Background
Lionel Crabb was born in 1909 to Hugh and Beatrice Crabb of Streatham, south-west London.
Lionel Crabb was born in 1909 to Hugh and Beatrice Crabb of Streatham, south-west London.
He studied at Brighton College.
An affable drifter, he pumped gas at a service station in Wingap, Pa, before joining a cousin in a London advertising business and selling out as soon as the business prospered. Crabb spent time in Singapore on two occasions before returning to London in 1938. Virtually destitute, he tried to join the navy, a childhood ambition, but was rejected for being too old at 28. Crabb was a merchant seaman gunner for a year before he was accepted by the Royal Navy Patrol Service. Ll Crabb went to Gibraltar in Nov 42 as a mine and bomb disposal officer. Prince BORGHESE’s frogmen were attacking British ships here and elsewhere, and Crabb became involved in developing countermeasures. Although “opposed to any form of exercise”, always a weak swimmer, and with poor vision in his left eye, the gnome-like seaman showed an aptitude for developing equipment and techniques for underwater warfare. Rising to the rank of commander, becoming legendary for his exploits in the Mediterranean, Crabb was awarded the George Medal in 1944. At end of the war he was appointed to the DSO for work as head of the Venice Underwater Working Party. He went on to perform antisabotage duties in Israel, remaining involved in diving, got interested in underwater photography, and took part in several marine rescue and salvage operations in England. The famous frogman was again running out of money when MI6 gave him a covert assignment. The Admiralty wanted to know whether there was something special about the hull or propellor of the Soviet heavy cruiser Ordzhonikidze to make her so fast. An earlier effort had been aborted, but the big ship and two destroyers lay in Portsmouth harbor after bringing Bulganin and Khrushchev for a state visit in the spring of 1956.
Overweight, overage, and ripe for a heart attack (ibid.), Crabb and a Bernard Smith checked into a Portsmouth hotel on 17 Apr 56 and registered under their own names. Two days later it was reported that Crabb had disappeared in the harbor, “presumed drowned.” The Admiralty denied knowledge of any “dirty tricks,” and PM Anthony Eden said in the House of Commons on 4 May that “It would not be in the public interest to disclose the circumstances in which Commander Crabb is presumed to have met his death." Two days later Moscow Radio broadcast a note in which the Soviets said a frogman had been seen floating between the Soviet destroyers at 7:30 AM on 19 Apr and said it was confirmed that British naval authorities had carried out secret underwater tests around the Soviet warships that “resulted in the death of the British frogman." (Pugh, 206.) A headless, mutilated, unidentifiable corpse in a frogman’s suit later washed ashore near Portsmouth. The British government implied that Crabb had been freelancing.