STANLEY Percival Phillips saw plenty of action during his time in the RAF during the Second World War.

He took part in numerous bombing raids as the Allies fought to defeat the enemy.

Mr Phillips – known as Tim to his family and Phil to the RAF colleagues – died aged 74 in 1998, and his son, also called Tim, and sister-in-law, Doreen Phillips, of Didcot, have now pieced together details of his remarkable career with Bomber Command.

He left the family home at Milton-under-Wychwood to join the RAF at the age of 17 in 1941 when he finished his studies at Burford Grammar School.

After training as an air wireless operator/air gunner, he joined 76 Operational Training Unit at RAF Aqir in Palestine, where young airmen were prepared for battle. In June 1944, he was posted to 40 Squadron, whose crews flew Wellington bombers from Foggia air base in Southern Italy.

His first ‘sortie’ in June that year was particularly hazardous. The target was the heavily defended railway marshalling yards in Munich and to reach it, the crew had to fly through, rather than over, the Alps because the bomb load was so heavy.

Between then and the end of October, Mr Phillips’s crew, led by their skipper, Sgt Dickie Regan, flew 36 bombing missions, attacking targets in Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Austria and France, often having to dodge intense enemy fire.

Their final operational flight was to bomb bridges in Italy. In January 1945, the crew transferred to RAF Quastina in Southern Palestine and helped train new crewmen.

Mr Phillips, by now a Warrant Officer, went on demob leave in 1947, but decided to stay in the RAF and resumed his flying career. He retired in 1970.

Son Tim says of his father: “Like many men who have been to war, he rarely mentioned his experiences but if you could get him to talk, he invariably mentioned ‘Dickie Regan, our Skipper’. It is this man he credits, as well as the Wellington, for his survival in the many operations over enemy territory.”

More of the Phillips’s family memories soon.