Lt-Cdr Nick Cook, naval pilot whose plane was hit three times during the Korean War

Lieutenant-Commander Nick Cook, who has died aged 95, was a consummate Fleet Air Arm pilot who flew in the Korean War and later with BOAC before becoming a successful estate agent.

The Korean War was not a forgotten war, wrote Cook, “it was ignored”. When communist North Korea, backed by China and the Soviet Union, invaded democratic South Korea on June 25 1950, the superpowers were rapidly involved and it became a significant event in the Cold War. United Nations forces were led by the US, while the war in the air, too distant from friendly airbases, was fought from American, Australian and British aircraft carriers.

Cook flew the Hawker Sea Fury in 802 Naval Air Squadron from the carrier Ocean, attacking machine-gun posts, coastal batteries and bridges; he was credited with destroying 13 bridges, two of them on the same day, July 25 1952.

“We flew three times a day,” he recalled. “Rocket attacks were hopeless, so we used mainly 500lb bombs… we threw the book away about diving and angle of dive and worked out a 40-degree dive.” There was sporadic opposition from Russian MiG-15s, but heavy gunfire was more dangerous. Cook was wingman to his commanding officer Lt-Cdr Donald Dick DSC on July 26 when Dick was shot down while attacking a sampan.

Cook’s aircraft was hit on three occasions: once he heard “this terrible clunk”, and a shell passed through the cockpit from side to side, creasing his shoulder blades.

The report on Cook covering February to December 1952 stated that he was “a gifted pilot with considerable dash and determination who did extremely well in 137 offensive sorties over Korea. Always cheerful, often entertaining, he was a great asset throughout.”

Nicholas James Cook was born on November 22 1929 in Chigwell, Essex, where his father was a solicitor. His early education at Galloway in Scotland and in Stafford was interrupted by wartime evacuations, before he settled at Forest School, Epping.

Called up for National Service in 1948, Cook volunteered for the Navy and found himself a naval airman 2nd class at a naval air station in Cornwall, where he so excelled as a parachute-packer that he was selected for officer training and sent to sea in the battleship Anson.

In 1949, when he learnt that national servicemen were eligible for flying training, he immediately volunteered. He flew solo after seven and a half hours in a Percival Prentice (“a f------ awful aeroplane”), and had begun advanced flying training in the Seafire 17 (“Wonderful, wonderful”) when it was discovered that his National Service was about to expire. Cook promptly renounced the months he had already served in order to finish flying training.

By 1951 he was flying the Sea Fury (“Nothing can compare with flying the 2,500hp Sea Fury on your 21st birthday”). But he was demobbed, and had joined the RNVR Air Branch, flying Seafires and Sea Furies at Culham (“the best flying club in the world”).

Then on a Friday afternoon in January 1952 in Ye Grapes pub in Shepherd Market, Mayfair, he learnt that because of the attrition among aircrew (33 were lost in the three years of the Korean War), 802 Naval Air Squadron was recruiting for service in the Far East.

Cook took a taxi to the Admiralty, where he demanded to be recalled, and that Sunday night he took the sleeper to Penzance, only to find that there was no aeroplane for him. Undeterred, he flew out to Malta in a Viking (“a right old boneshaker”); the refuelling in Nice was Cook’s first ever visit overseas. Waiting for him in Malta was a brand-new Sea Fury, which he practised in for 11 days before embarking in Ocean and going off to war.

After the Korean War, Cook transferred from RNVR to a regular commission and took part in the flypast over the Coronation Review of 1953, described by the naval historian Ned Wilmott as “the last parade of the Royal Navy as the world’s greatest and most prodigious navy”.

This came despite his crashing into the sea and passing under the ship when the catapult on Theseus failed. He recalled that in the water off Torbay his hands were so cold that he could not lift himself into the helicopter strop but had to be rescued by the seaboat from the destroyer Cadiz.

Joining 804 NAS, Cook converted to flying the jet Sea Hawk (“so easy”) under the instruction of the future Admiral Ray Lygo and the command of the legendary Eric “Winkle” Brown, and for the next several months he was Brown’s wingman.

Next, Cook qualified as a weapons instructor and served in Southern Air Division (a reserve organisation) flying the jet Attacker (“the most awful aeroplane… ghastly, terrible”). Then, though he had only three years’ seniority as a lieutenant, he was given command of 1835 NAS until it was disbanded during the Sandys Defence Review.

In all, Cook flew 1,270 hours in 12 types of naval aircraft and made 335 deck landings on five carriers – Triumph, Ocean, Theseus, Unicorn and Illustrious. He flew a further 1,914 hours as a commercial pilot with BOAC.

After a short spell with Associated Rediffusion, run largely by ex-Navy officers and the first commercial TV station serving London, Cook started a property company in Belgravia, Kensington and Chelsea.

Cook was erudite and had a prodigious memory. He was a great raconteur, conversationalist and public speaker with a resonant voice, and could have been an actor. He was gregarious and generous, curious and thoughtful, and very interested in family life despite having no children of his own.

A member of Boodles, for many years he was doyen of the annual Cradock Night dinner and was a patron of the Fleet Air Arm Officers’ Association’s Taranto Night dinner, which commemorates victory over the Italian fleet in November 1940.

Following a brief, early marriage, Cook shared homes in London and Somerset with Elizabeth (“Eliza”), Marchioness Conyngham before they moved to the Isle of Man in 2013. She survives him.

Lieutenant-Commander Nick Cook, born November 22 1929, died October 24 2025

[Source: Daily Telegraph]