OTD: 9th May

On 9th May 1956 Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden refused to reveal the details surrounding the disappearance of naval diver Commander Lionel "Buster" Crabb during a goodwill visit by the Soviet leadership.

He told a packed House of Commons that "the appropriate disciplinary steps" were being taken – heightening speculation that the Commander was on a secret spying mission for which permission had not been granted.

The speculation was proven right.

MI6 had recruited Crabb in 1956 to investigate the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze that had taken Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin on a diplomatic mission to Britain. According to Peter Wright in his 1987 book 'Spycatcher', Crabb was sent to investigate Ordzhonikidze's propeller, a new design that Naval Intelligence wanted to examine.

On 19 April 1956, Crabb dived into Portsmouth Harbour and his MI6 controller never saw him again. Crabb's companion in the Sally Port Hotel took all his belongings and even the page of the hotel register on which they had written their names. Ten days later British newspapers published stories about Crabb's disappearance in an underwater mission.

MI6 tried to cover up the mission. On 29 April, under instructions from Rear Admiral John Inglis, the Director of Naval Intelligence, the Admiralty announced that Crabb had vanished when he had taken part in trials of secret underwater apparatus in Stokes Bay on the Solent. The Soviets answered by releasing a statement stating that the crew of Ordzhonikidze had seen a frogman near the cruiser on 19 April.

British newspapers speculated that the Soviets had captured Crabb and taken him to the Soviet Union. The British Prime Minister Anthony Eden apparently disapproved of the fact that MI6 had operated without his consent in the UK (the preserve of the Security Service, "MI5"). Eden told MPs it was not in the public interest to disclose the circumstances in which the frogman met his end.

As information was declassified under the 50-year rule, new facts on Crabb's disappearance came to light. On 27 October 2006, the National Archives released papers relating to the fatal Ordzhonikidze mission. Sydney Knowles, a former diving partner of Crabb's, stated in a televised interview on Inside Out – South on 19 January 2007 that Crabb did not dive alone on his fatal last mission: "He told me they'd given him a buddy diver." Furthermore, papers released under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that there were other divers investigating Ordzhonikidze while the ship was in Portsmouth Harbour.

The cruiser Ordzhonikidze was later transferred by the Soviet government to Indonesia in 1962, where it operated as KRI Irian. The ship operated in the conflict against the Netherlands over West Papua and was later used as a floating detention centre for suspected communists during the Indonesian killings of 1965-1966. The cruiser was scrapped in 1971.

Crabb's fate remains unknown. Speculation ranges from his having been killed by the Soviets or even having defected, to the more mundane possibility of death due to equipment failure. Others, including his MI6 handler, have suggested that years of heavy smoking and drinking on the part of Crabb had left him in such poor health that he simply did not survive the dive.

The Cabinet papers concerning the Crabb affair will remain secret until 2057.

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