Russian claims he killed frogman who inspired James Bond

One of the most enduring mysteries of the Cold War – who killed Commander Lionel "Buster" Crabb? – may finally have been solved, reports The Times.

A retired Russian frogman claimed that he cut the British diver's throat in Portsmouth harbour when he caught him placing a mine on the hull of a ship that had brought Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders to Britain in April 1956.

But the claim was dismissed by one of Commander Crabb's relatives, who said that it was unthinkable that a Royal Navy diver would have deliberately endangered a visiting ship.

According to a BBC News report, the diver, Eduard Koltsov, spoke to a Russian documentary team because he needed to tell the truth before his own death.

Mr Koltsov, who was 23 at the time, said that he was ordered to investigate suspicious activity around the ship, the cruiser Ordzhonikidze, when he spotted Commander Crabb fixing a mine to the hull.

He then showed the documentary team the dagger he claims that he used to kill the Englishman and the Red Star medal that he was later awarded secretly for his bravery.

“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,” Mr Koltsov told the film crew, according to the BBC. “I swam closer and saw that he was fixing a mine.”

Crabb was a pioneering Royal Navy frogman who had received the George Cross in 1944 for removing German limpet mines from merchant ships in Gibraltar harbour. He remained in the Navy after the war, rising to the rank of commander, and was later described as having helped to inspire Ian Fleming's fictional British spy James Bond.

Although by 1956 Crabb had already retired from the navy until, at the age of 46, he was recruited by MI6, the foreign intelligence service, for a final assignment: spying on the Ordzhonikidze in Portsmouth harbour.

Commander Crabb was last seen alive on April 19, 1956. The Navy announced ten days later that he was missing, presumed dead, after disappearing while testing certain underwater apparatus in nearby Stokes Bay.

But it soon became clear that there had been a cover-up when it emerged that the head of the Portsmouth CID had ripped out the pages from the register of the hotel where Crabb had stayed. Only a week later, the mystery deepened when an assistant naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy in London let slip that a frogman had been seen near Khrushchev's ship while it was docked at Portsmouth.

The Government of the time was determined to put a lid on the story. Sir Anthony Eden, then the Prime Minister, told the Commons that it would “not be in the public interest” to disclose the circumstances of the frogman's death. The affair even led to the dismissal of Sir John Sinclair, the MI6 chief.

It was not until June 1957, 14 months after his disappearance, that a headless body in a frogman's suit was washed up off Chichester. Crabb's relatives could not identify it, but a coroner said that he was satisfied that it was the diver.

Lomond Handley, 61, from Poole, Dorset, is one of Commander Crabb's few living relatives. Her mother, Eileen, was brought up with him and spent her life trying to find out what really happened to him.

Ms Handley said of the Russian claims: “I find it astonishing and hard to believe. For any of Her Majesty’s Navy to endanger a visiting ship would have been unthinkable.

“Any explosion would have embarrassed our Government and destroyed the relationship between the British and the Soviet Union which our Government was trying to build up. It’s possible that Crabb may have gone down to see whether there were mines and it would have been his duty to get rid of them.”

She added: “It’s absolutely incredible and I find it hard to believe that any Soviet divers or sailors would have committed murder of a British sailor in our waters. What he is admitting to, this gentleman, is committing an act of murder. I simply don’t believe it.”

Thanks to `kirby girl` for the alert.

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