Lionel Crabb

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For the American actor, see Buster Crabbe

Lionel "Buster" Crabb OBE, GM (28 January 1909 - presumed dead 19 April 1956) was a British Royal Navy frogman who vanished during a reconnaissance mission around a Soviet cruiser in 1956.

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[edit] Early life

Lionel Crabb was born on 28 January 1909 at 4 Greyswood Street, Streatham, South West London, the son of Hugh Alexander Crabb, a commercial traveller for a firm of photographic merchants, and his wife, Beatrice Goodall. They were a poor family. Little is known about Crabby or Buster Crabb's early life save that it was modestly commercial: in his youth he held many jobs but also joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve prior to World War II.

[edit] World War II

At the outbreak of World War II, Crabb was first an army gunner and then joined the Royal Navy in England in 1941. 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 guard divers who checked for limpet mines in Gibraltar harbour during the period of Italian frogman and manned torpedo attacks. 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 1944.[1] They dived with Davis Escape Sets, which until then had not been used much if at all for swimming down from the surface. At first they swam by breast stroke without swimfins.

On 17 December 1942, during one such attack, two of the Italian frogmen (Lt.Visintini and Petty Officer Magro) died, probably killed by depth charges. Their bodies were recovered, and their swimfins were taken and from then on used by Sydney Knowles and Commander Lionel Crabb.

He was awarded The George Medal for his efforts and was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander. In 1943 he became Principal Diving Officer for Northern Italy, was assigned to clear mines in the ports of Livorno and Venice and was later created OBE for this duty. By this time he had also gained the nickname "Buster", in honour of U.S. 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 Irgun the Zionist militant group. After 1947, he was demobilized from the military.

[edit] Civilian diver

Crabb moved to a civilian job and used his diving skills to explore the wreck of a Spanish galleon and 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 — HMS Truculent in January 1950 and HMS Affray in 1951 — to find out whether there were any survivors. Neither effort was successful, however. 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 the Soviet ship Sverdlov to evaluate its greater 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. In March 1955 Crabb was made to retire due to his age.

[edit] Diving for MI6

[edit] Crabb's disappearance

In 1956 MI6 recruited Crabb to investigate the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze that had brought Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin on a diplomatic mission to Britain. According to Peter Wright in his book 'Spy Catcher', Crabb was sent to try and find more information out about the propellor that the Ordzhonikidze had - a new design that Naval Intelligence wanted to find out more about. In April 19, 1956 Crabb dived into Portsmouth Harbour and his MI6 controller never saw him again. Crabb's companion in the Sally Port Hotel took all his belongings and even the page of the hotel registry book where 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 April 29 the Admiralty announced that Crabb had vanished when he had taken part in trials of secret underwater apparatus in Stokes Bay. Soviets answered by releasing a statement stating that the crew of Ordzhonikidze had seen a frogman near the cruiser on April 19.

A former Russian diver has since claimed that he slit Crabb's throat after he saw him placing a mine on the ship he was sent to investigate.[2]

British newspapers speculated that Soviets had captured Crabb and taken him to the Soviet Union. The British Prime Minister Anthony Eden apparently disapproved of the fact that MI6 had operated without his consent in the UK (the preserve of the Security Service, "MI5"), and forced director-general John Sinclair to resign. Eden told MPs it was not in the public interest to disclose the circumstances in which the frogman met his end.[2]

[edit] Body in a British frogman suit found

A little less than 14 months later, on June 9, 1957, a body in a frogman suit was found floating off Pilsey Island. It was missing its head and both hands, which made it impossible to identify (using then-available technology). Crabb's ex-wife was not sure enough to identify the body, nor was Crabb's girlfriend Pat Rose, though Sydney Knowles said that Crabb had had a similar scar on the left knee. An inquest jury returned an open verdict but the coroner announced that he was satisfied that the body was that of Lionel Crabb.

[edit] Fate

As information was declassified under the 50-year rule new facts on Crabb's disappearance came to light.

