Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

One of five brothers who served in WWII, Flying Officer Lionel Stephen Percival Tanner (Service No:4000844) enlisted in the RAAF on 9 November 1940 at No 1 Recruiting Centre Melbourne as an Aircraftman II - mustered as Air Crew. LAC Tanner (Service Police) served at RAAF Station Sembawang Singapore (30 December 1941 - 21 March 1942) and in the UK (30 November 1942 - 15 April 1946). Appointed to a commission on 28 December 1944, Flying Officer Tanner was attached to Overseas HQ at Discharge on 6 August 1946.

Jock was born in 1914 near Albany, Western Australia, second of six children of Clarence Stephen Tanner (b1885 at Lara via Geelong, Victoria) and Edith Amelia Chapman (b1891 in Albany, Western Australia). Clarence (a Farmer) and Edith married in 1912 in Albany, where they settled and raised their family and Clarence was a Farmer. In 1926 the family moved to Coburg in Melbourne, Victoria where they settled and Clarence was a Gas Company Employee. All five of their sons served in WWII and two - Clarence and Vernon - died (Clarence in France and Vernon in Bornea).

Jock worked as a Police Constable at Russell St Station in Melbourne prior to enlisting in the RAAF in 1940. Posted to the UK, he was in London in 1944 when he married his first wife Cecilia Helen McCulloch (b1917 in India) - Cecila was a Hospital Staff Nurse in Leicestershire, and in 1946 arrived in Fremantle on board the Runic. Following his Discharge in 1946, Jock and Cecilia settled in Melbourne, where Jock resumed employment as a Police Constable. Cecilia died in 1965, and in 1967 Jock remarried to Sheila May Hines (nee Slater; b1920 in Ballarat, Victoria). Jock and Sheila settled in Melbourne, and Jock left the Police Force in the early 1970s, then working as a Survey Officer until retirement. Jock died in 2007 and Sheila in 2010.