Lionel Crabb

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Lionel Kenneth Phillip "Buster" Crabb , OBE , (born January 28, 1909 in London ; missing since April 19, 1956 ) was a British combat diver and naval officer who gained international fame due to the circumstances of his disappearance in the port basin of Portsmouth .

Life

Lionel Crabb came to South London as the son of Hugh Alexander Crabb and Beatrice, b. Goodall, to the world. His father, a photography supplies salesman, did not return from World War I , after which Beatrice's relative Frank Jarvis took care of the family. Nonetheless, Crabb grew up in poverty.

After a brief visit to Brighton College , he was a cadet from 1922 to 1924 on the HMS Conway , a merchant navy training ship. With the outbreak of World War II , Crabb was drafted for the military, but was transferred to the Royal Navy Voluntary Reserve and trained there in the use of explosives. In 1941 he began active service in the Navy, which included missions in Gibraltar, Italy and Palestine. He reached the rank of Lieutenant , was awarded the George Medal and was named the Order of the British Empire . Crabb's professional skills as a demolition specialist earned him respect, but he was also considered unsporting and poor fitness, which u. a. was attributed to his alcohol and nicotine use.

In 1952 Crabb married Margaret Player, but the marriage was divorced in 1955. In the same year he resigned from the Navy for reasons of age. It was difficult for Crabb to return to civilian life, at times he thought of suicide . He also suffered from financial problems.

Crabbs Disappearance

On April 17, 1956 rented Crabb and MI6 - Agent Bernard Sydney Smith in the hotel "Sally Port" in Portsmouth a room, a day before the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze , accompanied by the destroyer Smotriaschi and Sowerschenni in the port of the city dropped anchor. On board were the CPSU chairman Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin , who arrived on a state visit. Crabb made dives near the ship that same day. Shortly after sunrise on April 19, he dived again for a short period, this time under the Ordzhonikidze . After consulting Smith, he took another walk but did not return to the surface.

The Soviet delegation left again on April 29th. On the same day, the British Admiralty declared Crabb missing and presumably dead, but allegedly he was at Stokes Bay, several miles west of Portsmouth harbor, for training purposes. On May 4, the Soviet government protested at the British Foreign Office after a frogman was seen near the ship on the morning of April 19 at 7:03 a.m. This was made public through an interview with Soviet Admiral Kotov in Pravda . Prime Minister Anthony Eden said before the House of Commons , after the member John Dugdale had requested information that Crabb while at the Orshonikidse have dipped, but the mission of the government was made without the knowledge and announced disciplinary action. At the same time, however, he took the position that it was not in the public interest to clarify the circumstances. Bernard Smith withdrew from the public, the head of MI6, Sir John Alexander Sinclair, announced his resignation.

On June 9, 1957 , the body of a man in a diving suit was discovered near Pilsey Island, an island in the Chichester harbor basin . The head and hands were separated so that unequivocal identification was not possible. Neither Crabb's ex-wife nor his partner, Pat Rose, wanted to commit to the investigation. While the Frogman Sidney Knowles, a longtime acquaintance of the missing persons confirmed that it was the corpse of him, this statement but recanted publicly in 2006, when it set the pressure of the MI5 had acted. The body was laid to rest under Crabb's name in Milton Cemetery in Portsmouth. Ten years after the find, a human skull was also discovered at Chichester Harbor, but it could not be assigned with any certainty to the torso.

The files relating to the case are locked for a period of 100 years, and the guest book of the hotel where Crabb and Smith checked in was long thought to be lost. Years later, Lomond Handley, a relative of Crabbs, accused those involved of abandoning the missing person and called for the documents to be opened. In 2015, some documents were released for inspection, showing that those involved made mistakes in keeping the operation secret. However, there was no clear indication of Crabb's whereabouts.

Theories

Crabb's disappearance subsequently became the object of various theories and conjectures.

