A war hero made his final journey to his old North Yorkshire base when his ashes were scattered by his family at RAF Linton-on-Ouse.

Flight Sergeant Stan Greaves was in his early twenties when he was based at Linton in July 1941.

He and his Halifax bomber crew, from 35 Squadron, were called up to carry out a daring daylight attack on the German battleship Scharnhorst on July 21.

They were spotted by the Nazis before they reached their target, and were confronted in the air by more than 30 enemy fighter planes.

Flt Sgt Greaves’s crew scored five direct hits on the 51-gunned battleship, which penetrated the armour-plated deck and caused a major fire to break out, rendering it out of action, and the ship was later sunk by the Royal Navy.

After the bombing, Flt Sgt Greaves’s bomber was attacked by seven ME109s, causing injuries to all but two of the crew, and fires in three of the four engines.

While Flt Sgt Greaves, originally from Bradford, fought to keep the aircraft level, he ordered his crew to bail out, and he himself only just escaped the Halifax before it exploded. The crew were captured and taken to prisoner of war camps across Europe. Six years after the raid, on December 29, 1947, Flt Sgt Greaves was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for his “marked display of determination and coolness”, during the attack, “in the face of considerable anti-aircraft and fighter opposition”.

After the war, Flt Sgt Greaves always regretted being unable to return his crew safely to base, and they had a reunion 40 years to the day after they were shot down.

As a permanent memorial to the crew, the sergeants’ mess at RAF Linton-on-Ouse commissioned an oil painting of their aircraft “TL-U”, which takes pride of place in the Mess. On July 24, 2011, 70 years after the Halifax took off for the Scharnhorst raid, Flt Sgt Greaves’s son, Roger, scattered his father’s ashes on the same spot from which the aircraft left.

He said: “I was delighted with all aspects of the day and am sure that Dad would not have done anything differently should he have actually arranged it himself.”

Flight Lieutenant David Williams, from RAF Linton-on-Ouse, said: “It was a great honour for the station to receive Stan’s ashes and to be his final resting place.

“The story of Stan and his crew is extraordinary, and we do all we can to keep the memory of Stan and airmen like him alive.”