Flight Lt. John Cruickshank was at the controls of a Royal Air Force plane on submarine patrol in July 1944 when he spotted a German U-boat steaming placidly on the surface of the Norwegian Sea.
Swooping low, just 50 feet above the waves, the plane raked the submarine with gunfire, but the airplane’s depth charges failed to deploy.
As Flight Lieutenant Cruickshank returned for a second run, he was now fully in the U-boat’s sights, and the submarine fired a shell that exploded inside the airplane’s fuselage. The bombardier was killed, and Flight Lieutenant Cruickshank was lacerated by shrapnel, though he gave no indication of his grievous wounds to his crew.
He released the depth charges himself, sinking the U-boat. Wounded in 72 places, he had to be carried to a bunk as the crew braced for the five-hour night flight back to the plane’s R.A.F. base in the Shetland Islands, off the northern tip of Scotland.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, Flight Lieutenant Cruickshank refused morphine, knowing that his co-pilot did not have the skills to land their amphibious seaplane by himself. Fuel was leaking from damaged lines, and the fuselage was gashed.
As they neared home, Flight Lieutenant Cruickshank demanded to be carried back to the cockpit and propped in a seat. It was dark; despite his agony, he ordered his co-pilot to circle for an hour until daylight would allow a safer touchdown.
With hands hovering shakily over the controls, he coached the co-pilot through the descent and a water landing. A doctor rushed aboard to give him a blood transfusion before he was evacuated.
Flight Lieutenant Cruickshank, then 24, was presented with the Victoria Cross, the supreme recognition for valor for members of the British and Commonwealth Armed Forces. “He set an example of determination, fortitude and devotion to duty in keeping with the highest traditions of the Service,” the award citation read.
The last surviving Victoria Cross recipient from World War II, John Cruickshank died this month at 105. His death was announced on Saturday by the Royal Air Force, which said his death occurred the previous week.
He lived in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he was born, and where he retired in 1985 after a postwar career in banking. His wife, Marion Beverley, whom he married in 1955, died in 1985. The couple had no children.
Mr. Cruickshank, who was unable to return to military flying after his injuries and left the R.A.F. in 1946, was modest when discussing his wartime heroics. In 2004, he was present when Queen Elizabeth II unveiled a monument to the Coastal Command, the service that defended Allied ships during the war; he told the queen, “Decorations didn’t enter my head.”
That same year, he told The Daily Telegraph, “The citation said ‘showed great courage’ and all that nonsense, but a lot of people would have done that in those circumstances.”
John Alexander Cruickshank was born on May 20, 1920, and enlisted in the British Army in 1939 after completing high school in Edinburgh.
Commissioned as an officer pilot in 1942, he was assigned to the squadron based at an R.A.F. facility on Sullom Voe, an inlet in the Shetland Islands. The base was part of the Coastal Command that protected Allied supply convoys against German U-boats, or naval submarines, in the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea throughout World War II.
On July 17, 1944, Flight Lieutenant Cruickshank was captain of a Catalina flying boat, a widely used Allied seaplane, on a mission to protect the British fleet in the Norwegian Sea.
He was an experienced pilot making his 48th patrol in his 10-man plane, an ungainly-looking propeller craft, though on all his previous missions he had sighted just one U-boat and failed to sink it.
West of the Lofoten Islands of Norway, toward the end of a long patrol, the Catalina’s radar lit up with a blip some 40 miles away. Surmising that it was a friendly vessel, Flight Lieutenant Cruickshank ordered a flare to be set off and a code letter to be flashed.
In response, the German submarine, U-361, fired a barrage of flak.
John Appleton, an airman who helped the flight lieutenant after he was hit by shrapnel — his injuries included two serious lung wounds and 10 penetrating leg wounds — told the Imperial War Museum in a 1995 interview that he was sure his commanding officer was mortally wounded. He meant to keep him comfortable as he died.
“I realized he must be in terrible pain,” Mr. Appleton recalled. “I can see blood started to soak through into his chest, even through all his pullovers and flying gear, and so on. But he hadn’t mentioned any of this at all.”
“In the back of my head,” Mr. Cruickshank told The Telegraph in 2004, “was the worry that the co-pilot was not trained in landing a Catalina.”
Airman Appleton, with the help of another crewman, carried the flight lieutenant back to the cockpit as the plane neared home, after the wounded pilot implored, “You must help me up.”
“It was very difficult,” Mr. Appleton said. “Not so much difficult for us, but we just thought how agonizing for a person so badly wounded.”
King George VI bestowed the Victoria Cross on Flight Lieutenant Cruickshank.
“By pressing home his second attack in his gravely wounded condition and continuing his exertions on the return journey with his failing strength,” the award citation read, “he seriously prejudiced his chance of survival even if the aircraft safely reached its base.”
Trip Gabriel is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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