George Werner "Pete" Bransom was born on 8th December 1897 in Forestville, Maryland to William Skidmore Bransom and Florence Cornelia Bransom (nee King). In the 1910 census he is listed as living in Washington with his parents and four of his siblings (Robert, Alice/Alta, Florence and Henry). His brother Henry Wilton Bransom rose to Colonel in the USMC and his obituary stated that he was one of seven children so the names of two siblings are not yet known. George Bransom joined the US Marine Corps in August 1922 and served as a pilot with the VF-9M, he flew in Nicaragua during the US occupation and it is believed that he survived a flying accident when he crashed into a mountain in Nicaragua.

This photograph shows him with the wreckage of Vought VE-7 A5969 which he was the pilot after colliding on the ground with Boeing NB-2 A6778 (with its pilot Jim Knowlan) in February 1927. He later returned to the USA and became a civilian pilot flying mail planes for Eastern Air Transport. In 1930 he was appointed to a pilot salesman in the Detroit Aircraft Corporation for the New York district. He later flew small civilian passenger planes and airmail aircraft across the USA. He married Mary Hardy Burns on 23rd May 1931 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and they would have two children over the coming years; Mary Patricia (born in 1933) and Peter Ronald (born in 1942).

In the mid-1930s he became a pilot with Eastern Air Lines and the photograph shown at the top of this page shows him in their uniform. Whether he already knew his then Eastern Airlines boss Eddie Rickenbacker is not yet known but they are later recorded as being good friends. In September 1936 while working with Eastern Air Lines his fellow collegue Henry "Dick" Merrill along with Harry Richman undertook and completed the first successful double Atlantic crossing flight in a Vultee NC13770. On the return to North America the Vultee's fuel ran out and Merrill force landed Musgrave Harbour, Newfoundland. They contacted Eastern Air Lines to seek help in re-fuelling and repairing the aircraft so Bransom's Eastern Airlines boss Eddie Rickenbacker asked him to pilot a DC-2 from Boston to Newfoundland with . On board the DC-2 were Eddie Rickenbacker, chief pilot George Bransom and co-pilot Joseph John Kelley. There were also three mechanics, Earl Powell (Richman's mechanic) and John Dobbon McPhall and Jule Neuenhaus (Eastern Air Lines mechanics). The Vultee was repaired and flown back to the USA. This Rickenbacker link at Eastern Air Lines may be why there could be a link between Rickenbacker and the crash site at Coniston, Rickenbacker was in the UK just before the accident at Coniston and he and Bransom must have come into contact with each other at Prestwick when Rickenbacker arrived in the UK. This theory I detail on a seperate webpage.

After this incident in September 1936 nothing more is yet known about George Bransom until he joined the staff of the Lockheed Overseas Corporation in the "Flight Test Section" of the Inspection Division. He were posted to Langford Lodge in Northern Ireland when the unit was set up but because they had little work to do in the early stages of the unit both he and fellow LOC pilot Mr Osborne Keith were assigned to the U.S.Army to serve as Ferry Pilots. By the time the accident occurred at Coniston he had been working at Prestwick / Ayr airfields in the ferry pilot role for some weeks. Following his death at Coniston George Bransom's remains were cremated in Liverpool on 20th October 1942 and then flown back home to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery (Sec 12, Site 3675). His brother Colonel Henry Wilton Bransom is also buried in Arlington Cemetery. He was forty three years old.