The Airmen's Stories - F/O F D Hughes

DESMOND Hughes, who died on the 11th January 1992 aged 72, was the most decorated living member of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association and one of the most successful night fighter pilots of the last war. To the press he was "Hawkeye" Hughes, a hero in the same mould as "Cat's Eyes" Cunningham, whose exploits helped to keep British spirits high. By the end of the fighting in Europe, still one month short of his 26th birthday, he had been credited with shooting down 18.5 enemy aircraft. The "half" was a shared Ju88.

But at one time Hughes must have counted himself lucky just to have survived the desperate air battles of 1940. During the last week of August, shortly after his squadron, No 264, had been moved from Lincolnshire to Hornchurch, Essex, it lost nine air gunners, five pilots, one commanding officer, an acting CO injured and two flight commanders shot down. At one point the most experienced pilot left was a pilot officer not yet 21. On one occasion when the squadron was "scrambled" after a raid, there were only two crews left with serviceable aircraft. Hughes just managed to take off from the badly cratered airfield to fend off an approaching force more than 30 strong. At 12,000 feet, however, the control tower radioed: "Terribly sorry old boy - they've turned away". The sorrow was not shared by Hughes and company.

He had had the misfortune to be assigned to a squadron of Defiants - an aircraft which won few admirers. Its rear gun turret made it slow and vulnerable to anything other than an undefended bomber. As most of the enemy raiders were escorted, Defiant crews had the odds stacked against them.

The fact was we were out-turned, out-climbed and out-gunned by the Messerschmitt 109 ..................

Hughes later wrote. He became involved in converting the Defiants to a night-fighter role, to which they seemed better adapted. His DFC was won on the night of March 12, 1941 when he and his gunner, Sergeant Fred Gash, shot down a He111.

Hughes moved to No 125 Beaufighter squadron in 1942 and in June bagged the squadron's first victim. Later that year he also became the first (or one of the first) to take his pet dog on a sortie. His mongrel Scruffy, dressed in flying overalls for warmth, survived the mission, only to be killed by a WAAF truck driver shortly afterwards.

In January 1943 Hughes was posted as a flight commander to No 600 squadron in North Africa. He won the first bar to his DFC in February and a second in September as, one by one - and sometimes by as many as three in one day - his tally of enemy aircraft accumulated. He subsequently served in Sicily and Italy then was given command of No 604 Mosquito squadron which became the first night fighter unit to be based on the continent after D-Day. Now a wing commander in rank, he was awarded the DSO in March 1945 and next year was offered a permanent commission.

Desmond Hughes belonged to that youthful generation whose futures were re-shaped by the second world war. Born in Donaghadee near Belfast, the son of the director of a linen firm, he went from Campbell College to Pembroke College, Cambridge to read law. He joined the university air squadron in 1938 and the RAF at the outbreak of the war. He served on the directing staff of the RAF Staff College, Bracknell between 1954 and 1956 after which he was personal staff officer to the Chief of the Air Staff, then Air Chief Marshal Sir Dermot Boyle, for two years. Between 1959 and 1961 he was station commander at Geilenkirchen in West Germany. In 1962-64 he was director of air staff plans at the Ministry of Defence and ADC to the Queen.

As commandant of the RAF College, Cranwell between 1970 and 1972 he supervised the Prince of Wales's flying training and presided over the college's 50th anniversary celebrations. He also had the responsibility for overseeing the reorganisation of officer training, which partly involved phasing out the old three-year cadetship and introducing the university graduate entry.

After two years as senior air staff officer at the Near East Air Force headquarters in Cyprus, Desmond Hughes retired in 1974. He was made a deputy lieutenant of Lincolnshire in 1983.

A fine sportsman all his life, he played on the wing for London Irish RFC after the last war. In 1990 he marched with Battle of Britain crews past Buckingham Palace to commemorate the battle's 50th anniversary. But Hughes himself was a quiet and modest man who talked little in later life about his own war.

He is survived by his wife Pamela, daughter of the conductor and composer Julius Harrison, and by two of their three sons.