TWO KILLED IN ’PLANE CRASH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18961, 7 January 1930, Page 9

TWO KILLED IN ’PLANE CRASH.

NEW ZEALANDER AND WIFE ARE VICTIMS.

(Special to the “Star.”) WELLINGTON, January 7. A crash in Texas a few days ago brought about the death of Robert Hector Gray, a former New Zealand war pilot, and a native of Wellington. His wife was also killed in the same accident.

No details of the tragedy are available at present, and the only intimation which relatives in Wellington had was a cablegram informing them that both husband and wife had been killed as the result of a crash at Amarillo on December 30.

Gray, who was educated at the Wellington South School, was thirty-eight years of age, his home- being in Britomart Street, Berhampore. Prior to the war he was employed by Joseph Nathan and Co., and, leaving there, went to Auckland, where he enrolled Walsh Brothers’ Flying School at Kohimarama, where he qualified as a pilot and left for the front. As a member of the Royal Air Force Gray was a fighting pilot in No. 74 Squadron, which was famed for its success, and whose leader was Major Keith Caldwell, D.F.C., of Auckland. Engine trouble while engaged upon patrol some miles behind the German lines towards the end of the war necessitated his spending the last few months in a German prison camp. After the Armistice he returned to New Zealand, which he left again in 1922 to enter civil aviation in America. At the time of his death he was assistant manager of the Texas Air Transport Company, which carries aerial mails between Dallas, Galveston, and San Antonio. On June 19 last his mother and sister Phyllis went to visit him. After their arrival in San Francisco he met them by aeroplane and took them to his home about 1000 miles distant. ITis mother and sister were to have left on their return to the Dominion on February 5. Deceased was married while in America, and had one small son.