On October 27, 2006, the National Archives released papers relating to the fatal Ordzhonikidze mission.[3] On November 9, 2007, The Independent reported how the Government covered up the death of 'Buster' Crabb.[4] Then, on 16 November 2007, the BBC reported that Eduard Koltsov, a Soviet frogman, claims to have caught Crabb placing a mine on the Ordzhonikidze hull near ammunition depot and cut his throat. Koltsov showed the dagger he allegedly used in a Russian documentary. He also showed an Order of the Red Star medal that he claimed to have been awarded for the deed.[5][2]

[edit] Theories and speculations

In the years following Crabb's disappearance, a number of theories were expounded explaining it. These ranged from the plausible to the fanciful.

[edit] A second MI6 diver?

After Crabb's disappearance there have been numerous speculations of what happened to him. Some sources have stated that another British Navy diver was in the water with Crabb on the night of April 19. He held the rank of lieutenant, was stationed at Portsmouth, and usually went home to his wife at night. On the evening that Crabb disappeared, Navy police searched for and found his wife at a restaurant where she was with friends and made her sign the Official Secrets Act. Her husband did not return for several days and had been under severe psychological pressure. She claimed he was never the same again and he died a few years later. She remarried and now lives in Australia.[citation needed]

[edit] Captured, brainwashed, defected, or a double agent

Certain Members of Parliament became concerned about Crabb's ultimate fate, and in 1961 Commander J.S. Kerans (and later in 1964 Marcus Lipton) submitted proposals to re-open the case but were rebuffed. Various people speculated that Crabb had been killed by some secret Soviet underwater weapon; that he had been captured and imprisoned in Lefortovo prison with prison number 147; that he had been brainwashed to work for the Soviet Union to train their frogman teams; that he had defected and became a Commander in the Soviet Navy under the name Lev Lvovich Korablov; that he was in the Soviet Special Task Underwater Operational Command in the Black Sea Fleet; or that MI6 had asked him to defect so he could become a double agent.

[edit] Shot in the water by a Soviet sniper

In a 1990 interview Joseph Zwerkin, an ex-member of Soviet Naval intelligence who had moved to Israel after the fall of the Soviet Union, claimed that Soviets had noticed Crabb in the water and that a Soviet sniper had shot him. Official government documents regarding Crabb's disappearance are not scheduled to be released until 2057.

[edit] Murdered by MI5

On March 26, 2006, The Mail On Sunday published an article by Tim Binding entitled Buster Crabb was murdered - by MI5. Binding wrote a fictionalised account of Crabb's life, Man Overboard, published in 2005. Binding stated that, following the publication, he was contacted by Sydney Knowles, now living in Málaga, Spain. Binding has alleged that he then met Knowles in Spain and was told that Crabb was known by MI5 to have intentions of defecting to the USSR. This would have been embarrassing for the UK — Crabb being an acknowledged war hero. Knowles has suggested that MI5 set up the mission to the Ordzhonikidze specifically to murder Crabb, and supplied Crabb with a new diving partner ordered to kill him. Binding stated that Knowles alleges that he was ordered by MI5 to identify the body found as Crabb, when he knew it was definitely not Crabb. Knowles went along with the deception. Knowles has also alleged that his life was threatened in Torremolinos in 1989, at a time when Knowles was in discussions with a biographer.

[edit] Popular culture

Crabb's time in Gibraltar is covered in the film The Silent Enemy with Laurence Harvey portraying Crabb.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ UKTV History "Infamous Assassinations", episode "General Sikorski" aired 2nd April 2008
  2. ^ a b c Nick Webster and Claire Donnelly. "Cold war spy riddle ends", Daily Mirror, 17 November 2007. Retrieved on 2007-11-17. 
  3. ^ "Details on vanished 'spy' diver", BBC, 27 October 2007. 
  4. ^ Verkaik, Robert. "Freedom Of Information: How the Government covered up the death of 'Buster' Crabb", The Independent, 9 November 2007. 
  5. ^ "Russian 'killed UK diver' in 1956", BBC, 16 November 2007. Retrieved on 2007-11-16. 

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