Helen Fry
Buster Crabbe: The Disappearing Frogman and Headless Body
Helen Fry - Buster Crabbe: The Disappearing Frogman and Headless Body
- We’re going to be looking at one of the most compelling unsolved disappearances of MI6 frogman during the Cold War. And I’ve started with one of my favourite quotes, actually, from Frederick Forsyth, and I highly recommend all of his novels. They’re absolutely brilliant. They’re based on extensive research and you kind of wonder what’s the difference between the fiction and reality, and that’s part of the compelling thing, I think, about much of what he writes. And he writes about a number of periods, and in particular, of course, espionage assassinations. And I want to link one of his famous quotes to what we’re going to talk about today to add a kind of query in your own minds, or even a sense of mystery, because what we’re going to talk about today, the case of Buster Crabb, is certainly, you know, amongst one of the biggest unsolved mysteries of the Cold War. And Frederick Forsyth wrote that “The spies in history who can say from their graves, the information I supplied to my masters, for better or worse, altered the history of our planet, that can be counted on the fingers of one hand.” And on one level, that’s quite shocking to think that the number of spies who might have changed the course of history, that might have given something incredibly valuable to their spy masters can just be counted on the fingers of one hand. I’m not sure these are actually accurate in that respect. Next slide, please. Today, we are going to look at Buster Crabb, Commander Crabb.
And I’ve deliberately titled it “Hero or Double Agent?” And at the end of today’s lecture, you’ll need to decide for yourself. You’ll probably want to do a little bit more research of your own and decide for yourself, do you really think he was one of the heroes of MI6 or was he a double agent? Had he been turned to work for the Soviet Union? And his disappearance is utterly extraordinary in what was extraordinary circumstances. He disappears, we’re going to look at this in more detail, he disappears on the 29th of April, 1956. And just to give you an idea of the background, what’s happening at this point in the Cold War? We’re not yet up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s in the early 1960s. But nevertheless, 1950s was also marked by an important period in the Cold War. We have a war that was arguably, by many historians, as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than the previous war, than the Second World War in that, although it was a Cold War, it never really became hot. The stakes were incredibly high. You have two superpowers vying for all kinds of power in terms of air power, the Space Race, the arms race I’ll come back to shortly. In 1953, so just not quite three years before the disappearance of Buster Crabb, we had the end of the Korean War. The same year we had the death of Stalin, Stalin who was remembered, certainly in the West, for his brutality, for his purges, not necessarily the glorious leader that he would want to be remembered for in Soviet history. Now you have new leaders.
You have new leaders in the Soviet Union who, in a sense, don’t want to be associated with the Stalinist regime. In a sense, they want to de-Stalinize, for want of a better word, the Soviet Union. They want to enter a new era. If we look at the American side, the Americans have a new president in Dwight Eisenhower, so the Cold War players are changing. The leadership has changed in the USA and also in Soviet Union. Is this going to dawn on a new era? But for the USA, for America, its Cold War policy is largely going to be unchanged. There is still a huge fear of communism. This is the backdrop to the story of Buster Crabb. I think it is important to understand, you know, what’s going on in the background. In the wider Cold War, there is still concern that the Russians have design on taking over the whole of Berlin. Berlin is divided between east and west still, and you know, whether the Soviets will make any progress in clawing back. And also, in Eastern Europe, the Western allies are really hoping that they can push back the Soviet influence, that those Eastern countries, perhaps, might one day be democratic again. So that’s from a Western perspective. And the new Prime Minister, relatively new in the Soviet Union, is Khrushchev Nikita. Khrushchev, he also, it is hoped, will have a new vision for the Soviet Union. How far is he going to distance himself from the Soviet Union past? Is there really any change? And into this, we have this intense race, the Space Race. The race, of course, it is the Russians that ultimately send Sputnik first into space a few years later, a couple of years later. And then the arms race, you’ve got the atomic race.
If any of you have been to see “Oppenheimer,” a fabulous three-hour film, that early atomic Space Race. So all of this is in the mix. And if I can add into that as well, espionage, the spies of the Cold War. We can’t talk about the Cold War without mentioning the spies. And we have the atomic spies on one hand, those who are western scientists, western spies who are passing secrets to the Russians. It’s a very murky period. We don’t really know who’s working for who, who is a double agent. And just a few years before Buster Crabb’s disappearance, in 1951, famously in England, we see the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. So they were part of the Cambridge Spy Ring, and I’m going to do a session on Kim Philby shortly. They just continue to fascinate us, those Cold War spies, and the shadows and mirrors, what’s really happening? And of course, from a western perspective, they need to know what are the Soviet intentions, has that actually changed, and particularly with Khrushchev. Is he a man that one can talk to to do some kind of rapprochement? So all of this is in the background. Next slide, please. Before anything really comes out proper, and some files on Crabb have now been declassified in the UK, he’s already been fictionalised and he’s been fictionalised famously. I’m not sure if you’re aware that in “Thunderball,” he’s a central character. You know, he’s morphed into the James Bond who leaps from a helicopter that’s hovering above the water. He’s wearing this state-of-the-art diving suit and the diving suit seems to be of incredible complexity. Next slide, please. So is, it is largely believed, actually, that Fleming’s figure in “Thunderball,” I’ve got a picture of this. It’s great, isn’t it? I hope Crabb didn’t go in with one of these pieces of equipment that’s strapped to his back.
