Lionel Crabb

Lieutenant-Commander Lionel Kenneth Phillip Crabb, (28 January 1909 – presumed dead 19 April 1956), known as Buster Crabb, was a Royal Navy frogman and diver who vanished during a reconnaissance mission for MI6 around a Soviet cruiser berthed at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1956.

Early life

Lionel Crabb was born in 1909 to Hugh Alexander Crabb and Beatrice (née Goodall) of Streatham, south-west London. They were a poor family; Hugh Crabb was a commercial traveller for a firm of photographic merchants. In his youth Crabb held many jobs but after two years training for a career at sea in the school ship HMS ''Conway'' he joined the merchant navy and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve before the Second World War.

Second World War

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Crabb was first an army gunner. Then, in 1941, he joined the Royal Navy. The next year he was sent to Gibraltar where he worked in a mine and bomb disposal unit to remove the Italian limpet mines that enemy divers had attached to the hulls of Allied ships. Initially, Crabb's job was to disarm mines that British divers removed, but eventually he decided to learn to dive.

He was one of a group of underwater clearance divers who checked for limpet mines in Gibraltar harbour during the period of Italian frogman and manned torpedo attacks by the Decima Flottiglia MAS. They dived with oxygen rebreathers, Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus, which until then had not been used much if at all for swimming down from the surface. At first they swam by breaststroke without swimfins.

On 8 December 1942, during one such attack, two of the Italian frogmen, Lieutenant Visintini and Petty Officer Magro, died, probably killed by small explosive charges thrown from harbour-defence patrol boats, a tactic said to have been introduced by Crabb. Their bodies were recovered, and their swimfins and Scuba sets were taken and from then on used by Sydney Knowles and Crabb.

Awards

Crabb was awarded the George Medal for his efforts and was promoted to lieutenant commander. In 1943 he became Principal Diving Officer for Northern Italy, and was assigned to clear mines in the ports of Livorno and Venice; he was later created an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for these services. He was also an investigating diver in the suspicious death of General Sikorski of the Polish Army, whose B-24 Liberator aircraft crashed near Gibraltar in 1943.

By this time, he had gained the nickname "Buster", after the American actor and swimmer Buster Crabbe. After the war, Crabb was stationed in Palestine and led an underwater explosives disposal team that removed mines placed by Jewish divers from the Palyam, the maritime force of the Palmach elite Jewish fighting force during the years of Mandatory Palestine. After 1947, he was demobilised from the military.

Civilian diver

Crabb moved to a civilian job and used his diving skills to explore the wreck of a Spanish galleon from the 1588 Armada, off Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. He then located a suitable site for a discharge pipe for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston. He later returned to work for the Royal Navy. He twice dived to investigate sunken Royal Navy submarines — in January 1950 and in 1951 — to find out whether there were any survivors. Both efforts proved fruitless. In 1952, Crabb married Margaret Elaine Player, the daughter of Henry Charles Brackenbury Williamson and the former wife of Ernest Albert Player. The couple separated in 1953 and divorced about two years later.

In 1955, Crabb took frogman Sydney Knowles with him to investigate the hull of a Soviet ''Sverdlov''-class cruiser to evaluate its superior manoeuvrability. According to Knowles, they found a circular opening at the ship's bow and inside it a large propeller that could be directed to give thrust to the bow. That same year, in March, Crabb was made to retire due to his age, but a year later he was recruited by MI6. By that time, Crabb's heavy drinking and smoking had taken its toll on his health, and he was not the diver that he had been in World War II.

Crabb Affair

Disappearance

MI6 recruited Crabb in 1956 to investigate the Soviet cruiser '' Ordzhonikidze'' that had taken head of state Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin on a diplomatic mission to Britain. According to Peter Wright in his book ''Spycatcher'' (1987), Crabb was sent to investigate ''Ordzhonikidze''s propeller, a new design that Naval Intelligence wanted to examine. On 19 April 1956, Crabb dived into Portsmouth Harbour and his MI6 controller never saw him again. Years later, a Russian who had been on board ''Ordzhonikidze'' claimed that the Soviets were expecting him that night (after being tipped off about the British operation by a mole) and that he dived into the dark and dirty waters beneath the ''Ordzhonikidze'', hunted down Crabb, and slit his air hose and his throat with a knife. Crabb's companion in the Sally Port Hotel took all his belongings and even the page of the hotel register on which they had written their names. Ten days later British newspapers published stories about Crabb's disappearance in an underwater mission.

MI6 tried to cover up this espionage mission. On 29 April, under instructions from Rear Admiral John Inglis, the Director of Naval Intelligence, the Admiralty announced that Crabb had vanished when he had taken part in trials of secret underwater apparatus in Stokes Bay on the Solent. The Soviets answered by releasing a statement stating that the crew of ''Ordzhonikidze'' had seen a frogman near the cruiser on 19 April.

It was reported by Radio Moscow that the Kremlin had sent an official note to the United Kingdom concerning what ''Pravda'' described as “shameful espionage”. The Foreign Office reportedly replied: “Commander Crabb carried out frogman tests, and, as is assumed, lost his life during these tests. His presence in the vicinity of the destroyers occurred without any permission whatever, and Her Majesty’s Government express their regret at the incident.”

