Hope for end to riddle of pilot killed in war

HE was just 21 when his Spitfire was shot down in Brittany a few weeks after D-Day.

The family of former George Watson's pupil Russell Lyon never had the comfort of knowing his final resting place.

But now, 63 years after the crash, French aviation enthusiasts may have solved the mystery.

Researchers have contacted Mr Lyon's surviving family in Cambridgeshire after finding wreckage in a field in France and using serial numbers to track down the pilot.

They then discovered an unmarked grave in Lorient, where an officer was buried two days after Mr Lyon's plane went down. His nephew Richard Lyon who, along with his two brothers are Mr Lyon's only living relatives, now hopes finally to put a name on the gravestone.

Richard said: "It has been very emotional, especially on Remembrance Sunday. I was contacted by some French enthusiasts who had found the plane.

"They told me they might have found his grave in a war cemetery. Now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is holding an inquiry to find out if it is his body. We are hoping it will tell us that is where he was buried, but they do not exhume bodies for DNA testing, so they have a difficult task.

"However, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence which points to his body having been buried there just days after he was shot down."

Ernest Russell Lyon was born and raised in Colinton, and joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve when he was 18-years-old.

He was a flying instructor during the early part of the war, in the US and Canada. He then joined 234 Squadron and flew in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, but lost his life at the controls of his Spitfire in late July 1944.

Richard, who works as an architect and lives in Cambridgeshire, added: "From what we know he was desperate to get into the war and volunteered to go back to England to fly.

"Now we wait for a decision from the inquiry which may take several months. Maybe then we can finally lay my uncle to rest."

Farmer Joseph Le Corroller witnessed the crash on July 27, 1944, when he saw the pilot thrown from his plane.

He said: "There were several planes. They initially fired with the machine gun at the submarine base, and while coming from the sea towards the airport the plane went up and then fell. The propeller and the engine were on the ground on fire. The plane was broken up.

"The pilot was seven or eight metres from the plane. He was injured but his arms still moved. I saw his face. The Germans arrived quickly and told me to leave."

The farmer has since been unable to identify Mr Lyon from a photograph. The body lies in a cemetery near the former Luftwaffe airfield and the register records the burial of an Englishman on July 29, 1944.