Of course not. But you know, I love that the reality and the kind of bizarre, almost comical facade that we get in fiction, and particularly in Fleming. He takes a core story like the disappearance of Buster Crabb and he immortalises him. When Bond, you know, leaps into the water in this quintessentially English gadget on his back. And the mission is underwater warfare, really, between SPECTRE and this CIA frogman. And in the main scene, it kind of builds up. It’s a long time since I’ve seen the film actually, but maybe you’ve seen it since. It’s worth watching again with a view to Buster Crabb in mind. James Bond kind of flips into this comment which says, here comes the kitchen sink, having just such British humour. Next slide, please. So he clearly is linked very closely. He’s the inspiration for James Bond’s mission in “Thunderball.” But he also appears in a number of other films. Nothing really has come out in recent years. I hope it does, actually. It’d be great if they could fictionalise a drama, do something around this. But “The Silent Enemy” and that came out in 1958. Laurence Harvey actually plays the character of Crabb, and this covers a time when Crabb’s in Gibraltar. We also have a 1996 novel “Old Flames,” John Lawton. And this is about the assassination, actually, of a fictitious frogman, a frogman who has this kind of secret life in the shadowy world of spies and espionage, and it’s largely believed that this is based on Buster Crabb at a time when one couldn’t really write a proper history of what happened to Buster Crabb.
And then, Tim Binding, in 2004, brings out another novel, “Man Overboard.” You might have read it. Again, this is a kind of fictional memoir of Crabb, but can we get anywhere near the reality of what happened on the 29th of April, 1956? Next slide, please. What are the facts then? Well, you can see Buster Crabb there, the very short man with the parting hair, that’s Buster Crabb. He is one of Britain’s most senior experienced frogman. And frogman would, of course, be diving for all kinds of reasons. If they’re working within the military, they might be sent on special deep-sea diving expeditions and Commander Crabb was reported missing, verdict, presumed dead. So that’s what the Admiralty decided, concluded, after his disappearance on the 29th April, 1956. The official statement said he died, this is at the time, he died following a test dive at Stokes Bay near Portsmouth on the Hampshire coast. So this is right there on the southern coast of England, right sort of in the middle of England if you like, but on the southern coast of the middle of England. Next slide, please. So he’s gone on some kind of diving mission, and he’s completely disappeared, and not unsurprisingly, he is the subject of not just fiction, but he also, there are a number of books that have come out about him, and again, you might want to follow up and read some of those. Next slide, please. So it is over a year later, it’s 14 months later, because on the 29th of April, 1956, he disappears and I’ll come into what exactly the diving operation was, he disappears and the Admiralty declared he’s presumed dead, he’s missing, presumed dead, and there’s no body, there’s no body at this point.
No inquest, nothing. And it’s the headless body, actually, with its hands missing that is floated up, that’s found by two fishermen, not that far from Portsmouth, actually, off sort of the Chichester end of the harbour. So the 9th of June, 1957, this body, it’s sort of partly has been entangled in the fishing nets, is kind of disentangled, brought ashore. So it’s headless, it’s got no hands, and it couldn’t possibly be identified properly, but conveniently, it was the same height as Crabb. It’s a male figure, same sort of body, hair colour, dressed in the same kind of clothes still, so still in a particular diving suit, a Pirelli diving suit, but no head. How is he going to be identified? You can’t identify him from dental records, even. And it goes on to become one of the greatest, I would argue as I’ve put there, unsolved Cold War mysteries. What happened and was the body that floated up in June, 1957, the body of Buster Crabb? Did he die accidentally, as I’ve posed a question there, in the cold waters of Portsmouth Harbour, as the government claimed 14 months earlier? Question. Next slide, please. You’re probably, if you’ve known my lectures by now, you’re probably thinking, no, it was not necessarily accidental. But one of the British diving experts, Rob Hoole, wrote later, “Given the length of time that Crabb’s body had been in the water, there was nothing sinister about the missing head and hands.” So in fact, you know, it’s amazing, you know that nothing, it hadn’t deteriorated even more or that parts of his feet had disappeared or that kind of thing.
