On Aug. 20, 1943, three years after graduating from high school in California, Army Air Corps Lt. Roane Thorpe Sias was flying a P-38 Lightning fighter providing cover for B-26 bombers near Naples, Italy, when a Messerschmitt 109 swooped in with machine guns blazing.

The 20-year-old Sias, flying in a back position called “Tail-End Charlie” in a formation of four, drew fire almost immediately and bailed out after flames roared through the cockpit floorboards. Bloody and badly burned, he was barely able to pull the ripcord.

As an epic air battle raged above, claiming four more P-38s, the wounded 94th Fighter Squadron flyer landed in an orchard where he was tended by peasants, taken by Italian soldiers to a prisoner of war hospital and later turned over to German troops. It was the beginning of a harrowing seven-month ordeal in which he escaped from Nazi captors twice before making it back to Allied lines.

Mr. Sias earned a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and acclaim as a hero during World War II, died at home in Greenbrae, Calif., May 12. He was 92.

Two weeks after his plane went down, his father, Donald, got a dreaded Western Union telegram from the War Department: “I regret to inform you, your son ... is missing in action.”

The next year, after he emerged alive, Mr. Sias was hailed as a Marin County war hero, becoming a celebrity who was enlisted to sell war bonds to audiences at local forums.

“Mill Valley ‘Fox’ Escapes,” the San Francisco Call Bulletin reported on March 30, 1944. “Roane Sias Escapes German Prison Camp,” the San Rafael Independent said. “Outwits Hitler’s Men,” a caption noted. Marin County’s hero, a rebellious prankster as a teenager, was “Mill Valley’s ‘Wild Kid’ of Yesterday,” the San Francisco Chronicle observed.

“It wasn’t a jinx,” Mr. Sias told reporters about being shot down on his 13th mission for the 94th Fighter Squadron, famed as the “Hat in the Ring Gang” of World War I. “It was just too many Jerris.”

In later life, Mr. Sias rarely talked about the war, although he sat down with a military historian for detailed interviews that resulted in a riveting 2007 account of his exploits called “Double Escape.”

His first escape came shortly after Italy capitulated on Sept. 8, 1943. He and other prisoners were transferred by German troops to a cargo train and crammed into freight cars destined for POW camps in Germany. Mr. Sias and a medic were able to remove barbed wire binding a door shut and jumped from the train in a downpour at night. He was on the run for almost two months, helped by farmers and linking up with other escapees, before getting recaptured by German soldiers south of Avezzano.

Four or five days later, while standing at the end of a line of prisoners waiting at a Nazi transient camp to be deloused, he stepped behind a pillar as the line advanced. A door slammed shut and he was left behind. He grabbed a long pole from a scrap pile and pretended to be part of a work crew, then used the pole to scale a wall. He walked slowly into a vineyard, where he stopped from vine to vine as if caring for the plants, then broke into a run when he reached a nearby forest.

For the next three months, he was sheltered by families including the clan of a village mayor, and lived for a while in a cave and a parish rectory before making it to safety at a British 8th Army outpost.

After the war, he returned to the air as a jet pilot instructor, flying out of Hamilton Air Force Base for a time, then launched a career in sales. He became a trust officer for the Bank of California as well as Whittier Trust in San Francisco.

Mr. Sias was an Eagle Scout and an athlete who set a Northern California backstroke record at Tamalpais High that stood for decades. He earned a business degree at University of Washington.

He married Charlotte Sherman of Mill Valley, a union that lasted 49 years until her death in 1996, and then married Clare Wheeler.

To help put his three children through college, Mr. Sias started a Christmas tree farm, partnering with pal Tony Brazil to plant seedlings on the ridge west of Muir Woods, then part of the Brazil dairy ranch. But they never harvested a tree after the ranch was sold to the state, and years later, the towering stands of trees that had become a scenic spot for hikers were cut down to rid the area of a non-native species.

Mr. Sias was an unabashed patriot whose devotion to the red, white and blue knew few bounds, especially on the Fourth of July, when he celebrated by firing his .45 service revolver into the air, shouting, “Strike a blow for liberty!”

Mrs. Sias, who lived in San Anselmo for many years, served as a board member of Sunny Hills as well as the San Francisco Botanical Gardens, and was a big supporter of the Ecumenical Association for Housing in the Ross Valley, and the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, according to his son, Spencer.

He is survived by his wife, Clare Wheeler of Greenbrae; a daughter, Corrie Sias of San Rafael; two sons, Spencer of San Anselmo and Ben of Portland, Oregon, and his brother, John, of Houston, former publisher and CEO of the San Francisco Chronicle. He also leaves seven grandchildren and 11 step-grandchildren.

A celebration of his life will be at 2 p.m. June 27 at the Meadow Club in Fairfax.

Donations in his memory are welcome at the Marin Agricultural Land Trust at www.malt.org.

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©2015 The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.)

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