28 Facts About Lionel Crabb

Lionel Crabb was born in 1909 to Hugh Alexander Crabb and Beatrice of Streatham, south-west London.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Lionel Crabb was first an army gunner.

Lionel Crabb was one of a group of underwater clearance divers who checked for limpet mines in Gibraltar harbour during the period of Italian frogman and manned torpedo attacks by the Decima Flottiglia MAS.

Lionel Crabb was awarded the George Medal for his efforts and was promoted to lieutenant commander.

Lionel Crabb was an investigating diver in the suspicious death of General Sikorski of the Polish Army, whose B-24 Liberator aircraft crashed near Gibraltar in 1943.

Lionel Crabb moved to a civilian job and used his diving skills to explore the wreck of a Spanish galleon from the 1588 Armada, off Tobermory on the Isle of Mull.

Lionel Crabb then located a suitable site for a discharge pipe for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston.

Lionel Crabb later returned to work for the Royal Navy.

In 1952, Lionel Crabb married Margaret Elaine Player, the daughter of Henry Charles Brackenbury Williamson and the former wife of Ernest Albert Player.

In 1955, Lionel Crabb took frogman Sydney Knowles with him to investigate the hull of a Soviet Sverdlov-class cruiser to evaluate its superior manoeuvrability.

On 19 April 1956, Lionel Crabb dived into Portsmouth Harbour and his MI6 controller never saw him again.

British newspapers speculated that the Soviets had captured Lionel Crabb and taken him to the Soviet Union.

The Prime Minister told the House of Commons it was not in the public interest to disclose the circumstances in which Lionel Crabb was presumed to have met his end.

Hoole wrote that given the length of time that Lionel Crabb's body had been in the water, there was "nothing sinister" about the missing head and hands.

Lionel Crabb's ex-wife was not sure enough to identify the body, nor was Lionel Crabb's girlfriend, Pat Rose.

Lionel Crabb described the body as being clad in a faded green rubber frogman suit of a type issued to Royal Navy divers, and the remains of a white sweater.

Lionel Crabb failed to find any scars on the body and stated that it was not Crabb.

Lionel Crabb reported that he had found a scar in the shape of an inverted Y on the left side of the left knee, and a scar on the left thigh, about the size of a sixpenny coin.

When Lionel Crabb arrived, a struggle ensued in which Lionel Crabb's air supply was turned off and he passed out.

Lionel Crabb was then hauled on board and taken to the sick bay, having passed out a second time, where he was given medical treatment.

When Lionel Crabb had recovered sufficiently, the Soviets began to interrogate him.

Lionel Crabb was making a confession when he collapsed and did not recover.

Houghton advanced the theory that Lionel Crabb's mission was to plant a small limpet mine on Ordzhonikidze, the purpose of which was to detect whether the Soviet Navy was using the latest sonar technology.

On 16 November 2007, the BBC and the Daily Mirror reported that Eduard Koltsov, a Soviet frogman, claimed to have caught Lionel Crabb placing a mine on the hull of Ordzhonikidze and cut his throat.

Knowles has suggested that MI5 set up the mission to the Ordzhonikidze specifically to murder Lionel Crabb, and supplied Lionel Crabb with a new diving partner who was under orders to kill him.

Lionel Crabb was very fond of being a hero, and it is hard to imagine him jeopardising that status.

The British diving expert Rob Hoole wrote in 2007 that Lionel Crabb had probably died of oxygen poisoning or perhaps carbon dioxide poisoning, and that Lionel Crabb's age and poor health caused by his heavy drinking and smoking had made him unsuitable for the mission that he had been assigned.

In support of the death by misadventure theory, Hoole noted that before disappearing on his second attempt to dive Ordzhonikidze, Lionel Crabb had during his first attempt experienced equipment failure, which suggested that Lionel Crabb's equipment was not up to standard.