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A WORLD record breaking Scots fighter pilot who helped liberate Europe from the Nazis has died aged 97.

Leith-born Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown , who passed away on Sunday, was the Royal Navy’s most decorated airman.

He held the world record for flying the greatest number of different types of aircraft at 487, as well as performing a record-smashing 2407 aircraft carrier landings .

At the outbreak of war he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve as a Fleet Air Arm pilot.

He was soon flying fighters from the world’s smallest aircraft carrier, HMS Audacity, before later surviving this ship being torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1941.

A family statement said: “It is with deep regret that the passing of Captain Eric Melrose Brown CBE DSC AFC is announced.

“Eric was the most decorated pilot of the Fleet Air Arm in which service he was universally known as ‘Winkle’ on account of his diminutive stature.

“He also held three absolute Guinness World Records, including for the number of aircraft carrier deck landings and types of aeroplane flown.”

Born in Leith on January 21 1919, he was educated at Fettes College and the University of Edinburgh, where he learned to fly.

He attended the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin as a student and became a fluent German speaker before being arrested by the SS and deported.

While a student Brown earned extra cash as a ‘wall of death’ rider on a 250cc motorbike, often sharing the wall with his boss - who had a fully-grown lion riding pillion.

Winkle returned to Germany at the end of the war on the orders of Winston Churchill to capture and fly advanced German aeroplanes.

He witnessed the liberation of Bergen-Belsen camp and acted as an interpreter for the trial of the camp commandants.

As Chief Naval Test Pilot Winkle landed the first jet and the first twin-engined aeroplane, and tested the world’s only jet-powered seaplane fighter in the Solent.

He retired from the Royal Navy in 1970 in the rank of Captain and became the Director-General of the British Helicopter Advisory Board. He was also president of the Royal Aeronautical Society from 1982 to 83.

Winkle was honoured in the Sunday Mail’s Great Scot awards and there had been calls for him to be Knighted for his achievements.

He passed away at East Surrey Hospital on Sunday following a short illness and is survived by his son, Glen, and his second wife, Jean Kelly Brown.