The Cold War spy mystery of the ‘vanishing frogman’

In 1956, the commander of the Royal Navy “Buster” Crabb disappeared in murky circumstances during a visit to the United Kingdom by Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev. In 2006, Michael Buchanan of the BBC read the newly declassified files detailed by the unofficial Crabb secret mission, and how the government tried to cover it.

It was on May 9, 1956, 68 years ago, this week, that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Sir Anthony Eden, finally succumbed to the pressure of the press and international shame, and ordered an investigation into the mysterious disappearance of the Royal Lionel “Buster” Buster “.

The decorated Frogman had disappeared a goodwill to the United Kingdom for Soviet leadership in the apogee of the tensions of the cold war. When the voice was leaked that Crabb had disappeared, the admiralty, the department of the government responsible for the Navy, issued a vague statement that the diver had been testing underwater teams in Stokes Bay on the coast of Hampshire and was supposed to drowned.

But the story collapsed when the Russian visitors accused their hosts of espionage. The Soviets said they had seen a Frogman near Ordzhonikidze, the ship that had brought the Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev to the United Kingdom, while he was docked in the port of Portsmouth. Despite the questions that are asked repeatedly in Parliament, Eden refused to say more, claiming: “It would not be of public interest to reveal the circumstances in which it is presumed that Commander Crabb has with his death.” Government flicker simply suspicion that Crabb had been in a covert spy mission.

Fourteen months after Crabb disappeared, a headless body and without hand in a diving suit was found by fishermen in Chichester Harbor on the southern coast of England. His lack of digital footprints and teeth hindered the identification of the mutilated body, but a subsequent investigation ruled that it was Crabb. The entire episode publicly embarrassed Eden and destroyed his attempts to develop a more friendly relationship with a Soviet union after Stalin.

When he disappeared in 1956, Crabb was known for his daring underwater feats. Nicknamed “Buster”, after the Olympic swimmer and Olympic actor from the United States, Buster Crabbe, who had risen to fame in the 1930s, was an expert in disposition of underwater bombs. The World War of his duration of his courage had won the George Medal for eliminating the Italian Lapa mines of British warships in Malta, and an order of the British Empire (OBE) for his mining work in Livorno in Italy. His amphibious adventures in times of war would be later fictitious in a 1958 film, The Silent Enemy, with Crabb playing Laurence Harvey. And just after being official demobilized in 1947, continuous diving for the military in several capacities, including the investigation of sunken submarines.

For decades after the disappearance of Frogman, the United Kingdom government firmly maintained its silence about the incident. It would only be 2006 Onards, when it is due to requests for freedom of information by the BBC, and the classified documents will be made public under the 50 -year rule, which arise the murky circumstances of the unfortunate final immersion of Crabb.

The declassified archives showed that, from the beginning, the United Kingdom’s security services were eager to take advantage of Khruschev’s visit to gather intelligence about their opponents of the cold war. They suggested microphones at the Claridge hotel, which Soviet leadership intended to use as its duration of its stay. But the prime minister expressly ruled out the idea and made it clear that the adventures of a similar nature were prohibited. ”

Despite this, Mi6 recruited Crabb to undertake an “unofficial company” to investigate the Russian ship ordzhonikidze. The exact nature of his mission is not yet clear, but former Mi5 officer Peter Wright suggested in his book Spycatcher (1987) that he had to examine and photograph the advanced design of the ship’s propeller.

Two days before the mission, Crabb and another MI6 agent, named Bernard Smith, were recorded at the Sally Port hotel in Portsmouth. On the night of April 17, 1956, Crabb with a military colleague in a local pub. This colleague, whose name was eliminated from the archive, was a Lieutenant of the Royal Lieutenant who agreed to help Crabb enter Portsmouth Harbor for his final immersion. In 2006, Michael Buchanan of the BBC had the opportunity to examine the prevent -classified affidavit of “the last man to see Crabb living.”

“He says that the commander approached him a couple of days before his end and asked me ‘if I would be prepared to help him, completely unexpected and, in a strictly private capacity, in relation to one or two diving later” any responsible naval authority, “said Buchanan.

Just before 07:00 on April 19, Lieutenant Unidentified Commander was with Crabb to the port of Portsmouth, and helped him dress and review his team. Crabb then swam towards the Russian ship, and was never seen alive again. The Royal Navy did not try to look for Frogman lost for fear of alerting the crew of Ordzhonikidze. “The documents also reveal that no search and rescue efforts for Crabb were made, since it was not a good faith operation,” said Buchanan. “And they detailed the extensive efforts made by [the Admiralty] To make sure they were not involved in a failed mission of which they knew nothing. “

Intelligence services assume that Crabb must have captured the leg by the Soviets, have been destroyed by Russian “countermeasures”, or suffered a “natural accident.” Smith, the MI6 agent, withdrew Crabb’s belongings and left the Sally Port Hotel. A few days later, the Police withdrew the pages with their details of the Sally Port record, which only served to feed the suspicions of an undercover mission. Under the pressure of the MI6 and the government, the admiralty hurriedly invented the spurious story that Crabb had lost a test in Stokes Bay.

Meeting records show panic at the highest levels of government. The authorities feared that if a body was, the Soviets could use the death of Crabbs for propaganda purposes. Howard Davis of National Archives told the BBC in 2006 that the file “makes it perfectly clear that this was an admiraral operation; they had nothing to do it and we see them trying to build a story that can Plausy -Rom Press.”

But despite the publication of some of the Government’s classified documents, exactly what happened at the diver that day in 1956 is still unknown. In 1990, Joseph Zwerkin, a former Soviet naval intelligence agent, said that a Soviet sniper on the deck of Ordzhonikidze had seen the diver in the water and shot him. In 2007, a 74 -year -old former Russian raan, Eduard Koltsov, said he cut Crabb’s throat in a underwater fight after catching him to unite a mine to Ordzhonikidze.

He has also suggested that, as Crabb was an associate of Sir Anthony Blunt, who was unmasked as a Soviet spy in 1979, he could have deserted. Nicholas Elliott, a former senior mi6 agent who was rumored who was involved in the final immersion of Crabb, believed that the 47 -year -old diver was known by his fond of whiskey and cigarettes, he had succumbed to the oxygen balance under water.

It can spend some time before the details or the destiny of the Crabbs come to light. While some documents on the matter have been published in the public domain, others have had their classified state extended by the Government and are not scheduled for its launch until 2057.

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