Espionage

The Mysterious Death of MI6 Frogman, Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb is Still a Puzzle

A Cold War tale that’s like a plot from a James Bond novel, the mystery lingers on

Portsmouth Harbour is a major UK naval base and has hosted many strange visitors and events. This is an area of secrecy and intrigue and has been since even before the days of King Henry VIII whose flagship, the Mary Rose, sunk just outside the harbour in 1545. Admiral Lord Nelson’s ‘HMS Victory’ is still moored there, as is ‘HMS Warrior’, the UK’s first iron warship (on which I once attended a wedding reception). I kept several of my boats there and sailed in and out through the narrow channel where the tide runs hard.

Fort Monckton, the MI6 training centre, is nearby in Gosport and HMS Dolphin, the submariners’ training school is right across the narrow harbour entrance.

The Sally Port Inn on Portsmouth High Street comprises two ancient buildings dating back to 1600 and has many tales to tell not least that of MI6 diver Buster Crabb.

On 20th April 1956 highly-decorated Lieutenant-Commander Lionel Crabb left the Inn and went with his MI6 handlers to start what would be his last dive. The mission was to examine the hull and underwater equipment of the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze.

The day before, the ship had brought Nikolai Bulganin, the Soviet premier and Minister of Defence, and Nikita Khrushchev, the maverick first secretary of the Communist Party on a diplomatic mission to Britain just as the Suez Crisis was starting to boil. The cruiser was moored at the naval dockyard in Portsmouth less than a mile from the Inn.

Crabb never returned from his sortie and his headless, handless body was found over a year later near Chichester Harbour, further along the coast.

The man

This is the portrait that history.net paints:

By the mid-1950s, Commander Crabb was a war hero with an Order of the British Empire and a George Medal. He had even acquired the sobriquet “Buster” after Buster Crabbe, the Hollywood actor and former Olympic swimmer. Something of an eccentric, he favored tweed suits, wore a monocle in the style of an English gent, and brandished a silver swordstick with a crab emblazoned on its handle. Rumors swirled that he had a rubber fetish and liked to sit down to dinner in his frogman suit. Despite his dandy demeanor, Crabb battled depression, an illness he buried in drink, gambling, and womanising.

There is a tale I recall that Crabb was once incensed to receive a letter with the postage stamp showing the Queen’s head having been stuck on upside-down to the envelope. He flew into a rage and punched the sender of the letter for disloyalty to the Crown.

The mystery

On June 9, 1957, approximately 14 months after Commander Lionel Crabb’s disappearance, a body in a diving suit was found by fishermen near Pilsey Island in Chichester Harbour. The Royal Air Force Marine Craft Unit №1107 retrieved the body.

Pilsey Island is a beautiful spot, quiet with plenty of birdlife. I’ve anchored there many times in my boat.

Due to decomposition and the absence of the head and hands, identification using contemporary forensic techniques such as DNA analysis was not possible. British diving expert Robert Hoole noted the suit’s resemblance to the attire Crabb wore during his final mission, including the height, body hair color, and specific diving gear. However, Hoole attributed the head and hand loss to the extended underwater exposure and did not consider it suspicious. Crabb’s ex-wife and girlfriend remained uncertain in their identifications.

Shortly after the discovery, Sydney Knowles, Crabb’s wartime buddy diver, examined the body. He described a faded green Heinke rubber diving suit and remnants of a white sweater. Notably, the suit had been extensively cut open, revealing dark pubic hair. He searched for specific scars known to be present on Crabb’s body but found none, leading him to conclude that the remains were not those of Buster Crabb. A pathologist conducted a brief examination and reported the absence of any identifiable scars or marks.

The treachery?

Was his mission screwed by a fatal equipment malfunction, or a physical confrontation with Soviet operatives in Portsmouth Harbour? Did Crabb, disillusioned with the Cold War’s deep machinations, choose defection as an escape or did treachery within MI6 itself lead to his death?

The lack of concrete evidence and the cloak of Cold War secrecy deny us definitive answers. The discovery of Crabb’s mutilated torso, minus hands and head, fuels speculation about foul play. Soviet accounts hinting at his capture and execution add weight to the rumours of espionage gone wrong.

However, declassified documents reveal concerns about Crabb’s mental state and a potential defection plan, casting doubt on the official narrative. He was a decorated WWII veteran diver, an expert in underwater mine disposal. He was known to ‘like a drink’ — or several — as well as being a heavy smoker when MI6 recruited him out of retirement. At that time his physical fitness was well below par for professional diving.

The truth

Crabb’s disappearance has become a microcosm of the Cold War’s espionage landscape, where loyalty and betrayal were different sides of the same coin. His story serves as a painful reminder of the human cost of this historical period, where individuals became casualties in the grand game of international power struggles.

I’m inclined to believe that he was loyal and that his death was as a result of treachery. This was just at the end of the era of the Cambridge Five (maybe even six) when the British Secret Intelligence Service was penetrated at its highest levels by the Soviet Union.

Ultimately, Crabb’s fate remains an unsolved puzzle at least in public. Some of MI6’s most secret records have never been released and are stored at Hanslope Park outside London. The answers are there. The truth, however, could be a long time coming. In 1987 the British government added 70 years to its standard 30-year declassification rule on files related to the Crabb affair.

There is a lot more intrigue behind this story, for sure.

The model for James Bond

It’s said that the Sally Port Inn in Portsmouth might have been the birthplace of Commander James Bond, at least in author Ian Fleming’s mind. As he was employed by MI6 during WWII, Lieutenant-Commander Fleming knew many of the players in this saga (including Crabb) and it is believed that several of Bond’s characteristics were modelled on Crabb’s larger than life swashbuckling personality — but not all (take your pick):

Something of an eccentric, he favored tweed suits, wore a monocle in the style of an English gent, and brandished a silver swordstick with a crab emblazoned on its handle. Rumors swirled that he had a rubber fetish and liked to sit down to dinner in his frogman suit. Despite his dandy demeanor, Crabb battled depression, an illness he buried in drink, gambling, and womanizing. — history.net

Also, Buster Crabb’s interest in gadgets was reflected in Bond’s character. Crabb was innovative and his pioneering methods and adaptations had a significant impact on underwater exploration and warfare techniques.

More context:

A really good read with a ring of truth if you are into espionage: