Reginald "Rusty" Kierath (20 February 1915 – 29 March 1944) was an Australian Handley Page Hampden bomber pilot who was taken prisoner during the Second World War.

Kierath was a good sportsman and also achieved reasonable academic results sufficient to gain a position with the Bank of Australasia.

He was checked out by the German medical team to ensure that he was unhurt before being placed in a temporary prisoner compound in Tunis and later shipped to Sicily for onward transit to Germany.

[6] He was eventually put into prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III in the province of Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan (now Żagań in Poland).

[8] In prison camp he established himself as a "hide specialist" constructing small hide-aways in the accommodation blocks to permit forged papers and other escape essentials to be hidden from the German search teams.

He was in the first group of "walkers" who followed, they were led by Williy Williams and posed as a band of lumber mill workers on leave and included Canadian Jim Wernham and Poles Tony Kiewnarski and Kaz Pawluk.

[11][12][13] The four airmen were handed over to the Gestapo at 4 am on 29 March 1944 believing that they were to be returned to prison camp by road but near Jelenia Góra then called Hirschberg they were shot.

[24][25] On 25 March 2012, the Czech Republic held a ceremony honouring these men and unveiling a plaque in their memory in the city of Most (formerly Brüx) where they were murdered.