He escaped and assisted other Allied fugitives to safety, receiving for his efforts the Military Cross, a rare honour for an RAAF pilot.

In 1931, aged fifteen, he began his association with the Lord Somers Camp and Power House social and sporting organisations located at Western Port.

After leaving school, Barr studied construction at Swinburne Technical College, but later took a diploma course in accountancy and made it his profession.

The tour was cancelled less than a day after the team arrived in the UK on 2 September, due to the outbreak of World War II.

[1][2] Keen to serve as a fighter pilot, Barr initially tried to enlist in the Royal Air Force, but withdrew his application when told that it was unlikely he would fly anytime in the near future, and that he could expect only administrative duties in the interim.

[1][6] In his quest to gain assignment as a fighter pilot, he had deliberately aimed poorly during bombing practice, a stratagem also adopted by at least two of his fellow students.

[1][4] The aircraft was, according to Barr, "our front line fighter in those days, but it didn't take too long to realise that the capacity of the Wirraway, compared with the types of planes that we were going to encounter, left much to be desired".

While based in Queensland, he served as honorary aide-de-camp to the Governor, Sir Leslie Wilson, and also captained the RAAF rugby union team.

There he also received his "goolie chit", a piece of paper to be shown to local tribesmen in the event he was shot down, reading in Arabic: "don't kill the bearer, feed him and protect him, take him to the English and you will be rewarded.

The squadron then re-equipped with P-40 Kittyhawks; Barr was flying the new model when he became an ace on New Year's Day 1942, shooting down two Junkers Ju 87 Stukas.

[8][11] On 8 March, he led a flight of six Kittyhawks to intercept a raid on Tobruk by twelve Ju 87s escorted by ten Macchi C. 202s and two Bf 109s.

[14][15] His philosophy was that the P-40 was not a top-class fighter, but that its shortcomings "could be offset by unbridled aggression", so he resolved to treat aerial combat as he would a boxing match and "overcome much better opponents by simply going for them".

[16] Promoted to flight lieutenant on 1 April, Barr was raised to acting squadron leader and appointed to command the unit in May, barely six months after he commenced operations, following Gibbes's hospitalisation with a broken ankle.

The first occasion was on 11 January 1942 when, having destroyed a Bf 109 and a Fiat G.50, he was preparing to touch down in the desert to pick up a fellow pilot who had crash landed.

Enemy aircraft were encountered and, in the ensuing engagement, Flying Officer Barr attacked 2 Italian fighters, one of which he shot down.

He then observed one of his fellow pilots, who had been shot down, waving to him from the ground but, when preparing to make a landing in an attempt to rescue him, Flying Officer Barr was attacked by 2 Messerschmitt 109s.

[8][24] On 26 June, after being attacked by two Bf 109s and bailing out of his burning Kittyhawk, he was captured by Italian soldiers and taken as a prisoner-of-war, first to Tobruk, and then to Italy, where he received hospital treatment for serious wounds.

[13][25] He later learned that the pilot who shot him down was Oberleutnant Werner Schroer, a Luftwaffe ace credited with sixty-one victories in North Africa.

Court-martialled on a charge of murder, he only avoided a death sentence when the Swiss Red Cross colonel representing him located the official and proved that he had not died.

[33] Barr jumped from a moving train bound for the Brenner Pass and joined a group of Italian partisans in Pontremoli, remaining at large for two months before again being captured.

After reaching friendly lines in March 1944, he was sent to a military hospital in Vasto, weighing only 55 kilograms (121 lb) and in poor health, suffering malaria, malnutrition, and blood poisoning.

[8][36] The assistance he rendered to fellow Allied fugitives earned him the Military Cross (MC) for "Exceptional courage in organising escapes"; the award was gazetted on 1 December 1944.

[8] Posted to Britain in April 1944, Barr went ashore at Omaha Beach two days after D-Day as part of an air support control unit.

3 Squadron veteran Bobby Gibbes in an airline venture in New Guinea, before going into business as a company manager and director with civil engineering and pharmaceutical firms.

[14][44] Barr rejoined the RAAF on 20 March 1951 as a pilot in the active Citizen Air Force (CAF), with the acting rank of wing commander.

[44] In June 1987, Barr accepted an invitation to join John Glenn, Chuck Yeager, and fifteen other famed flyers in a so-called "Gathering of Eagles" for a seminar at the USAF Air Command and Staff College in Montgomery, Alabama.

[47] Generally reluctant to talk publicly about the war, he agreed to discuss his experiences during an episode of the television series Australian Story in 2002, appearing with his biographer Peter Dornan, and Bobby Gibbes.