Cyril Norman Crook

Cyril Norman Crook (service number 44550) was a British airman who rose through the ranks of No. 206 Squadron, RAF Coastal Command, from the opening days of the war to his death as a Squadron Leader in the summer of 1942, aged twenty-nine. He was among the first RAF aircrew to strike at Germany: two days before the invasion of Poland he was detached to Bomber Command, and on 3 September 1939 he navigated a Wellington on one of the earliest RAF bombing sorties of the war, targeting the Kiel Canal locks at Brunsbuttel. He remained with 206 Squadron — flying Lockheed Hudsons on anti-submarine and anti-shipping patrols over the North Sea and Atlantic — with a period in the Transatlantic ferry service, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in recognition of his sustained operational service. On the night of 25/26 June 1942, acting as a Squadron Leader, Crook led a formation of twelve 206 Squadron Hudsons in the third of Bomber Command’s “thousand-bomber” raids, the attack on Bremen; his aircraft, Hudson AM762 coded ‘S’, carried Pilot Officer J.C. Watson, Flight Sergeant McGlynn, Flight Sergeant R.H. Hubbard, and Wing Commander W.D. Cooke as passengers on his first operational flight. The Hudson failed to return and is believed to have been shot down by German night-fighter ace Major Werner Hoffmann near Schleswig at around 02:26 hours; on or about 3 July 1942 the bodies of Crook and his gunner, Flight Sergeant Hubbard, were recovered from the North Sea by the Germans. Cyril Norman Crook’s Distinguished Flying Cross was gazetted posthumously on 7 July 1942; he is buried at Kiel War Cemetery, Germany (Plot 2, Row F, Grave 15).