Peter Bailey was a vital part of D Day and the Berlin Airlift

In a long life of service, acclaimed aviator Peter Bailey helped push back the Nazis before falling in love with Australia.

After retiring, Peter Bailey managed a South African game farm before moving to Queensland in 1986.

Peter Bailey was fascinated by aircraft as a boy, learned to fly at 19, played a vital role in the air during the D-Day invasion, and later captained VIP flights for the Queen, Robert Menzies and four others who became Australian prime minister.

He attended Suffolk’s Framlingham College – whose alumni includes wine pioneer Len Evans – and would cycle to the nearby RAF airfield to watch the planes.

At 18 he applied to the RAF and joined in 1941, serving at RAF Kingstown where he learned to fly on a Miles Magister. A colleague was Jimmy Edwards, later the comedian who, after being shot down in 1944, hid his facial injuries behind a huge handlebar moustache that became his trademark.

Bailey was a part of the Empire Air Training Scheme in Canada. This was to make up the shortfall in pilots and flying squads. Britain could build plenty of warplanes from 1940 but struggled to staff them all – 37,000 Australians were taught to fly and navigate there.

Bailey gained his wings staying in Canada until 1943 when he joined Transport Command 233 Squadron, flying the Dakota DC3 which was to become his favourite. Bailey regarded the stable, reliable and easy-to-handle Dakota as the “gentleman’s aircraft”.

Just before midnight on June 5, 1944, Bailey piloted one of six aircraft towing Horsa gliders loaded with equipment for the men of the 3rd Airborne Brigade who had been parachuted into France to seize bridges near Caen, critical to the Normandy landings due to begin hours later.

The following day, D-Day, Bailey dropped supplies and was met with intense flak. Two of his squadron failed to return. Over several weeks he flew into hastily prepared airstrips in Normandy with supplies, returning with casualties. Later he flew on three consecutive days to an airfield near Paris carrying food for the locals. By September he was taking ammunition to airfields near Brussels.

During Operation Market Garden he landed troops by glider and parachute at Arnhem. It was a disaster, with 1400 men killed and 6500 men taken prisoner.

Bailey then carried supplies for the advancing Allied armies into airfields in France and Belgium, and was awarded the American Distinguished Flying Cross for “heroism and extraordinary achieve­ment”.

Peter Bailey with some of his medals for bravery in the air.

By December 1944 he was picking up Canadian-built Dakotas and flying them across the Pacific Ocean to Camden in NSW, his first taste of Australia. The crews were there and the Dakotas left fully laden to support Allied offensives up the Solomon Islands chain to New Guinea, Borneo and The Philippines. At a cocktail party at Hotel Australia, Bailey met Shirley Tilley. They later married but divorced in the 1960s.

Returning to Britain, he took part in the Berlin Airlift. After World War II Germany’s capital, located deep in the Soviet occupied zone of the defeated nation, but also shared with the Allies, was cut off by the Soviets in an attempt to starve the locals and force a retreat by the Western forces.

The city had food for five weeks and coal for six. Plans were launched for a famous rescue. Bailey flew seven days a week, sometimes making four return flights a day – 250 missions in all. Dakotas arrived at minute intervals and their crews remained seated as they were unloaded for an immediate return to England.

Across 15 months, a total of almost 300,000 flights using 700 aircraft flew 200 million kilometres delivering two million tonnes of supplies. Accidents claimed the lives of 66 airmen.

Bailey returned to Sydney to serve with the RAF VIP service. His passengers often included Menzies, Lady Menzies and their daughter Heather. On one occasion he flew the party to London, a five-day flight with numerous stops. He flew four men who would become prime minister: Country Party leaders Earle Page and Arthur Fadden, and Liberals Harold Holt and William McMahon. He also piloted air and sea searches and conducted bushfire surveillance.

Bailey returned to Britain in 1953 and served on the intelligence staff in the Air Ministry before becoming a flight commander on 80 Squadron and was awarded a Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air. While with the RAF’s VIP transport squadron his passengers included Winston Churchill, Lord Mountbatten and the Queen. After retiring he managed a South African game farm. Moving to Queensland in 1986, he joined the Red Cross as disaster officer for the Sunshine Coast. There he met Joy Mason, who became his second wife.

Bailey is survived by his son, Brett, the landscape painter who was a finalist in the 2009 Wynne Prize, and daughter Karen.

Neville Marsh is emeritus professor at the University of Adelaide and a Framlingham old boy.