Arthur Reginald Evans, DSC (14 May 1905 – 31 January 1989) was an Australian coastwatcher in the Pacific Ocean theatre in World War II.

He is chiefly remembered for having played a significant part in the rescue of future US President John F. Kennedy and his surviving crew after their motor torpedo boat, PT-109, was sunk by the Japanese in August 1943.

[1] Interested in being a sailor, after high school, he was rejected for a cadetship at the naval college in Jervis Bay, so joined as a senior cadet in the local militia instead, eventually becoming a second lieutenant.

[1] He then covertly manned an observation post atop Mount Veve volcano on Kolombangara, a small circular volcanic island, with the aid of local Melanesian guides.

[1] In the moonless early hours of 2 August 1943, as Evans was planning to leave for Gomu, he spotted the explosion of John F. Kennedy's boat PT-109, although he did not realise at the time it was an Allied loss.

At 9:30 am he received and decoded the Playfair-encrypted message, "PT Boat 109 lost in action in Blackett Strait two miles SW Meresu Cove.

Evans dispatched one of his five teams of Solomon Islander scouts, Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, in dugout canoes to locate the crew.

I strongly advise you return immediately to here in this canoe and by the time you arrive here I will be in radio communication with authorities at Rendova and we can finalise plans to collect balance your party.

[7][8] With Kennedy aboard, PT-157 rescued the other crew members on Olasana Island in the early morning of 8 August, after dispatching rowing boats to pick them up.

[9] Searches for him eventually narrowed the possible candidates, and his identity was confirmed after a congratulatory card he sent for the 1961 presidential inauguration was matched by a handwriting expert to the letter.

He was featured in a 2002 National Geographic special, The Search for Kennedy's PT 109 and the 2010 Patrick Lindsay book, The Coast Watchers, Behind Enemy Lines: The Men Who Saved the Pacific.

Evans met Getrude Slaney Poole, an amateur actor from Adelaide, who was working in the Solomons in the late 1930s as a secretary to a female lawyer.