A prewar RAFVR pilot, Jim Rosser was called up on September 1, 1939, two days before the outbreak of war. In November 1940 he was posted to 72 (Spitfire) Squadron with which he carried out fighter sweeps over northern France in 1941, when Fighter Command went on the offensive in the aftermath of the Battle of Britain.

He then took part in the intensive air battles which were fought out over over the disastrous Dieppe Raid of August 1942, in which British and Commonwealth losses both on the ground where the Canadians suffered heavy casualties, and in the air where the RAF lost many more aircraft than the Luftwaffe, were grievous.

After that Rosser spent some time as a test pilot flying Spitfires at Vickers Armstrong as part of Alex Henshaw’s team before returning to the front line as a flight commander in Normandy after the D-Day landings of June 1944.

Flying in support of Operation Market Garden, the unsuccessful Arnhem airborne operation in September that year, he was hit by flak over the battle area but managed to bring his Spitfire in to a forced landing.

After many vicissitudes and help from the Dutch Underground he regained his liberty and was able to return to Britain to a test pilot post at Vickers, where he remained until January 1946, when he was demobilised. The citation for his Distinguished Flying Cross credited him with two enemy aircraft destroyed and four damaged.

Walter James (Jim) Rosser was born in 1917 and educated at Northampton Grammar School, after which he studied architecture. He had enlisted in the RAF Volunteer Reserve in October 1938, learnt to fly and was called up on September 1, 1939.

Commissioned after joining 72 Squadron as a sergeant pilot, he took part in regular daylight sweeps over the formidable “hornets’ nest”, the German fighter base at St Omer that presented such a menace to the RAF’s sorties over northern France.

He also flew as one of the fighter escort to the bombers that dropped Douglas Bader’s spare artificial legs, after the legendary fighter ace’s Spitfire was in collision with an enemy aircraft on a sweep over the Pas de Calais in August 1941, and had to bale out, leaving one of his tin legs trapped in the cockpit. On this errand of mercy Rosser’s squadron had to fight its way in and out of northern France, losing several good pilots in the process.

He was posted to 130 Squadron as a flight commander in April 1942. Based at Perranporth, Cornwall, the Spitfires of No 130 were involved in sweeps over northwest France, convoy patrols off Cornwall and Devon and local air defence duties.

On one occasion he found himself over the sea with insufficient fuel to return to Perranporth. He calculated that he might just make Ireland although that would mean internment for the duration of the war. There was no option, and he succeeded in reaching an Irish airfield and landed safely.

He was escorted fom his aircraft to an official who informed him that, regrettably, he would indeed be interned. However, as he was refreshing himself alone at the bar he noticed that his Spitfire was in fact being refuelled. No one intervened as he walked out, climbed onboard and took off, to return to Perranporth. In June 1942 he was awarded the DFC.

On September 26, 1944, flying in support of the airborne operation that was intended to outflank the German defensive line and establish a bridgehead across the lower Rhine at Arnhem, his Spitfire was hit by flak and he crash-landed. He was hidden by the Dutch Underground, who advised him to wait for the Allies to advance rather than try and make his way back. But when the Germans discovered he was in the area and threatened to shoot a number of locals unless he gave himself up, he surrendered to a Waffen SS unit.

He subsequently escaped by overpowering a guard and returned to the Resistance, who sheltered him until advance units of the British Army arrived in the area.

After demobilisation he worked as an estate agent in Northampton until the outbreak of the Korean War, when he rejoined the RAF as a pilot. But it was found that he was suffering from high-tone deafness (or “Merlin ear”) and he thereafter transferred to the Secretarial Branch until retirement from the RAF in 1972.

In final retirement after a few more years with a civil engineering practice in Newcastle upon Tyne, he and his wife (formerly in the WRAF) lived first in Lot-et-Garonne, France, and later in Hampshire to share a house with their daughter and her family.

Rosser is survived by his wife, Denise, two sons and two daughters.

Flight Lieutenant Jim Rosser, DFC, wartime fighter pilot, was born on February 18, 1917. He died on October 13, 2009, aged 92