Iain Hutchinson, who has died at the age of 88, was a hero in the Battle of Britain who survived numerous air skirmishes and a spell in a German prison camp.

The Scots-born Spitfire pilot was shot down five times during the Second World War but himself destroyed a string of enemy aircraft.

One of his victims was the German air ace Eckhardt Priebe, who was subsequently held as a prisoner of war in Canada, and with whom Hutchinson was reunited at a RAF club in 1998.

Hutchinson was one of around 70 surviving Battle of Britain pilots, those veterans of the series of air battles in 1940 which saw off an attempt by the Luftwaffe to gain air superiority prior to a planned amphibious assault on the British Isles.

Most of the pilots flew Hurricanes, but Hutchinson was one of the few to be permitted to fly the more advanced Spitfire ZD-W.

A softly spoken Scotsman, and a Glaswegian by birth, Hutchinson joined the RAF Volunteer reserve in 1938 and was later assigned to 222 squadron.

At the outset of the Battle of Britain in July 1940, this Squadron was moved to Essex and placed at the heart of the cross-channel fighting.

The 222 had a disastrous first outing. Hutchinson later told his friends: "On our first sortie we lost half the squadron. I myself was shot down the next day.

"I was flying again the next day but I was shot down five times during the next month, though I didn't end up in hospital until the last time."

Hutchinson, then a sergeant pilot, was shot down on that occasion over south-west London in September 1940, and escaped by parachute, but was badly burned.

"Flames were coming out of the plane. I couldn't see very well because my face had been burned. The next thing I knew, I was floating free in the air," he recalled.

He had another close shave two weeks later, when he crash-landed, writing off a precious Spitfire.

After the Battle of Britain, promoted to squadron leader, Hutchinson went on to fly unarmed Spitfire reconnaissance missions.

He was on a long-range mission over Norway, this time in a specially-adapted Mosquito fighter-bomber, when he was shot down.

Although the tail of the plane had been shot off, he landed it, whereupon his navigator calmly fired a flare from a Verey pistol into the leaking petrol, to blow up the plane and deny the Germans the chance to inspect it.

They were eventually met by a Luftwaffe officer who Hutchinson always claimed addressed them in perfect English saying: "We've been waiting for you for a while I'm afraid our coffee's cold, but have some schnapps instead."

So he and his navigator became prisoners of war, and Hutchinson spent the rest of the conflict in the Stalag Luft III prison camp, which was later made famous by the film The Great Escape.

His official tally of enemy downed was: three Messerschmitt 109 fighters, a Heinkel 111 bomber and the probable destruction of a Messerschmitt 110 twin-engined fighter-bomber. Another 109 fighter was badly damaged.

In the peacetime that followed the war, he worked for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, and moved to Dorset with his wife.

He died earlier this month in a hospital in Charminster near Dorchester.