So it’s not surprising, if he’s been in the sea that long, and any of you who might have studied pathology yourself will know that the body goes through different stages at different points of being in the water, from being incredibly bloated, becoming very pale, and of course, parts of the body can be eaten by fish and that kind of thing. So we are now faced with this headless, handless body. Next slide, please. Bearing in mind that it’s not far from where Buster Crabb disappeared. So two days later, this inquest opens on the 11th of June, 1957. And not unsurprisingly, the pathologist can’t really make any headway. There is no way really of identifying him. So the inquest jury actually returned this verdict of, well, an open verdict. And the coroner then announced that he was satisfied. Actually, he’s a bit more vague in what he says, but he says he’s satisfied this was probably the body of Buster Crabb. Next slide, please. And Anthony Eden made a statement in the House of Commons, our Prime Minister then, that it’s not in, I love this, it’s not in the public interest to release the documents before 2057. Some of them have now been released, but it looks like not all of them have necessarily been released. So if we can hang on to 2057 and hope, because originally, the documents were not to be released for at least 30 years, and then as the 30 years came up, it was extended to 100 years. So if we can wait to 2057, we might, but don’t hold your breath, get some answers, but it’s not in the public interest for them to know what really happened to Buster Crabb. Next slide, please.
So what do we know about him? Some little bit of brief biographical. So he was actually born Lionel Crabb. He was sort of known to everyone as Buster. He’s born on the 28th of January, 1928, in South London in District of South London in Streatham. So he has a pretty humble background, a very poor background. He serves in the Second World War, first in the British Army as a gunner, and then he transfers and becomes a merchant seaman. But because he’s actually been injured, he himself volunteers to do some dangerous work. He’s quite happy to be involved in bomb disposal and all kinds of expertise surrounding mines and booby traps and that kind of thing. So he’s now working for the Royal Navy in, effectively, bomb disposal and mine sweeping. In 1942, he is stationed in Gibraltar. Think back to “Thunderball,” yeah. And it’s there that he’s in charge of protecting Royal Navy ships from Italian saboteurs. And what was happening at that time, something which some of our own commanders did to German ships in the wartime, Italian frogmen were diving under British warships and placing limpet mines on them with delays so that once they got far enough away, these could explode. They could explode at whatever point they’re timed. So it wasn’t unusual for each side to attach limpet mines. The commandos did something similar in 1942 in Bordeaux. It’s a very famous raid, of which only two of our commandos survived. So nothing’s changed really. And Buster Crabb is actually trying to locate where this might have happened. And in fact, he’s based for a while around Malta, and it’s while he’s in Malta looking for German limpet mines that are being put on our ships, on the hull, underwater on the hull of the ships, he’s diving under, checking the security of the British ships.
He’s actually given a George Medal and that’s one of the highest levels for bravery. And he’s then later, not long afterwards, given an OBE for his work in Livorno in Italy, so for actually, again, protecting British ships. And if you actually look online, there is a photograph of a whole string of medals that he has received, so he is incredibly brave, he’s highly skilled, but it is a brave job because, at any point, he’s risking his life, it’s natural, he’s risking his life, and he becomes our most senior expert frogman and a highly decorated war veteran. Next slide, please. So by 1943, he becomes the principal diving officer for the British Navy, Royal Navy, in Northern Italy. And the forces are making their way up through after the Allied Landings in July, 1943. They’ve come up through Sicily, up through Italy. It’s a long slow struggle through Italy, but eventually, he is in charge of diving operations and naval security around Northern Italy. And then, just a few years later, he’s stationed in what was then Palestine. And that’s interesting because there’s very little known about his period in Palestine. And again, he’s an expert. He’s advising on underwater explosives for the British-mandated Palestine. This is, of course, excuse me, before the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948. So he’s working for the British mandate forces, and he then comes back to the UK, and he’s working in a private capacity, this time for one of the secretive British research weapon establishments, the Atomic Weapon Research Establishment, as it was known, at Aldermaston, which I believe is in Surrey, so south of London, for those of you who are not acquainted with parts of the UK.
Then in 1952, he is seconded to do various duties as a frogman, diving in ports. He’s investigating various wreckages of ships. He’s, anything that might be suspicious that the Royal Navy needs him to do. He’s not technically working for the Royal Navy, but he is actually sent on various sporadic missions. And that’s in 1952. Next slide, please. Gradually, the information is beginning to come out about his last mission, his last mission for the Royal Navy in 1956, in which he dives under a Russian ship that’s harboured on the coast there in Portsmouth. And his diving partner, Sydney Knowles, has once suggested, and there are all kinds, as you can imagine, of conspiracy theories, before we get into the meat of this, all kinds of conspiracy theories which are beginning to emerge. It does seem that he is being connected with British Intelligence, that he was, it said that he was a frogman working on the orders, at one point, for MI6, and Sydney Knowles postulates that Crabb was even murdered on the orders of British Intelligence. And he had the difficult job of identifying Crabb’s body. And of course, it wasn’t possible to identify Crabb’s body. It was headless at the time, no hands. But Knowles said he had a particular scar on the upper part of his left leg that he’d, had happened during the Second World War. And that was the one and only identifying feature that Knowles could ask for when he was trying to identify Crabb’s body. Even Crabb’s ex-wife couldn’t. There was nothing that she could tell that it was actually him. And Knowles was eventually interviewed by the BBC for a whole series. It was called, into various mysteries, called “Inside Out.”
