ForeverMissed
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This memorial website was created in memory of our loved one, Earl Lane, 69 years old, born on July 22, 1920, and passed away on June 27, 1990. We will remember him forever.
June 27, 2020
June 27, 2020
Remembering my Uncle Earl R. Lane today.  His death was just two days after my late husband. Thinking of you today with much love, and admiration.
May 16, 2020
May 16, 2020
Today is Saturday, May 16, 2020. I reactivated Uncle Earl's memorial page. There have been so many deaths among the remaining Tuskegee Airmen since I last activated this memorial, if anyone has any information, please don't hesitate to leave messages.
November 12, 2013
November 12, 2013
Remembering you today on Veterans Day, and the service you and the other members of the "Red Tails" who gave so much to the service of our Country.
July 22, 2013
July 22, 2013
Today would have been your 93rd birthday. Today, Leslie would have been calling you and probably surprising you with a visit there in Cleveland. Remembering and never forgetting you, love from all your family.
June 27, 2013
June 27, 2013
Today is the 23rd anniversary of your passing. Remembering you, and honoring the service you made to our Country. "Eternal rest grant him Oh Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him."
February 2, 2013
February 2, 2013
I want to honor Earl Lane in a book I'm writing now and would like to hear from anyone who'd like to help.

Bob Dorr (robert.f.dorr@cox.net, (703) 264-8950)
November 19, 2012
November 19, 2012
Today would have been Aunt Dorothy's birthday, also I would be celebrating my 25th wedding anniversary. I'm thinking of her today and my late husband. Remembering you and Leslie also.
November 11, 2012
November 11, 2012
Today we honor all you veterans. I added several new pictures to your memorial page, wish you were here so you could tell me about them. Wish Leslie were here also.
November 9, 2012
November 9, 2012
Today I added the names of four Airmen who have recently passed. Lt. Col. Luke J. Weathers, age 90, October 15, 1912; George Hickman; Lt. Col. Herbert Carter, age 95; and Brew Hickman, age 97. Mr. Hickman received the Congressional Gold Medal several years after the other airmen ~ his wife was instrumental in him finally getting his medal.
July 22, 2012
July 22, 2012
Although I never met you, I heard so many great things about you. Thank you for all that you did for our country. I know that you are truly missed.
June 27, 2012
June 27, 2012
Today is the 22nd anniversary of your passing. I remember it like it was yesterday, because I had spoken to Leslie on the 25th to tell her that my husband had passed and she said she would be at the funeral. However, two days later, June 27th, she called me back to say that you had just passed. Rest in peace Uncle Earl. You will be forever in my heart.
May 25, 2012
May 25, 2012
Remembering you on Memorial Day, and everyday and to say thank-you Uncle Earl for your service to our Country, and to OUR people. Thank-you also to all the Tuskegee Airmen.
February 14, 2012
February 14, 2012
Wish I could have spent more time with you. As a retired army officer
we share much in common. I think of leslie often and when I do , you are always on my mind. Thanks so much for your service to our country.

Lt.Col.Robert J. Booth (USA Retired)
January 28, 2012
January 28, 2012
The saying, "youth is wasted on the young," is so true. I'm sorry I missed all the opportunities we could have had talking about your experiences during the war. Young people just take it for granted that our loved ones will be with us forever. All I can say is that you exemplified the term "an officer and a gentleman," as well as wonderful father to Leslie, and uncle to me. Miss U!!

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Recent Tributes
June 27, 2020
June 27, 2020
Remembering my Uncle Earl R. Lane today.  His death was just two days after my late husband. Thinking of you today with much love, and admiration.
May 16, 2020
May 16, 2020
Today is Saturday, May 16, 2020. I reactivated Uncle Earl's memorial page. There have been so many deaths among the remaining Tuskegee Airmen since I last activated this memorial, if anyone has any information, please don't hesitate to leave messages.
November 12, 2013
November 12, 2013
Remembering you today on Veterans Day, and the service you and the other members of the "Red Tails" who gave so much to the service of our Country.
His Life

The Tuskegee Airmen on BlackPast.org

May 25, 2020
The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American military aviators in the United States armed forces.  During their years of operation, 1940 to 1946, 996 pilots were trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field.  Approximately 445 were deployed overseas and 150 lost their lives during that period.  Sixty-six pilots were killed in action or accidents and 32 were captured and held as prisoners of war.

The Tuskegee Airmen served primarily in three units.  The first unit, the 99th Pursuit Squadron, was activated at Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois on March 19, 1941, nine months before the United States officially entered World War II.  They transferred to Tuskegee, Alabama in June, 1941 where they received pilot training.  At that time the unit had 47 white officers and 429 enlisted men. By mid-1942 nearly 3,000 white and black personnel were stationed at Tuskegee Army Air Field.  The African American personnel were placed under the command of Captain Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. one of only two black line officers then serving in the U.S. Army.  Davis reported to Major James Ellison, the commander of the 99th Fighter Squadron.

In April 1943, the 99th was deemed ready for combat and was transferred to North Africa where it was assigned to the 33rd Fighter Group.  There it first saw action and on May 30, 1943 the squadron attacked the small island of Pantelleria in the Mediterranean Sea to clear sea lanes for the Allied invasion of Sicily scheduled for July. The air strikes led the Italian population on the island to surrender to Allied forces on June 11.   The 99th moved on to Sicily where it continued to fly combat missions.

A third group of Tuskegee Airmen were trained in the U.S. to operate B-25 bombers.  Although they were organized as the 477th Bombardment Group in 1943, they did not complete their training in time to see overseas combat.

