Hitler's last surviving commander has told his former wartime foes in Yorkshire how he pioneered new tactics to destroy them.

Oberst Hajo Herrmann, a hero of the Luftwaffe and the man who rained bombs on the North of England, came face to face with members of RAF Bomber Command when he gave a special lecture at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington.

Oberst Herrmann, who flew more than 300 bombing missions during the Second World War, is credited with bringing down nine British Lancaster and Halifax bombers during intense air fighting.

In 1943, he was put in charge by Hitler of all night fighter operations against the RAF.

At Saturday's lecture, which was attended by several former Allied servicemen, Oberst Herrmann, now 85, told how he developed so-called Wild Boar operations to strike down RAF raids over Germany.

When the German radar defences were swamped by British counter measures, Herrmann used powerful search lights to pick out Lancaster and Halifax bombers in the night sky. Then he sent single-engine Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs, which were normally day fighters, to gun them down.

In the last year of the war, Herrmann conceived and commanded the Ramkommando volunteer fighter units, whose pilots rammed British bombers before bailing out. Oberst Herrmann, who brushed shoulders with Third Reich top brass such as Goering, personally bombed the Vickers-Armstrong factory in Newcastle and dropped mines into the entrance to Sunderland harbour.

But former RAF servicemen living in North Yorkshire who attended Oberst Herrmann's lecture said they bore no grudges. Wing Commander Peter West, of Ripon, who served with Bomber Command, said: "There is still a feeling from Bomber Command crews that they took a hell of a pasting during the war. But he was just doing what our fighter pilots were doing in the Battle of Britain.

"It is hard not to have a bit of a feeling but it is no good bearing grudges. It's nothing personal."

Oberst Herrmann himself said: "We were involved in a bitter war and we have to look to the future. "Now, personally we are friends."

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