And they’re fabulous investigative series. So he actually spoke in one of the series, but he said that he identified the body only under pressure that it was Crabb’s, that in actual fact, this specific scar was not on the body that he was shown. Next slide, please. And Knowles had first met Crabb when the two of them had been stationed in Gibraltar during the wartime, and they’d sort of become buddies. They were very close working together, they had to trust each other on diving missions. They were each other’s protector, if you like. So they became diving partners or buddies in the Royal Navy. And as I said, Crabb himself was actually awarded George Medal for his bravery in removing some of those limpet mines from British ships. And Knowles said the whole Navy loved him. You know, Buster Crabb was very charismatic. I guess if you’re a frogman, or as I found with a lot of the veterans who are in the RAF, there’s a sort of charisma. If they’re doing something dangerous, they’re on operations behind enemy lines, I think much like some of the Cold War pilots as well. And those that are going to be diving under these missions, hasn’t there got to be a kind of James Bond element to their character? Next slide. So he originally joined the Royal Navy in 1941. He’s now returned to civilian life. He’s a revered war hero. His colleagues adore him and he’s legendary in Royal naval circles. And he was determined to carry on. He didn’t want to give up his diving, so although he’s stationed in Aldermaston, which is right in the countryside, there’s no water in sight, there’s no coastline in sight, he still wants to continue his occasional diving job. Next slide, please.
And his chance comes during the Cold War, because in 1955, and Sydney Knowles talks about this, as his buddy, his partner, they actually go on a Cold War mission. They are sent by the intelligence services on this secret mission to spy on a Russian warship, that was known as the Sverdlov, on its visit to Portsmouth. And occasionally, in spite of this hot Cold War that wasn’t really hot, but it was incredibly tense, and at moments, we came very close, I understand, to nuclear war, it was incredible knife-edge situation and nobody could underestimate what, you know, the slightest misunderstanding by either side could trigger a nuclear weapon. And occasionally, you have these sort of missions, these liaison missions, these diplomatic missions. And Sydney Knowles was saying, well, I accompanied Crabb. We had this secret mission to spy on the Russian warship, to look for new technology, to look for any aspects that, you know, they didn’t know about, new technology on the ship, was it really on a spy mission? And Crabb, as a foremost frogman with Knowles, is kind of, just look for anything unusual. And it was said that it was very hard for Crabb to actually keep down a mainstream job. And why? Because he was mixing with British people who were beginning to emerge as potentially pro-Russian, pro-Soviet. And in amongst his close circle was this guy, in the bottom corner there, Anthony Blunt, of course. Anthony Blunt, who becomes master of the queen’s pictures, Queen Elizabeth the Second, he actually becomes very close to royal circles and he is outed later. He confesses to, he’s given anonymity for a while, but also, he’s not prosecuted for passing secrets to the Soviets after the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. He obviously loses his post, he’s got very close to the royal family. He’s one of the Cambridge Spy Ring. But he’s also close to Buster Crabb. And this, in itself, is of concern. Next slide, please.
And Crabb was once supposed to have said to Sydney Knowles, in a sort of throwaway comment when he was getting quite depressed by the fact that he couldn’t hold down a regular permanent job, he kind of says, oh, it’s either suicide or bloody Russia. So he’s contemplating either the sort of the drama of either the end of his life, he’s going to commit suicide, or he’s going to possibly work for the Russians. It’s a kind of throwaway comment, according to Sydney Knowles. And Sydney, at the time, couldn’t believe this decorated war veteran, his partner, is he really thinking of defecting? And Sydney actually alerts MI5. He’s really concerned because we’ve already had the defection of two spies. What if Crabb is thinking of working for the Soviets? I mean, why that throwaway comment? And so, this last crucial dive that Crabb undergoes for British Intelligence, and this is under a second Russian ship, this is the order long, oh, I can’t say it, you can read it on my screen. It’s actually in Portsmouth Harbour. And none other than Khrushchev himself, the Russian Prime Minister, the Soviet Prime Minister, has come to the UK on a kind of a liaison diplomatic mission. And he comes on the Russian ship, and it’s in Portsmouth Harbour. And Sydney Knowles decides he’s not going to dive with Crabb. He doesn’t trust him. And he also says that, in actual fact, Crabb didn’t dive alone on that last fatal mission. So what begins to emerge from the government saying after his disappearance that he’s a kind of, unfortunately, there’s been a diving accident and one of our key frogman’s disappeared. In actual fact, Crabb was on a secret mission to dive under the Russian ship. I mean, honestly, if this came out in the public domain at the time, you could imagine the fallout, you can imagine the fallout afterwards and why attempts would be made to keep all of this secret. So he dived on this top-secret mission under the ship to look for various things, was supposed to be new technology.
