Name
Laurence Raymond (Larry) Allen
Conflict
Second World War
Date of Death / Age
25/01/1944
24
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Flying Officer
123094
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
181 Sqdn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
RUNNYMEDE MEMORIAL
Panel 204.
United Kingdom
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin Boys’ Grammar School Memorial (WW2), Henlow Village Memorial
Biography
He attended the Hitchin Grammar School from 1931 - 1938. At school he captained the football, hockey and cricket elevens, skippered Pierson House, edited the school magazine and had been awarded the prize for public spirit. His name also appears in a book of linocuts produced by the school. He had a wide circle of friends and a loveable charm that was combined with a considerable capacity for hard work. He left to continue his studies at King's College in London and was later evacuated to Bristol. A very large framed man, he drove a motorcycle combination and later a Hillman saloon car. He also played cricket for Henlow village.
At the outbreak of war he joined the Devonshire Regiment but was soon transferred to the R.A.F. with the Service Number 123094. As a cadet he went to the southern part of the United States of America to receive training. When he returned to Great Britain he was commissioned and flew Typhoon 1B fighter-bombers. In the summer of 1943 it was reported that he was on fighters and stationed somewhere on the east coast of Britain.
He operated for many months over enemy territory, especially France and the Low Countries. On the morning of the 25th January 1944, whilst flying a Typhoon lB JP968’Y’ with 181 Squadron based at Merston near Portsmouth, he was escorting bombers attacking a V-1 (Flying Bomb) storage, manufacturing or launch site over France amid heavy flak. He failed to return from this raid and later his Squadron Leader wrote that he had last been seen spinning into a snow squall at the tail end of the Squadron. As it was weather and not enemy fire that forced him down, there was an initial hope that he had become a prisoner of war. He was subsequently declared missing presumed killed, but his body was not recovered and may still be in the aircraft at the bottom of the sea somewhere off the French coast. He is remembered on Panel 204 of the Runnymede R.A.F. Memorial to the Missing at Egham in Surrey.
His parents, Frank Duncan and Ethel Alfritha Allen, lived at ‘Glenister’, Clifton Rd, Henlow in Bedfordshire.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, Rev. B.O. Allen - his brother, Mr F.J. Parker - school contemporary, Hitchin Grammar School Chronicle, Herts & Beds Express dated 28th Oct 194, ‘R.A.F. Squadrons’ by C.G. Jefford, ‘Fighter Command Losses - Vol. 3’ by N.L.R. Franks
