John Cruickshank, who has died aged 105, was the last surviving combatant to have won the Victoria Cross during the second world war, and the last living Scottish recipient of what is one of the most distinguished awards for gallantry in the world.
At the start of the war Cruickshank was an apprenticed clerk with the Commercial Bank of Scotland. As a member of the Territorial Army he initially served with the Royal Artillery, transferring into the RAF as a trainee pilot in June 1941. By July 1944 he was with 210 Squadron in Shetland, flying anti-submarine patrols in Catalina flying boats.
On 17 July 1944, Flying Officer Cruickshank took off from RAF Sullom Voe in Shetland as the pilot and “boat skipper” of the 10-man crew of RAF Catalina JV928. They were tasked to help protect a Royal Navy carrier group of three aircraft carriers and 17 warships as it made its way home from northern Norway following a failed attack on the German battleship Tirpitz, which was wreaking havoc among allied convoys ferrying supplies to the Soviet Union.
John Cruickshank in London, 2006. The Victoria Cross comes first in his row of medals. Photograph: Sandra Rowse/Shutterstock
Cruickshank was by then one of the squadron’s most experienced pilots, having flown 47 sorties searching for German U-boats, albeit fruitlessly. The British were able to intercept and decipher the locations of the submarines, but even so, he and his crew had only ever found one, and they had failed to sink it.
They had been on patrol for eight hours and were just about to turn for home when the radar picked up a potential target 43 miles away. They homed in on it and found a submarine travelling on the surface. Cruickshank initially thought it was a friendly boat and had his crew fire a recognition signal flare while flashing the code letter of the day.
The swift response was a barrage of exploding anti-aircraft shells. Cruickshank flew out of the line of fire and then swooped down to 50ft to drop the depth charges that would break up the submarine and sink it. As he manoeuvred the Catalina into position to drop the charges his crew fired an intense burst of rounds at the U-boat’s gunners. But when John “Dickie” Dixon, the navigator and bomb-aimer, pressed the release button, the depth charges remained in place. A furious Cruickshank yelled at Dixon, telling him in no uncertain terms to fix the problem fast.
“I felt considerable anger,” he later recalled. “However, one can’t allow one’s anger and surprise to continue for very long and one has to decide what’s going to happen next.”
Determined not to let a second U-boat get away, Cruickshank climbed away and prepared to come in for another attack. As the Catalina swept through, it came under intense fire from the U-boat’s guns. “The flak was considerably more accurate this time,” one of the Catalina’s crew recalled. “There was a wall of black anti-aircraft fire bursting in front of us, and Cruickshank just flew the plane straight through it.”
The anti-aircraft rounds ripped a number of holes in the Catalina’s aluminium skin, killing Dixon, and shrapnel hit Cruickshank in the chest, penetrating his lungs. He was subsequently found to have suffered 72 wounds. But he kept going, this time releasing the depth charges himself and having the satisfaction of achieving a perfect “straddle”. The U-boat, later discovered to have been the U-361, broke up in the water and sank with the loss of all crew.
John Cruickshank standing by a Catalina aircraft on display at the RAF Leuchars airshow in St Andrews, Scotland, 2013. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
The Catalina was very badly damaged and there was serious doubt as to whether it could make the six-hour flight back to Sullom Voe. The crew put out the fires and plugged the holes with life-jackets and other pieces of gear but they had no radio, one of the fuel tanks was leaking and there was a gaping hole in the fuselage just below the waterline.
Despite his wounds, Cruickshank set a course for home and remained at the controls until on the verge of collapse when he finally let the second pilot, Jack Garnett, take over. He was taken to the back of the plane to have his wounds treated, but despite the pain refused morphine because it would affect his ability to take back control of the aircraft.
Cruickshank was falling in and out of consciousness due to loss of blood and, according to his citation, “able to breathe only with the greatest difficulty”, but an hour before they reached base he insisted that the crew take him back to the cockpit and place him in the second pilot’s seat so he could advise the inexperienced Garnett on how to land the badly damaged aircraft.
Garnett had never landed a plane in the dark, so when they reached Sullom Voe, Cruickshank told him to circle above the base and ordered his crew to lighten the aircraft by jettisoning anything they could. As dawn broke, he guided Garnett down towards the sea’s surface then grabbed the controls himself to make the actual landing, before taxi-ing swiftly towards the beach with water pouring in through the hole in the fuselage.
“It was in everybody’s interest that I should be helping Jack to land the aircraft,” Cruickshank later said. “It was better to make a safe landing, whatever the effect on my own life.”
Cruickshank was given an emergency blood transfusion at the base’s medical station and taken to hospital, where he remained on the critical list for 10 days. After two months’ treatment and recuperation he was well enough to receive the VC from King George VI at the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
As a result of the injuries suffered in the attack on the U-361, Cruickshank never flew again. He was promoted to flight lieutenant and posted to HQ Coastal Command at Northwood in Middlesex for the rest of the war.
Cruickshank was born in Macduff, Banffshire (now Aberdeenshire), the son of James, a civil engineer, and his wife, Alice (nee Bow). He was educated at Aberdeen grammar school, the Royal high school, Edinburgh, and Daniel Stewart’s college (also in Edinburgh, now Stewart’s Melville college).
He left the RAF in 1946 to take up a post as aide-de-camp to the lord high commissioner to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland. He joined Grindlays Bank in 1952, developing business in Africa and Asia, and from 1977 he was an administrator for North West Securities, until his retirement in 1985.
He married Marion Beverley, a Canadian from Toronto, in 1955. She died in 1985.
John Alexander Cruickshank, RAF pilot and banking administrator, born 20 June 1920; died 9 August 2025
