Nicky Barr Andrew William " Nicky " Barr , OBE , MC , DFC and Bar ( 10 December 1915 – 12 June 2006 ) was a member of the Australian national rugby union team who became a flying ace in the Royal Australian Air Force ( RAAF ) during World War II . He was credited with twelve aerial victories , all scored flying the Curtiss P - 40 fighter . Born in New Zealand , Barr was raised in Victoria and first represented the state in rugby in 1936 . Selected to play for Australia against the United Kingdom in 1939 , he had just arrived in England when the tour was cancelled following the outbreak of war . He joined the RAAF in 1940 and was posted to North Africa with No . 3 Squadron in September 1941 . The squadron ' s highest - scoring ace , he attained his first three victories in the P - 40D Tomahawk and the remainder in the P - 40E Kittyhawk . Barr ' s achievements as a combat pilot earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar . Shortly after taking command of No . 3 Squadron in May 1942 , he was shot down and captured by Axis forces , and incarcerated in Italy . He escaped and assisted other Allied fugitives to safety , receiving for his efforts the Military Cross , a rare honour for an RAAF pilot . Repatriated to England , he saw action during the invasion of Normandy in June 1944 before returning to Australia as chief instructor with No . 2 Operational Training Unit . After the war he became a company director , and rejoined the RAAF as an active reserve officer from 1951 to 1953 . From the early 1960s he was heavily involved in the oilseed industry , for which he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1983 . He died in 2006 , aged ninety . Early career . Andrew Barr was born in Wellington , New Zealand , on 10 December 1915 ; he had a twin brother , Jack . The family moved to Australia when the boys were six . Growing up in Melbourne , Andrew attended Kew Public School and played Australian rules football . He was also the Victorian Schoolboys ' 100 yards athletics champion three years in succession , from 1926 to 1928 . In 1931 , aged fifteen , he began his association with the Lord Somers Camp and Power House social and sporting organisations located at Western Port . After leaving school , Barr studied construction at Swinburne Technical College , but later took a diploma course in accountancy and made it his profession . He started playing rugby union in 1935 through one of his friends in the Power House club . Weighing and just under tall , Barr gained selection for Victoria as a hooker the following year . In 1939 , he was chosen to play in the United Kingdom with the Australian national team , the Wallabies . The tour was cancelled however less than a day after the team arrived in the UK on 2 September , due to the outbreak of World War II . Keen to serve as a fighter pilot , Barr initially tried to enlist in the Royal Air Force , but withdrew his application when told that it was unlikely he would fly anytime in the near future , and that he could expect only administrative duties in the interim . Returning to Australia on the RMS " Strathaird " , Barr joined the Royal Australian Air Force as an air cadet on 4 March 1940 . After undergoing instruction on Tiger Moth s at No . 3 Elementary Flying Training School , Essendon , and on Hawker Demon s and Avro Anson s at No . 1 Service Flying Training School , Point Cook , he was commissioned as a pilot officer on 24 September . He gained a reputation as something of a rebel during training , and became forever known as " Nicky " , for " Old Nick " , or the Devil . In his quest to gain assignment as a fighter pilot , he had deliberately aimed poorly during bombing practice , a stratagem also adopted by at least two of his fellow students . By November 1940 , he had been posted to No . 23 ( City of Brisbane ) Squadron , flying CAC Wirraway s on patrol off the Queensland coast . The aircraft was , according to Barr , " our front line fighter in those days , but it didn ' t take too long to realise that the capacity of the Wirraway , compared with the types of planes that we were going to encounter , left much to be desired " . Though his duties frustrated him somewhat , Barr was nevertheless grateful to have this extensive flight experience under his belt when he eventually saw combat . While based in Queensland , he served as honorary aide - de - camp to the Governor , Sir Leslie Wilson , and also captained the RAAF rugby union team . He was promoted to flying officer on 24 March 1941 . Combat service . Barr was posted to North Africa on 28 September 1941 , to fly with No . 