One of the last surviving Czechoslovakian airmen with the RAF

Born: December 11, 1923;

Died: January 4, 2018

IVAN Otto Schwarz, who has died aged 94, was one of the last surviving Czechoslovakian airmen who flew with the RAF during the Second World War. A Slovak by birth but later a British citizen, he was a gunner aboard Liberator B-24 bombers as part of 311 Squadron, the RAF's only Czechoslovakian-manned heavy bomber squadron. The squadron lost 273 men - more than half its personnel - in wartime combat. In all, 2,000 Czechoslovakian airmen flew with the RAF during the war and 480 were killed in action.

For the last year of the war, Mr Schwarz and 311 Squadron were based at RAF Tain on the Dornoch Firth, flying patrols between Scotland and Norway as a deterrent against German U-Boats.

Mr Schwarz had completed his higher education in Caernarfon, Wales, after his Jewish family managed to get him out of Czechoslovakia when he was only 15 as Hitler threatened Jews, Czechoslovakia (which he soon invaded) and eventually all of Europe. Mr Schwarz was part of the Kinderstranport programme which got nearly 10,000 mostly-Jewish children out of Nazi or Nazi-threatened territory and lodged them in British fosters homes. He was still only 15, at school in Wales, when Britain and Germany went to war and he immediately applied to join the RAF, pretending he was 18.

He was quickly rumbled by recruitment officers but in late 1942 he joined 311 Squadron just after it had been transferred from RAF Bomber Command to Coastal Command. First flying Vickers Wellington bombers and ultimately U.S.-built Consolidated B-24 Liberators, he and his comrades were involved in the Battle of the Atlantic, attacking "wolf packs" of German U-boats and their "milk cows" (torpedo and fuel supply vessels) to ensure U.S. troops, vital supplies and ammunition got through to Europe. Mr Schwarz and his crew sank at least two U-boats which might well have caused carnage to allied shipping.

His most memorable mission came on December 27, 1943, when 311 Squadron were patrolling the Bay of Biscay in search of the fast German "blockade runner," the 2,729-tonne Alsterufer. Allied codebreakers at Bletchley Park had cracked the German navy's more sophisticated version of the famous Enigma code machine and knew the Alsterufer was on its way from Japan, to Bordeaux, France, with a precious cargo bound for Germany; 344 tons of wolframite - tungsten ore - enough to produce vital ball-bearings for Nazi tanks, heavy artillery, aircraft and ships for a year.

As the Alsterufer sped towards the Bay of Biscay, Sutherland bombers of the Royal Canadian Air Force attacked but failed to sink her. The all-Czechoslovak 311 Squadron were called in, with Flight-Sergeant Ivan Schwarz as top-turret gunner on B-24 Liberator H and pilot Oldrich Dolezal at the controls. At 1607 hours on December 27, Dolezal dived low, despite heavy anti-aircraft flak. Gunner Schwarz raked the ship's bridge and communications mast with more than 100 rounds from his heavy machine-gun while his comrades fired rockets and dropped 250lb bombs.

The Alsterufer burned fiercely for four hours before it sank but most of its crew, 74 men who abandoned ship, were picked up alive by Canadian Navy corvettes. Schwarz's Liberator took anti-aircraft hits to its starboard engine but returned safely to base with its crew unharmed.

After the war, Mr Schwarz served in the Czechoslovakian Air Force until the Soviets took control of his country and he and other former RAF men were considered unreliable. He returned to the UK to set up his own business and remained in London for the rest of his life, even after the Slovak Republic became an independent nation on January 1, 1993. By then, he had long been a British citizen and was also given a Slovakian passport.

Having been demobbed with the rank of Warrant Officer, he was much later promoted to the rank of honorary Major-General in the Slovak Air Force.

Ivan Otto Schwarz was born in Bratislava on December 11, 1923, at the time part of Czechoslovakia but now the capital of Slovakia, to Otto Schwarz, a Jewish lawyer, landowner and sheep breeder, and his wife Anna. He grew up and went to school in Bytca but with the rise of the Nazis and their impending invasion of Czechoslovakia, his father managed to get him out via the Kindertransport programme to Wales.

When the war in Europe ceased in May 1945, Mr Schwarz, still in the RAF, returned to his homeland. But when the Soviets imposed Stalinist communism, he fled back to Britain in 1946 to start a new life. He was demobbed from the RAF that same year and in 1947 in London married Jaroslava Bendlova, a Czech girl from Prague whom he had brought to the UK with him. They both became British citizens, as did their daughter Christine.

With a fine business head, he recognized that the UK building industry and railways would need priority in the reconstruction of war-ravaged Europe and so he set up several of his own companies. Ferrotrack Engineering Ltd was involved in the maintenance of railways and equipment but he became best known as managing director of BSTO Ltd, based in St Albans, which sold heavy machinery for the construction industry. He was 87 when he retired in 2012.

Ivan Otto Schwarz died in St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London. His wife Jaroslava Bendlova pre-deceased him. He is survived by their daughter Christine, 67, who lives in Spain with her Spanish husband Juan and their daughters Milena and Paula.

PHIL DAVISON