According to rumors, the British secret service killed Crabb to keep his dives on the Ordshonikidze secret or to prevent him from speaking publicly about previous operations. According to Knowles, he and Crabb are e.g. B. dipped at the port of Portsmouth in October 1955 at night, when the Soviet cruiser Sverdlov anchored there. It is also controversial that Crabb was accompanied by an employee of MI6, as this intelligence agency is exclusively responsible for foreign intelligence.

It was also speculated that Crabb had been picked up alive by Soviet frogmen and summoned to serve in the Soviet Navy, to which, despite his right-wing political stance, he had consented in order not to be executed as a spy or saboteur. Similar reports in the German press and a photo published in a Soviet military magazine that showed a Lieutenant Lev Lvovich Korabljow, who may have been the missing person, spoke in favor of this. Furthermore, sailors from the Ordzhonikidze are said to have claimed that the ship's hospital was heavily guarded on the return voyage. In this context, the accusation arose that Crabb had been a double agent from the start.

Other rumors said Crabb tried to remove a mine that may have been attached to the ship by an anti-Soviet group of exiles and perished in the process.

Soviet officers in Berlin are also said to have alleged that a strong magnetic device attached to the cruiser held Crabb in place and drowned him.

In 2007, the former Soviet frogman Eduard Kolzow went public with the claim that he killed Crabb while he was trying to attach a mine to the ship. For this he was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the honor took place in secret due to the circumstances.

Processing in literature and film

Marshall Pugh processed Crabb's life in the year of his disappearance to the non-fiction book "Frogman: Commander Crabb's Story", which provided the basis for William Fairchield's film The Silent Enemy (German film title: "Froschmann Crabb").

The disappearance of Lionel Crabb inspired British author Ian Fleming to write his James Bond novel Thunderball .

Trivia

Lionel Crabb's nickname "Buster" goes back to the American diver and actor Buster Crabbe .

Crabb was considered an eccentric who even wore his diving suit under clothing or in bed.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Rob Hoole: The Buster Crabb Enigma. In: mcdoa.org.uk. January 2007, accessed on October 22, 2019 .
  2. ↑ John Simkin: Lionel “Buster” Crabb. Spartacus Educational, September 1997, accessed October 24, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e Commander Lionel 'Buster' Crabb. In: submerged.co.uk. Retrieved October 22, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b Cold war spy riddle ends ( Memento from November 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on October 21, 2019
  5. ↑ a b Buster Crabb mystery. BBC , January 19, 2007, accessed October 22, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e 1956: Mystery of missing frogman deepens. BBC , 2008, accessed October 21, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b Crabb on the trunk . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1956, pp. 40 ( Online - May 23, 1956 ).
  8. ↑ Russian 'killed UK diver' in 1956. BBC , November 16, 2007, accessed on October 21, 2019 .
  9. ↑ a b c Dominic Blake: Secret spy diver report revealed. BBC , June 12, 2006, accessed October 21, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Details on vanished 'spy' diver. BBC , October 27, 2006, accessed October 21, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Frogman files show blunders surrounding Cdr 'Buster' Crabb's death. BBC , November 23, 2015, accessed October 21, 2019 .
  12. ↑ https://www.sis.gov.uk/ , accessed October 24, 2019.
  13. ^ The Crabb Affair. In: vicsocotra.com. September 25, 2007, accessed October 22, 2019 .
  14. ^ Richard Alleyne: I killed 'Buster' Crabb, says Russian diver. The Telegraph , November 17, 2007, accessed October 23, 2019 .
  15. ^ Frogman: Commander Crabb's story. Goodreads, accessed October 23, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Froschmann Crabb in the Internet Movie Database , accessed on October 23, 2019
  17. ↑ Tijana Radeska: The mysterious disappearance of Lionel "Buster" Crabb inspired Ian Fleming's "Thunderball." In: The Vintage News. January 3, 2018, accessed October 23, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Crabb, Lionel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Crabb, Lionel Kenneth Phillip; Crabb, buster
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British combat diver and naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH after April 19, 1956