunt was to be engaged in what became known as the Battle of the Ruhr, as Bomber Command attacked the heavily defended cities and factories of this “armoury of the Third Reich”. In this third tour Ward-Hunt flew a further 55 sorties, which also included attacks on U-boat bases on the French Atlantic coast and targets in northern Italy. Finally, in June, he was awarded a second DFC and stood down from operations, after an exceptional career, in which he had demonstrated both skill and leadership.

For the remainder of the war he was responsible for the direction of bombing operations, and was mentioned in dispatches. He retired from the RAF in December 1945.

In civilian life Ward-Hunt was an air traffic controller, at Heathrow and many smaller airports around the country. A great sportsman, he played rugby well into his fifties.

He married, in 1940, Erica Turtle. She died in 2003, and he is survived by a son and daughter. Another son predeceased him.

Wing Commander Peter Ward-Hunt, DFC and Bar, wartime bomber pilot, was born on December 6, 1916. He died on December 7, 2005, aged 89.