3 Squadron under the command of Squadron Leader Peter Jeffrey . He converted to P - 40D Tomahawk fighters at an RAF operational training unit in Khartoum . There he also received his " goolie chit " , a piece of paper to be shown to local tribesmen in the event he was shot down , reading in , feed him and protect him , take him to the English and you will be rewarded . Peace be upon you . " Returning to North Africa , Barr achieved his first aerial victory , over a Messerschmitt Bf 110 , on 12 December . He followed this up with a Junkers Ju 88 and a Messerschmitt Bf 109 the next day . The squadron then re - equipped with P - 40E Kittyhawks ; Barr was flying the new model when he became an ace on New Year ' s Day 1942 , shooting down two Junkers Ju 87 " Stukas " . On 8 March , he led a flight of six Kittyhawks to intercept a raid on Tobruk by twelve Ju 87s escorted by ten Macchi C . 202 s and two Bf 109s . The Australians destroyed six Macchis and three Ju 87s without loss , Barr personally accounting for one of the Macchis . Eventually credited with victories over twelve enemy aircraft , plus two probables and eight damaged , Barr became No . 3 Squadron ' s highest - scoring member . He flew a total of eighty - four combat sortie s , twenty of them in one fortnight , and six on 16 June 1942 alone . His philosophy was that the P - 40 was not a top - class fighter , but that its shortcomings " could be offset by unbridled aggression " , so he resolved to treat aerial combat as he would a boxing match and " overcome much better opponents by simply going for them " . Bobby Gibbes became No . 3 Squadron ' s commanding officer in February 1942 , and made Barr his senior flight commander . Promoted to flight lieutenant on 1 April , Barr was raised to acting squadron leader and appointed to command the unit in May , barely six months after he commenced operations , following Gibbes ' s hospitalisation with a broken ankle . Barr had never sought leadership of the squadron , and felt that others were just as well qualified for the role . As a commander he delegated most administrative tasks to his adjutant but , contrary to normal practice , wrote letters to the next - of - kin of casualties himself . Three times while serving with No . 3 Squadron , Barr was himself shot down . The first occasion was on 11 January 1942 when , having destroyed a Bf 109 and a Fiat G . 50 , he was preparing to touch down in the desert to pick up a fellow pilot who had crash landed . He had his undercarriage halfway down when he was " jumped " by two other Bf 109s . He immediately engaged both and shot one down before more German fighters arrived and he was hit and forced to land behind enemy lines . As one of the German planes came in low to strafe the downed Kittyhawk , Barr ran straight at it in an attempt to throw the pilot off his aim , and was injured by ricocheting fragments of rock struck by cannon shells . A tribe of friendly Senussi Arabs found him , dressed his wounds , and helped him return to Allied lines . For this exploit , and his earlier successes , Barr was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross ( DFC ) , the full citation being published in the " London Gazette " on 20 February 1942 : On 25 May 1942 , Barr had to land in the desert when his engine overheated . Having just taken off the engine cowling , he spotted enemy tanks approaching and immediately took off with the engine exposed to the elements , safely landing back at base . He was shot down for the second time on 30 May , when he engaged eight Bf 109s and destroyed one before being hit and forced to crash land at high speed in no - man ' s land . He came down in a minefield during a fierce tank battle , and was forced to remain where he was as troops of both sides slowly converged on him ; British forces managed to reach him first and , after treatment for wounds , he again returned to his squadron . On 26 June , however , after being attacked by two Bf 109s and bailing out of his burning Kittyhawk , he was captured by Italian soldiers and taken as a prisoner - of - war , first to Tobruk , and then to Italy , where he received hospital treatment for serious wounds . He later learned that the pilot who shot him down was Oberleutnant Werner Schroer , a Luftwaffe ace credited with sixty - one victories in North Africa . Bobby Gibbes , having recovered from his own injuries , again took command of No . 