Rustington pilot who shot down first WWII plane dies aged 90

Born in Sandomierz, in eastern Poland on January 13, 1915, the youngest of five children, Antoni Lucjan Markiewicz was educated at the local grammar school.

After lying about his age at 16, he joined the Polish Air Force where he graduated as an aircraft mechanic and then completed his pilot training.

The air force training centre was 14 miles from his house, a journey he undertook by foot.

He later trained as a fighter pilot at Grudziadz, and joined No 122 Squadron of the 2nd Air Force Regiment at Cracow.

After flying with the French airforce, he joined the RAF where he flew under the command of the famous wing commander Douglas Bader.

In February, 1941, Mr Markiewicz crashed his plane in a Sussex field while practising low-level tactics in poor visibility. He spent 12 months in hospital before being declared unfit to fly again.

He spent the rest of the war training pilots and took a course in radio engineering before leaving the Polish Air Force in 1945 with the Polish Cross of Valour and two Bars.

When Mr Markiewicz married Yvonne Munday in 1944, a disaster was narrowly avoided when the house where the reception was to be held was destroyed by a German bomb attack.

Luckily, everyone who would have been at the house was at the wedding ceremony itself when the bomb hit and so none of the wedding party was killed.

Mr and Mrs Markiewicz first settled in Nottingham before moving to Tunbridge Wells and buying a holiday home in Rustington, to where they moved three years ago.

The couple have two children, Gina, 44, and Steven, 48, and five grandchildren '“ Abigail, 15, Alexandra, 12, Kasia, 13, Zophia, 10, and Halina, 6.

Their daughter Gina described her father as "An amazing man, very strong-willed and determined."

She went on to say: "His main focus in life was always his family. He believed strongly in a good education and because he had struggled being brought up in a poor Polish family, he wanted us to have the best in life and he gave us that.

"He never really spoke much about his war experiences and he felt that he wasn't really brave. He just felt that it was what he had to do at the time.

"He was reluctant to fly again after the war because he didn't trust anyone else to fly him and he said he had used up all of his good luck in the air already but he did fly to Poland once more with my brother."

Steven Markiewicz said: "He was a wonderful family man, a loving father who provided a very secure upbringing for my sister and I.

"He was very modest about his achievements during the war, although he was quite sought-after when the 50th and 60th anniversaries came up. Lots of people were asking for his autograph.

"Somebody recently described him as a real action man, making some of the things we do look silly, escaped three times, shot the first plane down in World War II, fought in the Battle of Britain and even survived an air crash, and married a beautiful girl, all before he was 29."

Mr Markiewicz's funeral has taken place at Worthing crematorium.