British newspapers speculated that the Soviets had captured Crabb and taken him to the Soviet Union. The British Prime Minister Anthony Eden disapproved of the fact that MI6 had operated without his consent in the UK (the preserve of the Security Service, "MI5"). It is mistakenly claimed that Eden forced director-general John Sinclair to resign following the incident. He had determined to replace Sinclair with MI5 director-general Dick White before the incident. The Prime Minister told the House of Commons it was not in the public interest to disclose the circumstances in which Crabb was presumed to have met his end.

Body found

A little less than 14 months after Crabb's disappearance, on 9 June 1957, a body in a diving suit was brought to the surface in their net by two fishermen off Pilsey Island in Chichester Harbour. The body was brought to shore in a landing craftA Second World War Assault Landing Craft, ALC148 operated by members of RAF Marine Craft Unit No. 1107.

It was missing its head and both hands, which made it impossible to identify (using then-available technology). According to British diving expert Rob Hoole, the body had the same height as Crabb, the same body-hair colour, and was dressed in the same clothes, Pirelli two-piece diving suit and Admiralty Pattern swim fins that Crabb was wearing when he embarked on his final mission. Hoole wrote that given the length of time that Crabb's body had been in the water, there was "nothing sinister" about the missing head and hands. Crabb's ex-wife was not sure enough to identify the body, nor was Crabb's girlfriend, Pat Rose. Sydney Knowles was requested to identify the body shortly after its discovery. He described the body as being clad in a faded green rubber frogman suit of a type issued to Royal Navy divers, and the remains of a white sweater. The suit had been cut open from the neck to the groin and along both legs, revealing very dark pubic hair. Knowles examined the body closely, looking for a Y-shaped scar behind the left knee and a prominent scar on the left thigh. He failed to find any scars on the body and stated that it was not Crabb.

A pathologist, Dr. D. P. King, examined the body and stated in a short report for the inquest that a careful examination of the body failed to reveal any scars or marks of identification.

Inquest

The inquest was opened on 11 June 1957 by Bridgman, who had received the pathologist's report that there was no way of establishing identity. As neither Knowles nor Crabb's ex-wife nor a Lieutenant McLanahan, a Royal Navy torpedo officer from HMS ''Vernon'', had been able to identify the body, Bridgman adjourned the inquest until 26 June to allow time for identification.

The inquest was resumed on 26 June. The pathologist, King, gave evidence that he had returned to the mortuary and re-examined the body on 14 June. He reported that he had found a scar in the shape of an inverted Y on the left side of the left knee, and a scar on the left thigh, about the size of a sixpenny coin. King stated that the scar had been photographed whilst he was present.

Fate

As information was declassified under the 50-year rule, new facts on Crabb's disappearance came to light. On 27 October 2006, the National Archives released papers relating to the fatal ''Ordzhonikidze'' mission. Sydney Knowles, a former diving partner of Crabb's, stated in a televised interview on '' Inside Out – South'' on 19 January 2007 that Crabb did not dive alone on his fatal last mission: "He told me they'd given him a buddy diver." Furthermore, papers released under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that there were other divers investigating ''Ordzhonikidze'' while the ship was in Portsmouth Harbour. On 9 November 2007, ''The Independent'' reported how the government had covered up the death of 'Buster' Crabb.

The cruiser ''Ordzhonikidze'' was transferred by the Soviet government to Indonesia in 1962, where it operated as KRI ''Irian''. The ship operated in the conflict against the Netherlands over West Papua, and was later used as a floating detention centre for suspected communists during the Indonesian killings of 1965–1966. The cruiser was scrapped in 1971.

In a 1968 retrospective on the affair ''Time'' reported that a skull thought by some to be Crabb’s was found in early March 1967 on a beach near Portsmouth.

Theories and speculations

Died during Soviet interrogation

After he was released from prison, the spy Harry Houghton wrote a book called ''Operation Portland'' in which he claimed that, in July 1956, his Russian handler, a man he knew as Roman, had told him how Crabb had died. Houghton said that, shortly before the Soviet visit, he had been meeting Roman in a pub in Puncknowle, Dorset, and happened to see a friend who worked at the Underwater Detection Establishment with her boyfriend, who was a diver. The boyfriend was annoyed that he had been training for something special, which had just been called off. Shortly after hearing that, Roman had cut short the meeting.

According to Houghton's account, after assessing that divers might be planning some activity relating to ''Ordzhonikidze'', the Soviet Navy arranged for six underwater sentries to watch the bottom of the ship, which had been fitted with wire jack-stays on either side to help them hold on. When Crabb arrived, a struggle ensued in which Crabb's air supply was turned off and he passed out. He was then hauled on board and taken to the sick bay, having passed out a second time, where he was given medical treatment.

When Crabb had recovered sufficiently, the Soviets began to interrogate him. He was making a confession when he collapsed and did not recover. Aware that they might be accused of causing his death, the Soviets decided to fix his body lightly to the bottom of the ship so that it came loose once the ship was under way. However, the body tangled in something underwater, which meant it was not discovered for fourteen months. Houghton advanced the theory that Crabb's mission was to plant a small limpet mine on ''Ordzhonikidze'', the purpose of which was to detect whether the Soviet Navy was using the latest sonar technology. If it was, the mine would detonate and the ship would slow down; if not, the mine would eventually detach and fall to the bottom of the sea.

Killed by the Soviets

In a 1990 interview, Joseph Zwerkin, a former member of Soviet Naval intelligence, who had moved to Israel after the breakup of the Soviet Union, claimed that the Soviets had noticed Crabb in the water and that a Soviet sniper had shot him.

On 16 November 2007, the BBC
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