page_title: James Scaramanga
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: James Scaramanga / Death
caption_attribution_description: All Saints Church, Crawley Down, District of Mid Sussex, West Sussex, England. The parish church of the village of Crawley Down, southwest of East Grinstead; built in 1843–44 in the Early English style.
context_page_description: Lieutenant James John Scaramanga was a First World War British ace credited with twelve aerial victories. He scored his last victory after he had already received the wound which would soon prove fatal. The observer ace hailed from a wealthy Greek family with a connection to James Bond series author Ian Fleming.
context_section_description: Scaramanga was severely wounded in a dogfight and lost consciousness before he took down his twelfth and final enemy aircraft on 10 July 1918. He regained consciousness and with his one good arm shot down the attacking Pfalz D.III that had been on their tail. He died that same day, soon after he and his pilot, Lieutenant John Everard Gurdon, landed, about two weeks short of his twentieth birthday. Scaramanga was interred at Aire Communal Cemetery in Aire-sur-la-Lys, Pas-de-Calais, France. His grave reference number is III. H. 25. He is also commemorated on the Crawley Down War Memorial in Crawley Down, Worth, Sussex. The monument is located at the junction of Vicarage Road and Sandy Lane, down the road from the Church of All Saints. While the memorial does not list the names of the fallen, there is a roll of honour which lists those names at the church. Despite having been credited with twelve aerial victories and seriously wounded twice, the second time fatally, Lieutenant James John Scaramanga does not appear to have been decorated.
  His pilot, Lieutenant Gurdon, survived the encounter that killed Scaramanga. On 3 August 1918, the Supplement to the London Gazette announced that he had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. In addition, after he recovered, Gurdon scored an additional five victories in August 1918, for a total count of 28, and attained the rank of captain.
caption: Church of All Saints in Crawley Down
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