I have just been reading the Air Accident Investigation Board’s report on the tragic crash of a Hurricane at Shoreham in 2007. Brian Brown, one of Britain’s most accomplished pilots, was killed when his aircraft failed to complete a rolling manoeuvre and hit the ground. Mr Brown had 400 hours and ten years’ experience on the type. There was nothing wrong with the aircraft. How on earth could such a thing happen?

It made me think, not for the first time, that flying is inherently risky in a way that motor racing or sailing are not. Gravity is the enemy. Any small malfunction or the slightest error can bring you down, with no time to do anything about it. A maverick mentality is the last thing a pilot needs, in spite of the barnstormers’ myths; most of the best pilots I have known were cool, calm and methodical people who enjoyed operating their aircrafts’ controls and systems with almost superhuman precision.

There are exceptions. I knew a superb pilot at Biggin Hill who took outlandish risks and survived everything, perhaps because he was an exceptionally talented airman. He once set off solo for the South of France in a small, single-engined aircraft which would, he calculated, just about get him to his destination before he ran out of fuel. As he told the story, he got the wind wrong and as night descended he was well off course over the Alps. Eventually darkness and the teaspoonful left in his tank forced him to search for somewhere to land; he could see almost nothing, so ‘felt’ his way down in the gloom. At the last minute he spotted a suitable stretch of grass and made a short landing.

The next morning he discovered that he was on a football field which was the only piece of flat ground for miles around; everything else was mountainside. What’s more he had touched down between two trees, which he hadn’t been able to see, about 10 metres further apart than his wing-span. He couldn’t take off again; the aircraft had to be dismantled and taken down the mountain on a lorry.

There was a saying in the RAF: ‘there are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.’ My father was once informed that ‘genius’ pilots were assigned to fighters but so were those who only just made the grade – because when they crashed it would be less expensive. The steady, competent pilots were given bombers, which cost a lot more. Even so, the death-toll among bomber-crew was so horrific that the RAF censored the statistics. Roughly half were killed. The only comparable mortality rate was in the German U-Boat service, which – unlike Bomber Command – did not depend on volunteers.

I have only once witnessed a crash. It was one of the most distressing in UK airshow history because the pilot had taken a group of passengers up with him. The aircraft was a Boston Invader. It flew past the spectators at Biggin Hill and then suddenly dived straight down into a valley next to the airfield. There was silence, then a dreadful mushroom-cloud of smoke rose up from a point below the horizon; the crowd went deathly quiet because we all knew exactly what must have happened. This was in 1980. I remember the feeling of shock and utter sadness to this day.

Some wartime pilots won immortality by the manner in which they met their deaths in combat. My favourite, so to speak, was a 21-year-old ace called Paddy Finucane whose Spitfire had been hit over France and was unable to make it back across the Channel. Just before he crashed into the sea Paddy Finucane sent a last radio message to his comrades: ‘OK, chaps, this is it.’ To me his sang-froid is the height of heroism.

My own close shaves in the air have been pretty paltry. Once, coming in to land, I pressed the toggle-switch to lower my flaps. Immediately the aircraft tried to roll away to the left, quite violently. For some reason only one of the flaps had come down. I suppose I must have realised this because I reversed the toggle and made a safe landing. I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t luckily done the ‘right’ thing.

Because I usually don’t. On another occasion I was doing a free-fall parachute jump at an airfield in mid-Kent when my canopy didn’t open. Forgetting all my training (namely, to instantly release the reserve canopy on my chest) I apparently plummeted to earth trying to kick my main canopy into action, behind my back. Somehow it worked, but when I landed our Chief Instructor, who had been observing this pathetic performance from the door of the aircraft high above, stormed up to me and said: ‘Why don’t you give this up before either you die like an idiot or I die from a heart attack watching you?’ He wasn’t joking, but in the end he relented and let me carry on training.

The sensation of flying a light aircraft is not much like travelling in an airliner. Small aircraft are frail contraptions. They bounce and bump whenever they meet a gust or an area of different air-pressure, which is more or less all the time. The wings and fuselage bend and creak; the engine drones on but seems so weak in comparison with the giant hands of the wind and weather. You feel that you are only staying aloft by the skin of your teeth. Pilots are often superstitious: many have a lucky charm which must be on board with them; others have special routines and rituals which guarantee a safe return.

Perhaps the wafer-thin borderline between life and death in the air is what makes flying so exhilarating. It’s probably why pilots enjoy such camaraderie. Perhaps it’s why airmen come back after a flight feeling they have run a marathon: exhausted, every nerve on edge, but brimming over with a sense of accomplishment. Pilots know that any mistake, however small, could be fatal. As one of my instructors, a Scotsman, once said to me: ‘Get it right, laddie. If you get it wrong she’ll bite you’.