One of the last surviving members of Bomber Command has told the extraordinary story of his heroic wartime service for the first time aged 104.

Former pilot Colin Bell recalls in a new memoir how his station commander refused to ground his squadron of Mosquito fighter-bomber aircraft despite the manufacturer warning it had to fix a potential engine fault.

When asked what would happen if the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines failed on take-off, the commander replied in stark terms: ‘You die like an officer and a gentleman.’

Mr Bell also reveals that, rather than carrying a teddy bear as a mascot on his death-defying bombing raids over Nazi Germany, he took along a Smith & Wesson revolver with 20 rounds of ammunition in case he was shot down.

He writes in the memoir, serialised today in the Daily Mail: ‘At this time, Hitler and Goebbels were encouraging the German population to lynch downed airmen. My intention, if caught, was to shoot at least half a dozen members of any approaching mob before blowing my brains out.’

The modest war hero captures the incredible bravery of the air crews who faced unimaginable danger every time they set off on a mission.

Of the 30 or so pilots and navigators he shared a mess with during his time with 608 Squadron, based at RAF Downham Market in Norfolk, 13 were dead by the time he left after six months.

His final raid, over Berlin, took place in March 1945, just before his 24th birthday. Two days later the very Mosquito he had flown in was shot down and both crew members were killed.

Mr Bell, who turns 105 next week, also addresses recent criticism of Bomber Command’s devastating attacks on German cities like Dresden, which hit civilians as well as military targets.

He writes: ‘There is certainly an argument to be had about this, but I do often wonder how that argument would go if we had lost the war.

‘People might be expressing reservations about living as slave labourers under a Nazi regime, with concentration camps set up in every city for its opponents.

‘So, when people say, “What about Dresden?” I reply that Dresden was indeed horrific. But so too was the blitzing of London, Coventry, Plymouth, Exeter, Liverpool and Southampton, to name but a few.’

Bloody Dangerous by Colin Bell is published by Abacus on March 5. Read an extract here.