War hero Don McColl who risked his life to fly in supplies for resistance fighters behind enemy lines in the battle against the Nazis is still taking to the skies at 88.

The modest pilot, believed to be Scotland's oldest, still enjoys flying across the Highlands, and plans to continue for years to come, although adds: "It is all in the lap of the Gods really."

But his relaxing flight are all a long cry to his wartime days.

Flying under cover of darkness into Italy and Eastern Europe during World War II, the Flying Officer took his converted Halifax bomber as low as 500ft, guided only by bonfires and torches, to drop weapons, supplies and even the odd spy into enemy territory.

After the war, and still stuck on his boyhood dream of being a pilot, Mr McColl got a private licence.

But later, when he turned 60, the six-monthly medicals became just too costly and time-consuming, and he gave up his wings.

After his wife died, however, and becoming bored with his feet always being firmly on the ground, Mr McColl, at 81, decided to take to the skies again.

And seven years on he continues to enjoy his hobby. Flying out of Inverness-based Highland Aviation Flying School, his flights take him all over the west Highlands.

And he said: "When one's retired one has lots of time to read, mow the lawn, and fly.

"I am up about once a fortnight, going to the likes of Ullapool, Achnasheen and Plockton. I some times go down the Great Glen.

The introduction of the new National Private Pilot's Licence which just requires a GP examination to prove the pilot is airworthy gave Mr McColl a new lease of life

The widower from Lentran, near Inverness, returned to the air in 2003, and after sitting pilot exams and completing 32 hours of flying, he got his licence back.

Mr McColl revealed it was great to be back behind the controls, but added that the few months of part-time training and testing to get his licence this time was a far cry from the 400 hours of flying to become a special ops man.

He said: "I joined up in 1941, when I was 18 but I didn't become operational with 148 Squadron until 1943, when I was posted to Brindisi, in Italy.

"I was on special duties û supplying arms and things to the partisans and dropping the occasional agent. They were all night-time operations û in other words, we just sneaked in and sneaked out again.

"For each operation, we'd be briefed with the location for the drop. Once we got close enough, the partisans would light a series of bonfires or hold torches in the air to guide us to the best place.

"We'd descend from 10,000ft to 500ft and dropped canisters with the supplies from the converted bomb channels. Ours was the really sneaky stuff we took a bit of flak on occasions."

Mr McColl and six crewmen colleagues completed missions in northern Italy, Crete, Greece, Albania and Poland.

Like the bomber and fighter pilots who named their planes and painted pictures on the side, Mr McColl's special ops crew had a distinctive nickname on the side of their Halifax.

Mr McColl remembered: "I had been away for a while, and I came back to find the plane had 'McColl and Co Deliveries' painted along the side I think some of the crewmen did it.

"When we finished with special ops, the next crew to get the plane merely wrote 'under new management' below my name."

After his requisite 400 hours of nerve-racking special operations about 50 of them the Glasgow-born pilot continued on an exotic tour of duty that lasted until the late 1940s.

He served with a maintenance unit in Algiers, a ferry unit in Italy, and dropped parachutists in exercises with the 6th Airborne in Palestine.

Now, he will have to restrain himself to tamer flights in a single-engine Piper PA38, flying to slightly less exotic locations like Wick and Kirkwall.

All his flights will also have to take place in the daylight, as the licence does not allow night flying and he admitted this was something he would miss.

Mr McColl said: "There is something special about flying at night, but at least my flights are a bit more relaxed now than during the war I came across some pretty unfriendly people back then."

However, he revealed that flying again was "like getting back on a bike" and the basic design of planes had not changed at all.

He added: "As far as I can see, there has been no real evolutionary change in light aircraft over the years."