Ross Gregory Killed in RAF Wellington Crash — Bengal, June 1942

Born in Melbourne in 1916, Gregory played for Victoria from 1935 and broke into the Test side at 21 during the 1936-37 Ashes. His top score of 80 at Melbourne in February 1937 came in a partnership with Bradman that helped Australia recover from 0/3 to win the Test. He was already a Sheffield Shield captaincy candidate when he enlisted.

By mid-1942 the Japanese advance through Burma had brought RAF and Commonwealth bomber squadrons forward to Bengal and Assam to interdict supply lines. 215 Squadron, equipped with Wellingtons, was operating from forward fields and conducting both bombing and reconnaissance missions over Burmese targets in extremely difficult monsoon weather.

Gregory had enlisted in the RAAF in 1940 and trained as an observer (navigator/bomb aimer). By June 1942 he was attached to RAF 215 Squadron, then operating Vickers Wellingtons out of bases in north-east India and Bengal against Japanese targets in Burma.

On 10 June 1942 his aircraft exploded in mid-air near the village of Gafargaon, in the Mymensingh district of what was then Bengal Province (now Bangladesh, roughly 50 km from the Assam border). All six members of the crew — four Australians, including the two pilots, and two RAF personnel — were killed. The cause was never definitively established; most accounts suggest a fuel-related fire.

Gregory was 26. His Test record was small but startling: 23, 50 and 80 in his three innings against England in the 1936-37 Ashes, all before he turned 22. Bradman had said publicly that Gregory was the most likely batsman of his generation to take Australian middle-order batting forward into the 1940s.

He is buried at Maynamati War Cemetery in Bangladesh, alongside his crewmates. His name is on the Lord's Roll of Honour and on the AIF memorial at the MCG.

“A batsman whose loss Australia could ill afford.”

“If anyone can take over from Bradman in the middle order, it will be young Gregory.”

News reached Melbourne in mid-June 1942. The Australian Cricket Board and Victoria CA issued joint tributes. Bradman, then in the Royal Australian Air Force himself but invalided out for back trouble, wrote privately to Gregory's mother. Wisden's 1943 obituary called Gregory 'a batsman whose loss Australia could ill afford'.