Knott, Raymond – Plane crashed into American lake

Raymond Laurence Knott (1925 – 1944)

BORN at Walton Gardens, Grantham, and educated at Grantham King’s School, Sub-lieutenant Raymond Knott died during a training flight in the USA during the Second World War.

He was a member of the Grantham ATC – one of the first in the country – and gained a first-class cadet star.

He was keen on sport and in 1941 became an apprentice electrician at Aveling-Barford.

The following year, he volunteered for the Fleet Air Arm.

After training in the UK he sailed to Canada for further training, then to the USA to complete it.

But in May 1944, he was flying one of two Vought Corsairs fighters of 732 Sqn FAA, a British training unit based in Brunswick NAS,  which collided in the air during low level flying over Sebago Lake near Raymond, Maine.

Both pilots were killed, the other pilot being Sub Lt Vaughan Reginald Gill. They are commemorated on Lee-on-Solent Memorial.

The aircraft are on the bottom of the lake at a depth of 325 feet and the pilots have remained entombed in them since.

Lee-on-the-Solent, Hampshire, was chosen as the site for the  Memorial to the men of that service who died during the Second World War and who have no known grave.