Flight Lieutenant Colin Bell, who was stationed at RAF Downham Market, is the last surviving bomber pilot to have flown the de Havilland Mosquito aircraft during the conflict.

He gave the monarch a copy of his memoir Bloody Dangerous, which recounts his experiences and what it was like to fly a Mosquito - know as the “wooden wonder” for being mostly constructed of wood - during 50 raids over Germany.

Flt Lt Colin Bell's Mosquito takes off from RAF Downham Market (Image: Supplied by Colin Bell)

The book tells the story of how the then 23-year-old faced being chased by night-fighting Messerschmitt 262 jet fighters.

He suffered engine failures, fuel starvation, near-fatal ice, numerous hits to his plane and an explosion which was so close it left shrapnel in his parachute and burn marks on his navigator’s flying suit.

During Wednesday’s audience in the Palace, the pair shook hands and chatted.

The King presented Flt Lt Bell, who served with the RAF’s 608 Squadron in the Light Night Striking Force, with the citation to his Distinguished Flying Cross, which was originally awarded to him for his actions by Charles’s grandfather King George VI in 1945.

Mosquito pilot Flt Lt Colin Bell pictured in his wartime RAF uniform (Image: Supplied by Colin Bell)

The Distinguished Flying Cross is given for “acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty while flying in active operations against the enemy” to personnel of the Royal Air Force and other services.

Flt Lt Bell's squadron took part in 246 raids and flew 1,726 sorties for the loss of only nine Mosquitos while based at Downham from August 1944 until the end of the war the following year.

On the night of May 2 1945, 16 of its aircraft dropped bombs on Kiel in the last Bomber Command operation of the conflict. The squadron was disbanded three months later.

Flt Lt Colin Bell salutes his fallen comrades from RAF Downham Market, at a new memorial erected in 2023 (Image: Chris Bishop)

Downham was also home to four-engined Stirling and Lancaster bombers. More than 750 aircrew who were stationed there lost their lives.

Little of the base remains today apart from a few buildings and a fragment of its runway, the remainder of which was broken up in the 1970s and used for the foundations of the A10 bypass.

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