3 Squadron . During his incarceration , on 5 February 1943 , Barr was awarded a Bar to his DFC for " Destroying further enemy aircraft " . Barr tried to escape from his confinement four times . By November 1942 he had recovered sufficiently from the injuries he received in June to break out of the hospital where he was being held in Bergamo , northern Italy . He made his way to the Swiss border but was challenged by an Italian customs official , whom he struck with a rock before being recaptured . Court - martialled on a charge of murder , Barr only avoided a death sentence when the Swiss Red Cross colonel representing him located the official and proved that he had not died ; Barr was instead sentenced to ninety days solitary confinement in Gavi Prison Camp , Genoa . In August 1943 , with Italy on the verge of surrender , prisoners of war were rounded up for transport to Germany . Barr jumped from a moving train bound for the Brenner Pass and joined a group of Italian partisans in Pontremoli , remaining at large for two months before again being captured . Taken to a transit camp just over the Austrian border , Barr and fourteen other prisoners escaped by tunnelling under the barbed wire . Eventually he managed to link up with an Allied special operations unit , which was gathering intelligence behind enemy lines , sabotaging Axis infrastructure , and helping Allied prisoners and Italian refugees escape over the Apennine Mountains along the so - called " Alpine Route " . Barr was recaptured and escaped once more before finally making it through the Alpine crossing himself , leading a group of more than twenty . After reaching friendly lines in March 1944 , he was sent to a military hospital in Vasto , weighing only and in poor health , suffering malaria , malnutrition , and blood poisoning . The assistance he rendered to fellow Allied fugitives earned him the Military Cross ( MC ) for " Exceptional courage in organising escapes " ; the award was gazetted on 1 December 1944 . He is thought to be one of only five or six RAAF pilots to receive the MC during World War II . Posted to Britain in April 1944 , Barr went ashore at Omaha Beach two days after D - Day as part of an air support control unit . During the campaign in Normandy , he flew rocket - armed Hawker Typhoon s on operations against V - 1 flying bomb launch sites . After his return to Australia on 11 September , he was promoted to acting wing commander and appointed chief instructor at No . 2 Operational Training Unit in Mildura , Victoria , taking over from Bobby Gibbes . He also went to New Guinea and flew some ground attack missions in the Kittyhawk to gain experience in the South West Pacific theatre . Following the end of hostilities in August 1945 , Barr was treated for recurring fever and underwent two operations on his limbs in No . 6 RAAF Hospital , Heidelberg . He was discharged from the Air Force on 8 October . Later career . After leaving the Air Force , Barr remained in Mildura with his wife , Dorothy ( Dot ) . They had met on a blind date in 1938 and been married only a few weeks when Nicky joined the RAAF . During the war she was told on three occasions that her husband was dead . The couple had two sons , born in 1945 and 1947 . Barr ' s injuries prevented him from returning to a rugby career , and he took up yachting as a sport . He also briefly assisted fellow No . 3 Squadron veteran Bobby Gibbes in an airline venture in New Guinea , before going into business as a company manager and director with civil engineering and pharmaceutical firms . Barr rejoined the RAAF on 20 March 1951 as a pilot in the active Citizen Air Force ( CAF ) , with the acting rank of wing commander . On 15 April 1953 , he transferred to the CAF reserve . A member of the Royal Air Forces Escaping Society , Barr began travelling to Italy with his wife on a regular basis in the late 1950s to seek out and offer assistance to those who had helped him during his wartime escape attempts . In 1961 , Barr became General Manager of Meggitt Ltd , an oilseed - crushing firm ; he eventually rose to become Executive Chairman . The firm ' s board was joined in 1971 by the recently retired Chief of the Air Staff , Air Marshal Sir Alister Murdoch . Barr ' s work in the industry led to his appointment in the 1983 New Year Honours as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire ( OBE ) . The same year , he became Australian representative and Chairman of the International Oil Seed Group . In June 1987 , Barr accepted an invitation to join John Glenn , Chuck Yeager , and fifteen other famed flyers in a so - called " Gathering of Eagles " for a seminar at the USAF Air Command and Staff College in Montgomery , Alabama . Generally reluctant to talk publicly about the war , he agreed to discuss his experiences during an episode of the television series " Australian Story " in 2002 , appearing with his biographer Peter Dornan , and Bobby Gibbes . By this time Barr was said to be receiving daily treatment for the injuries he had suffered in combat . He died at the age of ninety on 12 June 2006 , a few months after his wife . Four F / A - 18 Hornet jet fighters from No . 3 Squadron overflew his funeral service on the Gold Coast , Queensland . He was further honoured at a rugby test match between Australia and England at Telstra Dome in Melbourne on 17 June , the day after his funeral . On 14 September 2006 , No . 3 Squadron dedicated a stone memorial in Barr ' s honour ; the unveiling was attended by his sons Bob and Brian .