By that time, Crabb's heavy drinking and smoking had taken its toll on his health, and he was not the diver that he had been in World War II. That same year, in March, Crabb was made to retire due to his age, but a year later he was recruited by MI6. According to Knowles, they found a circular opening at the ship's bow and inside it a large propeller that could be directed to give thrust to the bow. In 1955, Crabb took frogman Sydney Knowles with him to investigate the hull of a Soviet Sverdlov-class cruiser to evaluate its superior manoeuvrability. The couple separated in 1953 and divorced about two years later. In 1952, Crabb married Margaret Elaine Player, the daughter of Henry Charles Brackenbury Williamson and the former wife of Ernest Albert Player. He twice dived to investigate sunken Royal Navy submarines - HMS Truculent in January 1950 and HMS Affray in 1951 - to find out whether there were any survivors. He later returned to work for the Royal Navy. He then located a suitable site for a discharge pipe for the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston. After 1947, he was demobilised from the military.Ĭrabb 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. After the war, Crabb was stationed in Palestine and led an underwater explosives disposal team that removed mines placed by Jewish divers from the Palyam, the maritime force of the Palmach elite Jewish fighting force during the years of Mandatory Palestine. īy this time, he had gained the nickname "Buster", after the American actor and swimmer Buster Crabbe. He was also an investigating diver in the suspicious death of General Sikorski of the Polish Army, whose B-24 Liberator aircraft crashed into the sea off Gibraltar in 1943. In 1943 he became Principal Diving Officer for Northern Italy, and was assigned to clear mines in the ports of Livorno and Venice he was later created an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for these services. Awards Ĭrabb was awarded the George Medal for his efforts and was promoted to lieutenant commander. ![]() Their bodies were recovered, and their swimfins and Scuba sets were taken and from then on used by Sydney Knowles and Crabb. On 8 December 1942, during one such attack, two of the Italian frogmen, Lieutenant Visintini and Petty Officer Magro, died, probably killed by small explosive charges thrown from harbour-defence patrol boats, a tactic said to have been introduced by Crabb. At first they swam by breaststroke without swimfins. They dived with oxygen rebreathers, Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus, which until then had not been used much if at all for swimming down from the surface. He 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. Initially, Crabb's job was to disarm mines that British divers removed, but eventually he decided to learn to dive. ![]() The next year he was sent to Gibraltar where he worked in a mine and bomb disposal unit to remove the Italian limpet mines that enemy divers had attached to the hulls of Allied ships. ![]() Second World War Īt the outbreak of the Second World War, Crabb was first an army gunner. In his youth Crabb held many jobs but after two years training for a career at sea in the school ship HMS Conway he joined the merchant navy and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve before the Second World War. They were a poor family Hugh Crabb was a commercial traveller for a firm of photographic merchants. Lionel Crabb was born in 1909 to Hugh Alexander Crabb and Beatrice (née Goodall) of Streatham, south-west London. Lieutenant-Commander Lionel Kenneth Phillip Crabb, OBE, GM (28 January 1909 – presumed dead 19 April 1956), known as Buster Crabb, was a Royal Navy frogman and diver who vanished during a reconnaissance mission for MI6 around a Soviet cruiser berthed at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1956. Officer of the Order of the British Empire
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