FORMER spy plane pilot Harry Bromley, whose energy and enthusiasm got many of the Swindon’s good causes off the ground, has died aged 91.

The ex-RAF man risked shot down over the Middle East in his Canberra aircraft and was once mistaken for a mercenary while flying a trainer down the east coast of Africa through tropical storms and hostile territory during his career.

But he was known to many as one of the leading lights in the Old Town Festival and the Christmas lights - events he worked on until well into his 80s.

Based at Brize Norton for some years and then in the community relations department at RAF Lyneham at the end of his service, he moved to live in Swindon in the 1970s.

After retirement from the RAF he got involved with national charities, including the Imperial Cancer Research Fund where he was a regional director. He also did work for the RAF Benevolent Fund and Save the Children. 

When he moved to Swindon he became involved in some of the town’s good causes. He was chairman of the Old Town Festival committee and funding co-ordinator for the Old Town Christmas lights.

When Littlecote House was put up for sale he led a fight to keep the largest single collection of English Civil War armour for the nation. It is now in the National Armouries in Leeds.

Harry also led a campaign in the early 1990s to stop the sale of Fresden Manor in Highworth, which had been left to the Roman Research Trust to be preserved for archaeological research.

The Wilts and Berks Canal Trust also benefitted from his phenomenal organisation skills, especially when it found itself struggling to stage a water festival.

Harry got TV naturalist David Bellamy down to open it riding a water bike.

And the final flying years of Vulcan bomber XH558 happened in no small part due to Harry’s efforts in spearheading a national campaign to stop the Government scrapping it.

The cold war aircraft was grounded in 1992, but returned to the sky in 2008 and was a star of the air show circuit until 2015.

“If anybody asked him to get involved in something he would involve himself 100 per cent," said son Neil.

"He didn’t do anything half-heartedly, whether it was the national campaign to save the Vulcan or the Old Town Christmas lights. His devotion to both was absolute.

“He always said: ‘We come this way but once'.”

But he was also very much a family man. He was 50 and had already left the RAF when his son was born.

“I was a bit of a surprise,” said Neil.

But even though he was an older father, Harry was a keen sportsman and kept himself very fit. At Neil's school sports days he was often in the top three in the parents' races.

During his time in the RAF he ran for the service and competed in tobogganing events. He also went to four Olympics as a member of the British Olympic Association’s administrative team.

When Neil was writing a 10,000-word university dissertation on the effect the outlet village would have on the town centre, he thought he could finish it in four weeks. Almost immediately it became clear that he had taken on a mammoth task.

Harry stepped up to help, organising interviews and access for him.

It was finished and printed at 2am on the day it was due to be handed in to the university. Waiting with Neil at the station that morning he said: “We did it.”

Neil said: “I could not have asked for a better parent. He was just always there – he would always have time for me.”

His parents met in 1956 when Harry was stationed at RAF Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire and Betty was training as a nurse in London. They married in 1962. She cared for him in his final years as dementia took hold.

A funeral service is planned for Monday, September 11, at Kingsdown Crematorium.