Nicholas Gresham Cooke

Nicholas Gresham Cooke — known in the service as “Lanky” — was born in Norfolk on 26 August 1913. He trained as an aeronautical engineer and gained his civil pilot’s licence in 1935 before entering the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell, from which he was commissioned in March 1936. After an early posting to No. 46 Squadron flying Gloster Gauntlet biplanes, he joined No. 264 Squadron, one of the first units to receive the Boulton Paul Defiant — an unusual fighter that carried no forward-firing guns of its own, relying instead on a four-gun power turret worked by a second crewman seated behind the pilot.

It was over Dunkirk in May 1940, with Corporal Albert Lippett in the turret, that the partnership made its name. Flying as a flight leader, Cooke positioned the Defiant while Lippett’s guns did the firing, and the pair were credited with around nine enemy aircraft destroyed together with several shared. Their most remarkable day came on 29 May 1940, when in two patrols above the evacuation beaches they accounted for eight aircraft — two Messerschmitt fighters and a string of Junkers Ju 87 dive-bombers — a feat that made Cooke an “ace in a day”. For this he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, gazetted on 14 June 1940.

By the time the award appeared he was already dead. On 31 May 1940, during another patrol over the Dunkirk beaches against German bombers and their fighter escort, his Defiant (serial L6975) was shot down into the sea. Both Cooke and Lippett were killed; neither body was recovered. Aged 26, Cooke has no grave and is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial, with a separate memorial later raised in his memory at Blakeney in his native Norfolk.