A remarkable wartime story has been recalled, following the death of Coastal Command pilot Dudley Marrows at the age of 101in Australia.

Dudley Marrows was captain of a Sunderland flying boat of No 461 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, based at RAF Station Pembroke Dock in west Wales.

In 1943, during the height of the Battle of the Atlantic Campaign, Sunderlands and other maritime aircraft made long and dangerous flights to seek out the German submarines (U-boats) which were attacking the convoy lifelines bringing supplies, munitions and food across the Atlantic.

On July 30, 1943, Marrows and his crew were involved in what has been described as ‘one of the greatest single victories of the war against the U-boats operating in the Bay of Biscay’.

Three U-boats were sighted and they remained close together on the surface to fight back.

Several Coastal Command aircraft arrived and sometime later Marrows seized his chance, diving into attack through heavy fire to perfectly drop depth changes around a submarine. The resulting explosions broke the craft in half.

Mr Marrows was flying Sunderland ‘U’ of 461 Squadron and in a remarkable coincidence, he and his crew had sunk U-461 – a large supplies-carrying submarine. As survivors struggled in the water the Sunderland crew dropped one of their own dinghies.

U-461’s captain, Wolf Steibler, and 14 others were later rescued by the Royal Navy and many years later Marrows and Steibler met up and visited each other in Australia and Germany.

Another of the U-boats was sunk by an RAF aircraft and the third submerged but was hunted down and sunk by Royal Navy vessels.

Six weeks later, during another Bay of Biscay patrol, Marrows’ Sunderland was attacked by six Luftwaffe Junkers Ju88s off the Spanish coast.

After a battle lasting nearly an hour the Sunderland was ditched and the 11 crew, some of them wounded, had to cram into a six-man dinghy from which they were later rescued.

For these two actions, Mr Marrows was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and later the Distinguished Service Order.

After the war, he became a very successful citrus fruit farmer in Victoria.