And Sydney Knowles says, actually, I don’t believe he dived alone. He didn’t go on his own. So what happened to the other frogman? That, again, is very hazy in history. But what we do know is that Crabb does not return alive. He disappears, he dives under the ship and he disappears. And there are various theories about the fact that his oxygen had failed, his equipment had failed. And you know, even from the point of view of the missing body, is it likely that his body couldn’t have been found for 14 months? I’m not sure, some of you may know if you are pathologists or doctors. Next slide, please. So there’s a little kind of a mystery over the body, but Sydney Knowles even contemplated, said, well you know, I think he’s been murdered. He makes this comment, our heroes, like you know, Buster Crabb, he’s the nation’s hero, our heroes are our heroes, and we couldn’t have such a decorated war hero defecting. Our heroes belong to us. He’s effectively saying that our heroes, we can’t have a war hero defecting. So it was his belief that when Crabb dived under, something happened such that he doesn’t return. And Sydney Knowles even contemplates that Crabb is actually murdered by British Intelligence. I mean, it’s an incredible claim to have made. Meanwhile, the Russians, of course, this is all beginning to untangle, call it shameful espionage. And that’s the term that’s used. They write to the foreign office, the Soviet Union officially writes to the foreign office and says, this is a shameful example of espionage. Next slide, please. So we have a number of conspiracy theories, of course we do. You’ve got a body that’s disappeared, floats up 14 months later, no head, no hands, and the conspiracy theories continued to be rife. That these are some of the theories that Crabb was a double agent who’s become involved in espionage, he’s been killed by a secret Soviet underwater weapon.
So there are some theories circulating that it’s actually the Soviets that killed him. MI6 is also in the frame. They’d asked Crabb to defect so he could become a double agent, and then he subsequently dies. That’s another theory. Another theory is he’s murdered by MI5 because they find out, you remember Sydney Knowles has actually reported to MI5 he thinks Crabb is about to defect. Goodness knows what Crabb has in his repertoire of expertise and knowledge. We don’t want this falling into the hands of the Russians. The Russians mustn’t have him. So did MI5 murder him because they believed he was about to defect? So that’s another of the conspiracy theories. And just to remind you that MI5 is in charge of security at home, largely, and MI6 is generally sending the spies and stuff abroad, is involved in the UK security abroad. So it’s postulated, or one of these theories, that MI5 has actually created this mission. They’ve sent him to sort of murder him. When he gets under there, he’s sort of murdered. His oxygen’s tampered with, he suffocates, and then they’ve covered up his death. Next slide, please. Another theory is that his oxygen was beginning to fail, even that one of the Russian divers themselves has gone under. There was a struggle, struggle with the oxygen, and just as he’s passing out unconscious, he’s brought aboard, and eventually, sort of given medical attention and then brainwashed to work for the Soviet Union. And so it’s postulated that he was sent to the Soviet Union, he was smuggled back to the Soviet Union to work with their frogmen. And it’s also gone one step further that he’s defected and joined the Soviet Navy, and he’s in charge of some of the Soviet Navy’s most important operations under another name. But of course, there’s total silence really on anything official from the British side because everything was, initially, as I said earlier, classified for 30 years and just as we’re on the 30 years, it’s extended for another 100, well, in total for 100 years. 2057, that’s the key year. Next slide, please.
So during investigations, the BBC is asked for an FOI. This is a freedom of information. So with the Freedom of Information Act, they can ask for a release of files. MI5 occasionally releases files into the archives. MI6 never releases anything into the archives. But in the release of some of the other documents, it becomes clear that his last mission, on his last mission, that the British government had specifically said to the intelligence services, we’ve got this high-level visit by Khrushchev. There is no way we’re going to have any funny business. You are not to be investigating those Russian ships. You are to keep completely away from those Russian ships. So those are the official orders from the British government to the intelligence services, and the inquest into his death was largely run by the intelligence services, so they can kind of maybe muddy the waters here and distance themselves from having had any involvement. So in the back of their minds, they’d been forbidden to have any involvement. But the report shows that there were other unnamed divers who’d been diving at various points under this ship whilst it was in Portsmouth Harbour, and this had been completely forbidden by the government. Next slide, please. And it’s going to cause a lack of trust, diplomatic crisis. And it was said that just 10 days beforehand, on the 19th of April, Crabb had been actually recruited by MI6 for this mission. He was to do a surveillance mission on this ship. He was to dive underneath it, he was to inspect all around the hull of the ship, but on the way back after the mission, he hadn’t checked back in with his MI6 handler. He just disappeared. So there’s no idea what’s happened to him. And as I said, his body floats up 14 months later. Next slide, please.
