Serial Number:
42696
RAF Trade:
Pilot, Four Year Short Service Commission,
General Duties Branch
Date of Enlistment:
July 24, 1939
Operational Sorties:
29 with 214 Squadron at Stradishall, 32 with 148 Squadron in the
Middle East, 5 with 419 Squadron at Middleton St George and 40 with
35 Squadron at Graveley, losing his life on his 107th operation,
over France on the night of July 4/5, 1944.
Personal Details:
Born 7 September 1919, only son of Philip and Maia Cranswick; father, a pilot, lost his life when two single-seater
aircraft collided mid-air on June 5, 1928, while practising for the
annual RAF Display at Hendon . Educated at New College Preparatory
School, Oxford, and St Edward’s School, Oxford (where Douglas Bader
and Guy Gibson were among its pupils), Married, 14 April 1944, to
Valerie Parr, who was serving in the WAAF as a teleprinter operator
at Path Finder Force HQ; one son, born after father’s death.
Service Record:
Number 7 Elementary and Reserve Flying
Training School, Desford.
Number 10 Flying Training School, Tern Hill. Number 11 Operational
Training Unit,
Bassingbourn. Number 214 Squadron, Stradishall. Number 148 Squadron,
Luqa and
elsewhere in the Middle East. Back in the UK, secondment to the
Ministry of Aircraft
Production, followed by Number 1659 Conversion Unit, Leeming. Number
419 Squadron,
Middleton St George. Number 35 Squadron, Graveley, with
non-operational service at Path
Finder Force HQ, Wyton.
Surprisingly, unlike many others with a particularly distinguished
war record, Alec Cranswick’s name was totally overlooked for public
recognition in his lifetime. This came
only in the late 1950’s, albeit in a modest manner, when – again
surprisingly – Air Vice-
Marshal Don Bennett chose to dedicate his autobiography, Pathfinder,
to… Alec Cranswick.
Though the DFC awarded in April 1942 praised “sixty-one sorties over
Germany and enemy-
occupied territory” and “exceptional” determination to complete his
task, and the DSO in July
1943 applauded the “excellent and sustained efforts” that were
“worthy of the highest praise”,
the world at large was unaware of Alec Cranswick’s astonishing
contribution to
the war effort.
Posted missing on 5 July 1944 on what was by then his one hundred
and seventh operation as a bomber pilot on Wellingtons, Halifaxes
and Lancasters,
no-one appears to
have picked up this remarkable achievement against ever-mounting
odds, so his death went
unrecorded other than in official documentation. No surprise,
therefore, when press interest
focused upon him immediately as a result of ‘Pathfinder’ Bennett’s
action, that Alec Cranswick became ‘the unknown hero’.
Bomber Command is full of statistics, for example that 55,573 of its
members lost their lives
in the Second World War and that 3,345 out of the 7,373 Lancaster
bombers built were lost on ops. But nowhere – so it seems, even to
this day – do we find confirmation that so-and-so
flew the most ops, whether as a pilot or as a crew member.
What is known is that when heavy-bomber pilot Leonard Cheshire was
awarded the Victoria
Cross in July 1944, the citation noted that he had then completed
one hundred missions (the
final figure was 102); and that the relevant squadron records show
John Burt, a pilot with an
Oboe-carrying Mosquito squadron (109), completing an unequalled 104
ops on Oboe target-
marking ops (as did his navigator, Ron Curtis) – on top of previous
ops in heavy bombers.
Greater still is the tally quoted for Guy Gibson, whose VC for his
work in the epic flight of
the Dambusters included, in the citation, the fact that he had
“completed over a hundred and
seventy sorties, involving more than 600 hours operational flying”.
Splitting hairs, some may say, but Don Bennett, apparently, argued
that those in the faster,
higher-flying Mosquitoes faced less risk than those in heavy
bombers; and it is unarguable
that the ops flown by Guy Gibson were not solely as a bomber pilot,
whether or not flying
heavies, because ninety-nine of his sorties were as a fighter pilot.
Nonetheless, confirmation in Alec Cranswick’s log book that the op
on which he lost his life
was his one hundred and seventh was sufficient for his biographer (a
feature writer on a
London evening newspaper at the time), having talked to Don Bennett,
to credit Cranswick as the RAF bomber pilot who flew the largest
number of operations in the Second World War. Bennett wrote the
Foreword to that biography, calling Cranswick “simply a quiet honest
Englishman”.
It is timely to note that, though the original hardback and the
subsequent updated and
extended paperback are no longer in print, Michael Cumming’s
biography, Pathfinder
Cranswick, earned a welcome come-back in worldwide availability with
its appearance as an
Amazon ebook* on 12 January 2011 –
thanks to what the author has described as “not just a
burning desire, more a belief that history demands successive
generations have continuing
access to the Cranswick story”. Quoting Bennett’s Foreword,
Cranswick was “so simply
courageous”… and to look back at this “boy-man” is a “rare and
elevating inspiration”.
Some 50 years have elapsed since Cranswick’s biographer parachuted
this name into the
public domain yet no-one seems to have queried the claim that he
flew the most ops, let alone
challenged it.
If Cranswick were to have survived that one hundred and seventh op
as a bomber pilot,
perhaps staying with 35 Squadron’s Lancasters towards the one
hundred and twenty ops he
envisaged as being his career total or, even, to the one hundred and
ten that, seemingly, his
senior officers had set as his limit without his knowledge, would
others have exceeded it?
And how different from Alec Cranswick would he (or they) have been?
School work “not below the average” and done “fairly well” in
sports. In initial training, as a
pilot, assessed as being “of average proficiency”; but “outstanding”
for keenness and
enthusiasm, when second-pilot on his first bomber squadron. A second
tour, operating from
bases in the Middle East, saw him having to cope with a nine-week
spell in hospital and an
aftermath no worse than “slight rheumatics and a morbid feeling of
illness in general”.
With Path Finder Force, Cranswick completed a third tour during
which he pushed aside
accusations of being a medal-hunter, reasoning that he was “only
doing his job” and that the
more hours he could show in his log book, the better would be his
prospects with an airline
after the war. ”My nerve is perfectly all right,” he would say, “it
is not getting me down”.
He preferred spending evenings alone in his room or out with his dog
than partying; he was
“reserved and withdrawn, restrained almost to timidity”. Crew
members saw him as “a quiet,
rather shy, non-smoker and non-drinker, lover of poetry and
classical music”. Indeed, among
those who knew him, he was the quiet hero… as he remains known to
this day.
