'BRITAIN'S greatest ever pilot' has been reunited with a plane he flew 70 years ago at the National Museum of Flight in East Fortune.

Captain Eric Brown CBE was a Royal Navy test pilot and visited the museum as part of a £3.6 million redevelopment of two nationally significant Second World War hangars.

The hangars will incorporate digital displays showing archive footage and interviews exploring the history, technology and personal stories behind each aircraft.

Ninety-six-year-old Captain Brown flew the Messerschmitt Me 163B-1a Komet On June 10 1945 after capturing it at Husum, Schleswig Holstein, at the end of the war.

Under instructions from Winston Churchill – who wanted to learn as much as possible about Germany's technological weapons – he was part of a mission to travel to Germany, test rocket aircraft and bring them back to Britain.

Born in Leith and now living in Sussex, Captain Brown is the Navy’s most decorated pilot, and has flown 487 different types of aircraft; more than anyone else in history.

He has completed 2,407 aircraft carrier landings and has led an extraordinary life; he interrogated Hermann Göring and was one of the first British servicemen to arrive at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Steve McLean, General Manager at the National Museum of Flight said: “An important element of the redevelopment at the National Museum of Flight is the opportunity to tell the human stories behind some of our aircraft using interactive digital displays.

“We were delighted to welcome Captain Eric Brown to the Museum to record the extraordinary story of his test flight in our Komet, and look forward to sharing that story with our visitors when the redevelopment opens in the spring.”