The Airmen's Stories - F/O R Lane

Roy Lane was born in Southampton on 12th September 1919, the son of Sidney John Lane and Edith Lane (nee Lumby). He and his two brothers attended King Edward VI School there.

He joined the RAF on a short service commission in June 1938.

Lane was posted from 7 OTU Hawarden to 43 Squadron at Tangmere on 23rd July 1940. He claimed a Ju87 destroyed on 8th August.

In combat with He111s over Portsmouth on 26th August Lane was shot down in Hurricane P3220 and is believed to have crashed at Wittering, Sussex.

Wounded and badly burned, he was admitted to the West Sussex Hospital, Chichester and then went to the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, where he underwent plastic surgery by Archie Mclndoe and became a Guinea Pig.

There is an incomplete record of his marriage around this time to Katherina Anna Schwind (1917–2007), a refugee from Vienna, Austria. The record claims that they had two children.

After leaving hospital Lane was sent on a speaking tour of the aircraft factories. In 1942 he was serving with the MSFU at Speke. On 21st May he sailed from Iceland in convoy PQ16 to set up and command the MSFU Pool at Archangel. Lane returned to the UK in November 1942 in convoy QP15, as pilot on the Empire Moon.

From the beginning of 1943 Camships were no longer used on Russian convoys, having been replaced by auxiliary carriers.

Lane was posted to India in late 1943. He volunteered to go into Burma and operate with the Chindits, as air liaison officer to Brigadier Bernard Fergusson. When the Chindits reached their area of operations in Japanese occupied territory they built an airstrip and a Hurricane was flown in for Lane to use.

Flying between the airstrip and Imphal in Hurricane IIB BG913 he was forced to land near the village of Hmangin, twenty miles east of the Chindwin River, as a result of a glycol leak. He set off walking towards the British lines but was captured by the Japanese and murdered by them on or around 26th April 1944.

Lane was 24 and is buried in Taukkyan War Cemetery, Rangoon, Burma.

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His younger brother (1921) Richard John was serving as a Midshipman with the Fleet Air Arm when he was lost in Albacore L7100 on a sortie over the North Sea. He and the pilot Lt. CSH Kennaway, are commemorated on the FAA Memorial at Lee-on-Solent.

The body of the air gunner, Airman GFK Howe, was washed ashore in Germany and lies in Sage War Cemetery.

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His youngest brother (1923) Peter was killed as a F/Sgt. whilst flying in Anson I EF927 of 3(P) Advanced Flying Unit which collided with N9738 of the same unit near Halfpenny Green.

Also lost were:

F/Sgt. R Clark
Sgt. DWR Dixon
Sgt. R Twaite
Sgt. A Brown

Lane lies in Stourbridge Cemetery.

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