The Tuskegee Airmen flew 15,533 combat sorties on 1,578 missions during World War II. Fifty-five airmen were credited with destroying 112 German aircraft in the air.  Three Airmen, First Lieutenant Roscoe Brown, First Lieutenant Earl R. Lane, and Second Lieutenant Charles V. Brantley shot down three Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighers over Berlin on March 24, 1945.  Three airmen, Captain Edward Toppins, Captain Joseph Elsberry, and First Lieutenant Lee Archer, shot down four planes during their service in Europe but no Tuskegee Airman got the coveted fifth “kill” which would have placed them in the rare “ace” category.  They and other airmen destroyed another 150 planes on the ground as well as approximately 950 railcars, trucks, and other motor vehicles.

The Airmen received three Distinguished Unit Citations. The 99th Pursuit Squadron’s first citation was awarded for its bombing and strafing of the enemy controlled airfield at Pantelleria, Italy between May 30 and June 11, 1943. The second citation was awarded to the 99th Fighter Squadron (the unit had been renamed) for successful air strikes against Monte Cassino, Italy. The 332 Fighter Group received a citation for participating in the longest bomber escort mission in World War II when American planes attacked Berlin, Germany from bases in Italy on March 24, 1945. Six weeks later on April 30, Nazi Germany surrendered ending the war in Europe.

The Tuskegee Airmen were often the subjects of incorrect claims that exaggerated or intentionally minimized their role and record in World War II aerial combat.  Yet the accomplishments of these pilots are best summarized by Dr. Daniel L. Haulman, historian of the Air Force Historical Research Agency and author of the 2011 article, “Nine Myths About the Tuskegee Airmen.".  Haulman writes: “Whoever dispenses with the myths that have come to circulate around the Tuskegee Airmen in the many decades since World War II emerges with a greater appreciation for what they actually accomplished.  If they did not demonstrate that they were far superior to the members of the six non-black fighter escort groups of the Fifteenth Air Force with which they served, they certainly demonstrated that they were not inferior to them either.  Moreover, they began at a line farther back, overcoming many more obstacles on the way to combat.”


Recent stories

What if You’d Taught Her to Fly?

November 11, 2023
I am LaTrell, Earl’s youngest living Granddaughter (that I know of), and today is Veteran’s day. You may be telling yourself, “Leslie didn’t have any kids.” We would both be right, which sometimes happens in a world where two things can be true. 

Anyways, today I flew home from Houston, Texas following a conference where I was one of two state advocates from Alabama sponsored by the CBPP to attend a SNAP policy conference. It was my first time sitting on an exit row. The attendant explained all of the implications.

I felt ill prepared. I looked around, no one else had picked up the booklet in the back of the seat. I said to myself “Fuck it, I’m not relying on my ego to save anyone if some shit goes down.” I picked up the booklet, did my due diligence, with no room for shame.

Then went to back to reading Octavia Butler to cleanse my mind of all the things the things discussed in the week prior…Acronyms after acronyms between hunger…houslessness…racism…domestic violence…So, I read about another world with no implications for me.

”Good Afternoon Passengers,” a flight attendant’s voice interjected as we floated slightly above the clouds, “today is Veteran’s day…” I zoned out, the man next to me clapped, and the wall next to me seemed to shudder slightly at a crease that seamed as though it were holding the entire operation together. I pondered on the privileged claps— a short lived sound, with no implications for the collective beyond that point. I thought of how you probably wouldn’t have been able to pilot my flight at one point in your life. I thought about a Black Air Woman’s mother, whose call I’d answered as a congressional intern. It was the only call that had ever made me cry. She spoke of the torment her daughter endured as a Black Air woman, and how she feared for her life in Texas, not abroad. 

Why were people clapping? How useless. I thought of the implications of war on hunger. The people dying in Gaza at the hands of the descendants of those you’d fought to save. I starred out over the wing, and asked myself if you’d have respected me if I clapped too…If I hadn’t picked up the booklet. I’ll never know. So, I let the dead rest and question the living narrative. 

I wrote stories about who you might be when I was younger, and now they are no longer about you, but who my mother would have been if you’d have taught HER how to fly. How would she have raised me differently? Would I have picked up that book, or would I have known the plane model number coming in? Would the shudders in the planes wall raised more caution than curiosity?

The Tuskegee airmen once shot down three German jets in a single day.

May 25, 2020
On March 24, 1944, a fleet of P-51 Mustangs led by Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, commander of the Tuskegee airmen, set out on the longest escort mission their crews would fly during World War II. The 43 fighters were there to help B-17 bombers run a gauntlet of over 1,600 miles into the heart of Hitler’s Germany and back. The bombers’ target, a massive Daimler-Benz tank factory in Berlin, was heavily defended by whatever forces the Luftwaffe could muster at that point in the war. The 25 aircraft protecting the plant included the battle-tested Fw 190 radial propeller fighters, the Me 163 “Komet” rocket-powered plane and the much more formidable Me 262, history’s first jetfighter and the forerunner of today’s modern fighters. While the American P-51s typically lagged behind the Me 163s and 262s, they could outmaneuver them at low speeds. The German planes also tended to run out of fuel more quickly than the Tuskegee airmen’s Mustangs. Making the most of their limited advantages, pilots Charles Brantley, Earl Lane and Roscoe Brown all shot down German jets over Berlin that day, earning the all-black 332nd Fighter Group a Distinguished Unit Citation.

Tuskegee Thunder

November 12, 2013

This is a picture that was drawn by the famous war artist Robert Bailey. 

March 24, 1945. 1st Lt. Earl R. Lane of the 100th Figher Group destroys a Messerschmitt-262 jet high over Germany. Also shown: the Luftwaffe were using a captured P-51 (all black) Mustang during this action.

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