And as we said, the coroner’s inquest concludes that the body was likely to be that of Crabb. So there we go, it’s all over, isn’t it? Well, or is it? That’s the thing. In the 1990s, you see a series of defections, well, both ways, including Soviet defectors to the west. But a former Soviet agent, Zwerkin, claimed Soviet security actually on the ship actually saw Crabb inspecting it, and that a sniper had shot at him in the water, so this is another story that’s beginning to emerge, that he was operating under the guidance of MI6, but in fact, this caused tension and a riff, he said, between MI5 and MI6, because technically, anything to do with British waters, British land, home security is MI5. So you’ve now got a tension here, and this whole attempt by MI6 to cover it up. Next slide, please. So what about his last movements? Well, just before we get to that, Anthony Eden finally tells a packed House of Commons, as I said, it’s not in the public interest to disclose the circumstances in which Crabb is presumed to have met his death. I’ll leave you to read that a moment. He does say, of course, at the very end, the appropriate disciplinary steps are being taken in the background. Next slide, please. There is now heightened speculation that Crabb was on a secret mission. He hasn’t just disappeared in some diving practise. He’s on a top-secret spying mission for which there was no official permission granted by the British government. Hugh Gaitskell, who at this point, of course he dies, doesn’t he, in 1963, again, in very unusual circumstances, a strain of lupus autoimmune, but again, he’s pitched to be the next Labour prime minister, and he’s a Labour leader at this point. Hugh Gaitskell warns the prime minister. So if he doesn’t expand on his original statement, if he doesn’t give the public more information, they’re going to inevitably conclude that Buster Crabb was a spy, and he’s spying on the Russians. It’s a huge, you know, the diplomatic fallout.
But what Eden does, because this is totally unauthorised, he actually forces the resignation of the then-head of MI6, John Sinclair, who’d previously been director of military intelligence. Actually, he becomes C, C, the new head of MI6, and he’s forced out by the whole Crabb affair. So he loses his job over this. Next slide, please. And it’s said that he was last seen, Crabb, on the 19th of April. The day after, this Soviet ship carrying two leaders, Khrushchev and Marshal Bulganin, they’ve arrived in Portsmouth Harbour. They are received with respect. They’re here for talks behind the scenes with the British government. Next slide, please. Around this time, Crabb is last seen leaving this hotel, the Sally Port Inn, which I believe has recently been renovated. I haven’t visited myself, but a quintessentially English pub there on the south coast. He’d actually checked into the hotel two days before the mission with another man who signed himself as Matthew Smith. Both checked out after two afternoon, and that’s the last that Crabb is seen. Next slide, please. He’s been released from the Navy. It’s said that he, you know, he can’t hold down a permanent job. He’s short of money. Has he been paid off by the Russians? Is he now working, has he disappeared to work for the Russians? And when the investigations get going, inquiries made at the hotel, if you look at the original hotel register, the original page is missing. And it was said that this whole operation, Richard Tomlinson, occasionally he’s interviewed on documentaries, he’s an exiled MI6 operative says that the whole Crabb affair, in his words, was a bungled, a failed MI6 operation, an operation that went wrong. And he says that new officers are taught about this during their training as a cautionary tale. But extraordinarily, Crabb and Smith had actually signed their real names. They hadn’t even used fake names in the entry in the hotel. Next slide, please.
But by the 4th of May, the government, the Soviet government, are actually issuing formal complaints to the foreign office. And it’s later that Koltsov, who was actually a member of the ship’s crew, said he was the one. He comes clean later and says, much, much later, decades later, that he was the one responsible for actually killing Crabb, that he actually cut his throat and that there was an underwater struggle between these two frogmen, between Koltsov and Crabb, because he claimed that Crabb was placing a limpet mine on the hull of the Soviet ship. I mean, honestly, do we really believe that MI6 would’ve done that, that they would’ve potentially blown up a Soviet ship with the Soviet leaders on it? I’m not sure that I buy that theory myself. Next slide, please. Koltsov said, as late as 2007, this was his exact words, “I saw a silhouette of a diver.” I mean, they’re not stupid, the crew, and our crew would be the same. They’d be looking for any suspicious activity under their ships. “I saw a silhouette of a diver in a light frogman suit who was fiddling with something at the starboard, next to the ship’s ammunition stores. I swam closer and saw that he was fixing a mine.” Next slide, please. Koltsov then suddenly produces the knife that he says that was used to kill Crabb, and he even produces the medals, because he’s a hero in Soviet eyes for having rescued the ship and killed a British spy, frogman spy. In 1990, that interview was working, he was formally working for Soviet naval intelligence. By this time, he’d actually moved to Israel, and this was as the Soviet Union had begun to break up, the Berlin Wall has come down.
