Wing Commander Bob Doe

Published: 7:28PM GMT twenty-two February 2010

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Yet Doe had struggled to turn a pilot, hardly flitting the required exams to benefit his wings. He lacked confidence, was bad at aerobatics and disliked drifting upside down not an portentous commencement for a warrior pilot.

On Aug fifteen 1940 dubbed Adler Tag (Eagle Day) by Hermann Goering, the day he claimed he would fall short Fighter Command the 20-year-old Doe was on standby with his Spitfire as piece of No 234 Squadron at Middle Wallop, Hampshire, watchful for his initial scramble. Years after he recalled: "I knew I was going to be killed. I was the misfortune commander in chief in chief on the squadron."

Wing Commander Les Harland Wing Commander Ken Mackenzie Wing Commander Douggie Oxby Wg Cdr George Melville-Jackson Group Captain Dickie Haine

When the hasten bell rang, Doe was filled with dismay but he took off; the fright of being thought a doormat was some-more absolute than the fright of death.

One hour after Doe landed to find that 4 of his colleagues had unsuccessful to return; but he had shot down dual Messerschmitt Bf 110 fighters south of Swanage. The subsequent day he damaged a Bf 109 warrior and shop-worn a bomber; and dual days after that he accounted for an additional Bf 109.

The Battle intensified, and Doe"s superb mental recall was to be of one after an additional tiredness, that constructed the capability to nap anytime and anywhere.

By the finish of Aug he had damaged five aircraft. On Sep 4 his armed military craft intercepted a large force of Bf 110s over the south seashore nearby Chichester.

Doe shot down 3 and the following day accounted for a Bf 109 over Kent. More successes followed, together with sharpened down a Heinkel bomber. But by Sep 7, only 3 weeks after it had arrived at Middle Wallop, the squadron"s fifteen pilots had been marked down to only three.

Doe was complacent for a short duration prior to fasten No 238 Squadron as a moody commander, this time drifting the Hurricane. On Sep thirty he claimed an additional Heinkel bomber after a head-on attack, but by this time the Luftwaffe was promulgation majority bombers over at night and the power of the day fighting reduced.

He shot down a Bf 110 on Oct 1 and 7 days after claimed his last feat on what incited out to be the last vital illumination bombing raid of the Battle, when he shot down a Junkers 88 bomber nearby Portland.

At the commencement of Oct Doe learnt that he had been awarded a DFC "for his superb lurch and an zeal to rivet the rivalry at close quarters". This "dash" roughly valid his undoing a couple of days later. As he privileged a little clouded cover his aircraft was strike regularly and he was really bad bleeding in the leg, reduce behind and arm. He bailed out and landed in a sewage drainage array on Brownsea Island. It was his last movement during the Battle.

In only eight weeks he had risen from being his squadron"s youth commander in chief in chief to a moody commander in chief in chief with at slightest fourteen victories. A couple of weeks after he was awarded a Bar to his DFC.

The son of a head gardener, Robert Francis Thomas Doe was innate at Reigate on Mar 10 1920. A shy, delicate boy, he left propagandize at fourteen to work as an bureau child at the News of the World. He was one of the initial immature men to request to the RAFVR and proposed to sight as a commander in chief in chief at a municipal drifting school. He gained a short use commission in the RAF in Mar 1939.

After recuperating from his wounds, Doe rejoined No 238 in Dec 1940. On Jan 3 1941 his aircraft suffered an engine disaster on a night duty and he done a forced landing. His confining strap pennyless and he crushed his face in to the gunsight. One eyeball had depressed out, his jaw line was damaged and his nose roughly severed; he additionally pennyless his arm.

After twenty-two operations at East Grinstead Hospital he warranted his place as a part of of the Guinea Pig Club (for patients of novel surgical techniques), and he was means to resume operational drifting inside of 4 months of his crash. A array of precision posts followed at a warrior school, and in Oct 1943 he volunteered for use in India.

Two months after he shaped No 10 Squadron, Indian Air Force, at Risalpur in the North-West Frontier Province, the last Indian Air Force armed military craft to be shaped during the war. He arrived to find twenty-seven pilots, majority of them Indian, about 1,400 men and sixteen Hurricanes. The rest was up to him.

They flew Hurricane IICs, well known as "Hurri-bombers", armed with 4 20mm gunnery section and dual 500lb bombs. Doe worked his armed military craft hard, and once it was spoken operational it changed to Burma to fly belligerent await missions in await of the Fourteenth Army"s operations in the Arakan and the Kaladan Valley. After a quite successful raid led by Doe in await of an amphibious landing, No 10 perceived a admiration from the commander in chief in chief of the Arakan Group.

Doe"s Indian armed military craft flew intensively, aggressive belligerent targets that were infrequently only a couple of hundred yards forward of accessible troops, as General Slim began his southern allege in to Burma and towards Rangoon. In Apr 1945 Doe left the armed military craft to attend the staff college at Quetta. For his use with the Indian Air Force he was awarded a DSO for his "inspiring care and resolute suggestion and good friendship to duty". At the finish of the fight he was since the pursuit of using the air arrangement for Indian Victory Week.

Doe remained in the RAF and, after appointments with the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, was sent to Egypt in May 1950 to authority No 32 Squadron, versed with Vampire jet fighters. He had never flown a jet before, so on his approach to the armed military craft he managed to stop off at a upkeep section and steal a Vampire for a couple of hours to familiarize himself. By the time he left in May 1953, No 32 had built up a repute for esprit de armed forces envied by all the alternative RAF and Army units on the base.

He returned to Britain to stick on the Fighter Gunnery Wing as a comparison instructor. A array of staff appointments followed, together with dual years with the Chiefs of Staff Secretariat. This placed him in the corridors of power, and the child who had left propagandize at fourteen had to sense how to write mins that would be scrutinised and reworded by secretaries and review by the chiefs. Doe found this pursuit to be the majority formidable and severe appointment of his career. In Apr 1966 he opted for beforehand retirement.

Doe staid in Tunbridge Wells, where he assimilated a family-owned garage commercial operation prior to relocating on to Rusthall, Kent, to settle his own really successful garage and stipulate sinecure and self-drive car company. He took a ardent seductiveness in his grassed area and 3 greenhouses, and in his large family.

Much-admired but regularly modest, Doe never deliberate himself a hero, observant that he had been "just you do my duty". But he did write about his wartime practice in Bob Doe, Fighter Pilot, published in 1989.

Bob Doe is survived by his third wife, Betty, and by five young kids and 3 stepchildren.