The story of the only unofficial ‘submariner’ to lose his life in a British boat during the war has been revealed by staff at the RN Submarine Museum in Gosport – although the full details will probably never be known.

War correspondent Bernard Gray was working in Malta in 1942, and is believed to have by-passed official channels in order to join the submarine HMS Urge on a patrol from the beleaguered island in the April of that year.

It is thought Bernard used his contacts to get a first-hand view of the war in the Mediterranean, and it would probably have passed relatively unnoticed were it not for the fact that the patrol turned out to be Urge’s last.

The ill-fated U-class boat was attacked, probably by Italian aircraft, and lost with all hands, and there is no record of Bernard in any official documents – it is thought his name may have been purged from the records.

The loss of the submarine was not made public for some time in order to spare the British population more bad news, and to avoid the sinking being used by the Axis forces as a propaganda coup.

It was only as a result of patient and discreet inquiries by his family’s lawyers and Naval authorities on Malta that his likely fate was discovered, and it was concluded – though without any firm documentary evidence – that the correspondent, a veteran of Dunkirk and the North African campaign, had sailed with Urge.

And it was when the family recently contacted the Submarine Museum that Gray’s fatal decision to make a sortie with the Silent Service came to light, more than 60 years after his probable death.

Submarine Museum archivist George Malcolmson said correspondents were known to have gone on missions with submarines, but had usually gone through the official procedures, which made Bernard’s death almost certainly unique.

“We were surprised because we thought we had the definitive list of men lost in submarines, and there is no mention of Bernard Gray,” said Mr Malcolmson.

“There is nothing on him in our files on HMS Urge, and to the best of our knowledge he is the only non-submariner lost at sea during World War II.”