He once commented, it’s “extremely unlikely that the British government would try to blow up a Soviet ship on a diplomatic mission.” I think, personally, I don’t know what you think, but I think, personally, I would agree with that. The Russians would know it wasn’t an accident. I think it’s a highly risky thing. Personally, I don’t buy that, but you may. Next slide, please. So it leaves a whole series of unanswered questions as it does often with these Cold War espionage and spies. The speculation, had Crabb been killed by secret Soviet underwater weapon? One of those conspiracy theories. Had he been captured? He’s unconscious, brought onto the ship, rehabilitated, given medical treatment, and then he’s imprisoned in Russia, the Soviet Union, has, whilst in prison, has he then been brainwashed? Has he been turned to work for the Soviet Union? Is he training their frogmen? And it’s also alleged that he defected to become a commander, so not just training Soviet frogmen, but an actual commander in the Soviet Navy. Can that possibly be true? Next slide, please. Did he defect and become a double agent? Was he murdered by MI5 because he’s on the verge of defecting? Did MI5 set up the mission, orchestrate it so that this accident happens? They’ve murdered Crabb and they ensure that his body disappears, and to sort of close the case, his body is mysteriously washed up 14 months later. Next slide, please. Then the revelations start to come out in the controversial publication of Peter Wright’s “Spycatcher.” I guess most of you have probably got it on your bookshelves. It was banned from publication in the United Kingdom. It was highly frowned upon, former MI5 officer writing his memoirs in which he’s spilling the beans.
There was various legal action and attempts to suppress it. And in fact, it’s, from my understanding, it is still not being published in the UK. You can buy it in secondhand bookshops or online, but you can’t actually, my understanding is it’s not actually being published here. And he publishes it in Australia, and it made him a millionaire, actually. But he uncovers all kinds of things. He makes all kinds of claims. And in it, you might want to go back and read this section, he says that Crabb was actually sent to investigate this propeller. It was a new design on the ship. The British had intelligence that the Soviets had designed something special and they wanted to understand what exactly was this, and that was purely his mission. It wasn’t to place a limpet mine, it was actually just a dive under the ship, take a look and come out again. And he said, you know, “Diving historians,” he concludes, “find it very hard to believe that this man, who prided himself on being a patriot, would have seriously considered defecting.” But Hoole, Robert Hoole, who is a diving expert, actually later said, look, Crabb, you know, he drunk heavily. It’s possible that he’d been drinking before the dive. He was under a high level of stress. He was a heavy smoker, you know. He’s in his 50s, if I’m not mistaken. He’s of an older age to be diving. It’s medically difficult for him anyway. And he says, look, he’s died of oxygen poisoning or carbon dioxide poisoning. And you know, in some sense, his breathing apparatus has failed, and as it’s beginning to fail, Crabb is no longer fit enough to actually be able to rescue himself. Next slide, please. But so what really happened?
Well, it said that in March, 1956, and there’s been new stuff written about this recently, Crabb received an urgent message from Lord Louis Mountbatten. He was, of course, head of the Royal Navy at that time, uncle to now King Charles. He’s the First Sea Lord in this period, head of all kinds of missions and operations. As he was, he was in charge of all kinds of clandestine operations in the Second World War. And Mountbatten is said to have had a secret meeting with him. It comes out, Andrew Lownie, historian, has written about a new book on the lives of the Mountbattens, and in it, he talks about this secret meeting between Crabb and Mountbatten at Mountbatten’s home in Broadlands in the south of England. And Mountbatten says to him, you are needed for this secret mission, and whatever you find, we are going to share the results with MI6 and the CIA. And it said that this mysterious Matthew Smith that no one really knew who he was, was actually a CIA agent who was said to have spent considerable time with Crabb beforehand as this mission was sort of planned. And here you have Khrushchev and Bulganin on this goodwill trip to Britain, and the intelligence services have the audacity, in a sense, to send these two divers on this secret mission. Next slide, please. So had Crabb been captured alive, smuggled back to the Soviet Union, had he been tortured, interrogated, had he given anything away? Nobody knows. And it’s said that, at least according now to what’s been released in Russian documents, that Crabb did in fact serve as an officer in the Royal, in the Russian Navy. So it may be that he’s done this under duress.
