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Lt Gray joined the Royal Canadian Naval
Volunteer Reserve in 1940 and served as a pilot in the Royal Navy
Fleet Air Arm. He embarked in His Majesty’s Ship (HMS) Formidable
with 1841 Squadron, joining the war in the Pacific as part of
Operation Iceberg, the invasion of Okinawa, Japan, in April 1945.
Lt Gray was awarded the Victoria Cross
posthumously for courage and determination in carrying out daring
air strikes on the Japanese destroyer His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s
Ship (HIJMS) Amakusa.
On August 9, 1945, he led two flights of
Corsair aircraft to attack naval vessels in Onagawa Bay, Japan. He
opened the attack run flying straight into concentrated
anti-aircraft fire and was hit almost immediately.
With his aircraft on fire and one bomb lost, he
continued the attack and released his remaining bomb on the escort
vessel HIJMS Amakusa, causing the ship to capsize and sink. His
aircraft then crashed into the sea and his body was never recovered.
Lt Gray was the only member of the RCN to be
awarded the Victoria Cross during the Second World War.
In 1946, the Geographic Board of Canada named
Gray’s Peak, a mountain in British Columbia’s Kokanee Glacier
Provincial Park, in honour of Lt Gray and his brother John, also
killed during the war.
In 1989, a memorial was erected to him at
Onagawa Bay, the only memorial dedicated to a foreign service member
on Japanese soil. (Source: Gov't of Canada website - RCN - Harry
Dewolf Class) |
