THE fate of a Naval hero said to have been the model for fictional spy James Bond was hushed up by the government, secret documents revealed yesterday.
Commander Lionel "Buster" Crabb, thought by some to have inspired Ian Fleming's novels, went missing during a dive off Portsmouth in 1956.
The government was keen to play down claims that he had been spying on Russian ships docked in the harbour
during the visit of Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Marshal Nikolai Bulganin.
The then prime minister, Sir Anthony Eden, told the House of Commons that it would "not be in the public interest" to disclose the circumstances of his death.
The cover-up prompted wild speculation for years, including claims that Crabb was alive and well and living in Russia as an officer in the red navy, and others that he was killed by the Soviets.
Secret documents relating to the controversy were released to the public yesterday at the National Archives in Kew, south-west London, revealing the determination of officials to cover up what really happened.
The official Admiralty line following the incident on 19 April was that Crabb had been "specially employed in connection with trials of certain underwater apparatus" and was missing presumed drowned.
But a memo from Rear Admiral JGT Inglis, director of naval intelligence, on 21 June, explained that it was "considered essential" to avoid implicating top officers. In a "bona fide" operation there would have been "immediate and extensive rescue operations", he explained, while an unnamed diving officer who was with Crabb would have also taken action.
Instead, as Inglis points out: "The moment it became clear that a mishap had occurred [name blanked out] was ordered to return to his ship and take no further part in the affair."
If it had been a "bona fide" operation, this would have exposed the other officer and the commander-in-chief to charges of "negligence, lack of humanity and error of judgment", which was considered unacceptable.
The secret account of an anonymous lieutenant-commander, who assisted Crabb on the day of his disappearance, was also seen publicly for the first time yesterday.
He said that he had been asked, as an expert diver, to assist him "entirely unofficially and in a strictly private capacity".
Navy officials were keen for this officer not to appear in public at a subsequent inquest after the headless body of a frogman was found in Chichester in June 1957.
It was decided to dispatch George William Bostock, a temporary clerical officer, to represent the Admiralty instead.
One of the documents explained: "He knows nothing of the background to the story and will not be able to answer any embarrassing questions even if they are asked."
Howard Davies, archivist at the National Archives, said: "The conclusion that most people will draw is that there is a real intelligence angle to this which the authorities aren't ready to release."
