BRITAIN’S last surviving World War Two Victoria Cross hero, John Cruickshank, has died aged 105.
The RAF flight lieutenant won the medal for destroying a Nazi U-Boat while piloting a flying boat in June 1944.
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His crew spotted the sub threatening UK vessels and defied heavy gunfire to launch a bombing run.
But the bombs did not release, forcing him to turn back and attack a second time.
He successfully dropped the bombs himself by straddling the U-Boat with his Catalina flying boat in the Norwegian Sea.
The pilot, from Aberdeen, suffered 72 injuries from anti-aircraft fire including two wounds to his lungs and ten to his legs.
His navigator John Dickson was killed and his co-pilot and two other crew members were seriously injured.
Flt Lt Cruickshank managed to limp the aircraft back to its base in Shetland where he was given a blood transfusion before he even left the plane.
He never flew operationally again and left the RAF in 1946 for a career in banking.
Last week he became the last to die of 181 who won the country’s highest military honour during WW2.
His funeral will be conducted in private.
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