"Outstanding and insightful accounts"

The Lost War Diaries of Roy Lane

Author: Alan Dawson

Publisher: Pen & Sword History, 2025, £25

ISBN: 9781036118280

Roy Lane had an eventful, distinguished and ultimately tragic career in the RAF. His was a family ripped to shreds by the war. One of Lane’s brothers also served in the RAF and died in a flying accident. The other brother was killed while serving in the Fleet Air Arm. Their sister served as a WAAF and survived.

Having joined the RAF on a short service commission in 1938, Roy Lane flew Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain with No 43 Squadron, The Fighting Cocks. He was shot down, badly burned and became a Guinea Pig at East Grinstead. He went on to serve with the Merchant Ship Fighter Unit and commanded the unit’s pool at Archangel.

In late 1943 he was posted to India and volunteered for service with the Chindits in a liaison role. Eventually an airstrip was built and Lane acquired a Hurricane. During a flight the aircraft developed a glycol leak and came down east of the Chindwin River. Lane was captured by the Japanese and murdered.

Now Roy Lane’s story is set to become better known through this competently written book which makes use of the subject’s vivid and insightful diaries kept, like so many others, in defiance of wartime orders. There are his letters, too. The book’s author, a Fellow (Emeritus) of Pembroke College, Cambridge, is married to a niece of Lane.

For those whose especial interest is the Battle of Britain, there are outstanding and insightful accounts of action in 1940.

Geoff Simpson