Second World War bomber pilot

Born: April 13, 1916;

Died: April 22, 2017

WING-COMMANDER Gerald Lane, who has died aged 101, was one of the first RAF pilots to bomb Germany during the Second World War, attacking U-Boat yards in Hamburg in his Handley Page Halifax bomber on March 11, 1941, and returning safely to base despite four attacks by Luftwaffe night fighters.

He took part in Bomber Command's first "1,000 bomber" raid which devastated Cologne and later joined in other raids on cities including Essen and eventually the capital, Berlin, his wartime actions winning him a Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC).

Although born in London, he fell in love with Scotland during his pre-war training in biplanes at RAF Prestwick and would return to spend the last half of his life in this country, in the North-East and the Perth area, where he was a leading figure in the Territorial and Auxiliary Forces Association until his dying day. He was awarded an OBE for his services in that organisation.

Gerald Arthur Lane was born in Clapham, south-west London, on April 13, 1916, at the height of the Great War, only son of Royal Navy man Arthur Lane and his wife Alice Lane. He was educated at the historic St Dunstan's College in south-east London.

Always fascinated by flying, he joined the RAF just before his 21st birthday and was sent for training to Prestwick where his chief instructor was Group Captain Duncan McIntyre, famous for being the first man to fly over Mount Everest (in a Westland aircraft) in 1933.

At Prestwick, Mr Lane trained in de Havilland Tiger Moth and Hawker Hart biplanes before being assigned to RAF 166th Squadron of Bomber Command at the new RAF Leconfield near York, where he first trained in Handley Page Heyford heavy biplane bombers and later the twin-engine Armstrong Whitworth Whitley.

He recalled that his first missions over Germany were to drop "bumf bombs" – propaganda leaflets urging the Nazis and the German people to surrender. He later carried out dangerous reconnaissance flights over the river Rhine, which would prove invaluable to the later allied advance.

After the Nazis invaded Norway in April 1940, he piloted bombing raids on Fornebu airfield near Oslo and later on Dusseldorf, surviving heavy anti-aircraft fire. When he radioed back to his base that his "pitot head" had been blown off, he was met at base by a doctor and an ambulance looking for the pilot whose head had had been blown off. In fact, the pitot head was an instrument used to tell the plane's airspeed. He had another close call during a bombing raid on Mannheim when his Whitley bomber was hit by ack-ack fire but limped back to an airfield in Suffolk with his crew intact.

In his new Halifax, his was one of seven aircraft to bomb the Nazi-occupied docks at Le Havre, Normandy on March 10, 1941. The following night, his and two other Halifax crews bombed Hamburg, the first allied air attack on Germany. It was from his base at RAF Wellesbourne near Stratford upon Avon that he took part on the first "1,000 bomber" raid on Cologne on the night of May 30, 1942, a turning point in the war. The Germans had not expected Churchill to respond like-for-like after the Luftwaffe Blitz on Glasgow, London, Coventry and other cities.

From early 1943, Wing-Commander Lane was in command of RAF 75th (New Zealand) Squadron – mostly flying the Stirling Short bomber and based at Newmarket, Suffolk – and he remains a war hero in New Zealand today. Towards the end of the war, he was sent to the US to train and advise American and Commonwealth pilots – known as the Tiger Force – for the Pacific war against Japan.

After the war, he served in Iraq – he was personally involved in flying hundreds of allied troops home from RAF Habbaniya near Baghdad – before retiring from the RAF in 1947. He was then hired as an executive with the Lancashire Aircraft Corporation near Blackburn, where he was instrumental in converting Halifax bombers to drop supplies into Berlin during the 1948/49 Berlin Airlift to beat the Soviets' ground blockade of the city.

Given his love of Scotland, he was delighted to be appointed in 1951 as Assistant Secretary to the Territorial and Auxiliary Forces Association for Aberdeen, Banff and Kincardine. Moving to the village of Woodside, outside Perth, in 1967, he was deeply involved in the restructuring of the Territorial Army, for which he was appointed OBE in 1977. He also became treasurer and later director of the Perth and Kinross Red Cross.

He officially retired in 1981, but not before he had founded a club for one of his passions – hillwalking. He called it A stoot he’rt tae a steigh brae.

Gerald Lane died at Viewlands House care home in Perth. His wife Boyce (née Smythe, whom he married in May 1939) passed away in 2001 and their son Andrew died in 1998. He is survived by his daughter-in-law Linda, granddaughters Sarah and Rebecca and grandchildren Markus, Ruth, Alexander and Peter.

PHIL DAVISON