the piston-engined, wheel-driven Railton Special, he broke the World Land Speed Record at Bonneville salt flats on 15 September 1938 by achieving 350 miles per hour. He broke it a second time at the same site on 23 August 1939, achieving 369 miles per hour. War service During World War II, he served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, and between 1943 and 1945 served with the Air Transport Auxiliary, being demobilised with the rank of Group Captain. He made an (uncredited) appearance in the wartime propaganda film Target for Tonight (1941). Post-war speed record career and death Cobb returned to Bonneville salt flats again in 1947, where on 16 September he beat his own standing 1939 World Land Speed Record by reaching (on one of the two runs he was clocked at having reached ), earning him the press moniker "The Fastest Man Alive". This record remained in place until 1963, when it was surpassed by the American Craig Breedlove. After the 1947 achievement, Cobb turned his mind to becoming on water what he now was on land and went after the simultaneous World Water Speed Record. He commissioned from Vospers the jet-engine powered speedboat Crusader and selected the long water loch of Loch Ness in Scotland for the speed trial. On 29 September 1952 he was killed at the age of 52 whilst attempting to break the world Water Speed Record at Loch Ness whilst piloting Crusader at a speed in excess of . During the run the boat hit an unexplained wake in the water and disintegrated about Cobb. The 1975 Sunn Classic Pictures documentary The Mysterious Monsters offered the theory that the wake was caused by the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie as it is called, trying to get out of the way of Cobb's boat. His body, which had been thrown beyond the wreckage, was recovered from the loch, and subsequently conveyed back to his home county of Surrey, where it was buried in the graveyard of Christ Church, Esher. A memorial was subsequently erected on the Loch Ness shore to his memory by the townsfolk of Glenurquhart. In 2002 the remains of the jet engine speedboat Crusader were located on the bed of Loch Ness at a depth of and the site was designated as a scheduled monument in 2005. The wreck was filmed by a research team from National Geographic in