A BOMBER pilot who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross after completing 36 bombing raids during the Second World War has died at the age of 89.

Flying Officer Reg Bailey received the award for the “utmost fortitude, courage and devotion to duty invariably displayed in numerous operations against the enemy”.

His flying log book reveals how he survived his aircraft being attacked and shot up by a Focke-Wulf 190 fighter during a sea mine laying operation in the Bay of Danzig.

He carried out 19 operations by day and another 17 by night, carrying a total of 424,000 lbs of bombs – with eight of them, called cookies, weighing 4,000 lbs each. More than 50,000 men who served in Bomber Command lost their lives in action.

A service to celebrate Mr Bailey’s life was held at St Oswald’s Church in Fulford Road.

His son-in-law, Geoffrey Mortimer, said he left his widow, Beryl, and had one daughter Patricia, and four sons John, Adrian, Paul and Charles.

He said Mr Bailey was born in Fulford in 1922 and attended Fulford Junior School before gaining a scholarship to Archbishop Holgate Grammar School. He left at the age of 16 for an apprenticeship with the then Yorkshire Evening Press as a linotype operator.

A year later, he volunteered for military service and joined the RAF at 18 years old. He trained as a pilot in Arizona before returning to England and serving for six years in the RAF, initially as a flying instructor and then as a bomber pilot flying the Lancaster.

After the war, he went back to work at this newspaper, and then at other publishers before working again as a flying instructor to RAF pilots. He eventually set up his own linotype business in York, Bailey Typesetting of Fulford Road.

He lived in recent times at Moorlands Care Home in Strensall, but was formerly of Huntington Road and before that Fulford.