Hector Bertram Gray

Hector Bertram Gray was born on 6 June 1911 in Gillingham, Kent, and joined the Royal Air Force as an aircraft apprentice at RAF Halton, later qualifying as a pilot. In November 1938, serving as a sergeant pilot with the RAF Long Range Development Flight, he was a crew member of one of three Vickers Wellesley bombers that flew non-stop from Ismailia in Egypt to Darwin, Australia, setting a world distance record, and for his part he was awarded the Air Force Medal. By the time of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in December 1941 he was a Flight Lieutenant, and he was taken prisoner when the colony fell; while in captivity he became associated with the British Army Aid Group, smuggling medicine into the prisoner-of-war camp and acting as a channel for news from the outside world. When the Japanese became suspicious, Gray was interrogated and tortured over roughly six months but refused to betray the names of his fellow officers. He was executed by firing squad on 18 December 1943, aged 32, and is buried in Stanley Military Cemetery on Hong Kong Island. His conspicuous gallantry was recognised by the posthumous award of the George Cross, announced in the London Gazette in April 1946.