Paul Farnes, a Royal Air Force fighter pilot and the last surviving R.A.F. ace of the Battle of Britain, in which he shot down six German aircraft and damaged a half-dozen more, died on Jan. 28 in West Sussex, England. He was 101.

His death was announced by the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust.

Mr. Farnes was one of the last survivors of the nearly 3,000 airmen called “The Few,” a nickname inspired by Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s tribute to them in August 1940 while the campaign, begun in July, raged on.

“Never in the field of human conflict,” Churchill said, “was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Mr. Farnes entered the Battle of Britain having destroyed three German Luftwaffe bombers, on his own or with a fellow fighter, during the Allies’ defeat in the Battle of France in May.

With France having fallen, Britain had reached a critical point in World War II and now had to defend itself against a relentless aerial assault by the Luftwaffe. A German victory in the air would almost certainly have led to a ground invasion of Britain more than a year before the United States entered the war.