And it’s now postulated as one theory that it’s the Soviets who have somehow managed to drop this body that’s washed up 14 months later, just when no one’s really kind of looking, with someone wearing identical equipment to Buster Crabb. And they drop it as close as they dare, where, close to where they believe, you know, he was lost or his body had floated a year earlier. Does beg the question as to why it hadn’t floated up earlier, but you know, was it the Soviets who floated this body? Next slide, please. But whatever happens, whoever’s body this is, it’s actually buried in Surrey, and that’s a picture of his tombstone in Southsea, Milton on Sea, which is right down on the South coast, not far from Portsmouth. Next slide, please. Coming to our last few comments. So Dr. Bevan, who’d had a look at this, he’s part of the Historical Diving Society said, you know, really now, he believes it’s somehow a matter, how can we without all the files released, some have been released, but he says, it’s a matter of rehabilitating Crabb’s reputation. The greatest work he has done, he said, has been suppressed for far too long because of the controversy over his death and the cover-up. He said, “I want to make it known that he was a great man. He deserved a better end and better treatment by the authorities. He should have had a military funeral with full military honours.” Next slide, please. In October, 2015, some of the files were declassified and what is released by these files? It does show these following key points, that this was arguably one of the most disastrous, for the western allies, one of the most disastrous Cold War spy operations because it provoked this crisis of relationship, it is said, between MI5 and MI6.
This operation has not been sanctioned by the government. It’s not been sanctioned by MI5, but that the operation had gone against specific orders. In these papers it says, Anthony Eden says, you’ve gone against my orders. And it said also that the foreign office had been informed by MI6 beforehand. But then, another paper within this says, well, the foreign office is denying this. So the official inquiry is now attacking MI6 for quote, “errors in tradecraft.” They’ve made monumental errors in this operation. Next slide. And very little has been said that I can find, officially, from MI6, but one of the quotes I found was this, in which MI6 said, is said to have said, “Delicate operations are those which come into the category liable to produce the most serious embarrassment if they misfire, that is to say, they could be readily traced directly to British official action.” So whatever’s happened in this, they don’t want to be, necessarily, for any of this to backfire and to lead back to them. Next slide, please. And now I’ll just give you some visuals of some of the things that are released. I’ve given references if there are any of you researchers, historians out there, who yourselves might want to look at these. These are cabinet files that were released in 2015. Nothing has been released from British Intelligence here. Nothing from MI6, of course. And it’s, there are all kinds of things about microphones being in Claridges, phone tapping, sections on warships, Soviet aircraft. Very, very interesting. Soviet defections, so again, you might want to look at cabinet files if you’re interested yourself. Next slide, please. So we’ve got some visuals here of some of the kind of, I’ve just done snapshot, in which there’s a response here from NID.
NID is Naval Intelligence Department. This is UK Naval Intelligence. It’s not Naval Intelligence practise to inquire into the details of SIS, otherwise, MI6 operations. But if asked for assistance, they would always help where they could. So we’re beginning to see that there’s something going on here in these official declassified files where MI6 clearly had a hand. Next slide, please. So we’ve got another visual here. Next slide, please. Sorry, back one. Just, beg your pardon. So yeah, the last point’s interesting. One of the comments in these declassified files says, owing to the shape of Portsmouth Harbour and the tides, it’s not likely that the body would reappear. So, yeah, interesting. Next slide, please. And again, we’ve got diary of events that are happening, which again, you can just see the top secret stamp there. Again, if you’re interested in taking it further, then please do have a look at these files. Next slide, please. I think this is the last one I have of the actual operation itself. So this is giving a sort of detail of exactly what is believed to have happened, certainly, in the hotel before the two men leave. Next slide, please. But as always, in some of the files, PREM, our prime minister’s files, and this particular reference, in some of this, there is sections which are blanked out and it says, it’s the original’s retained, it’s been redacted under section three in brackets four, and that’s not unsurprising, ‘cause I see that quite often in my research. And in this case, 19 documents, it says, have been retained on grounds of official secrecy.
So this is Section 3.4 is part of the, I suppose you would say it’s being retained under National Security Official Secrets Act. Last slide, please. And ever since, really, occasionally this whole story emerges. It’s emerging in a very interesting podcast. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but you might want to look online. There’s a podcast by historian Giles Milton, who’s uncovered some of this, and he does a session online on a podcast about Buster Crabb. So again, that’s very, very recently. So occasionally, this kind of rears its head. We have periods when everyone’s forgotten about this very heroic frogman who goes on this incredibly dangerous top-secret mission, but by and large, from the Russians, only silence. They’ve rarely commented apart from that official complaint to the foreign office, the British Foreign Office, about this whole espionage business. There’s only silence really from the Russians. So I’m not sure whether we can ever really answer, was he a hero? We don’t have enough evidence currently available to decide, yeah, was this a bungled MI6 operation? Was he a hero? Did he disappear? Was it his body? Probably not his body that washed up. What happened to the real Buster Crabb? And from the Russians, the Soviet Union itself, through the ensuing decades, there was only silence. Thank you for joining me today.