The secret document that puts the death of George VI’s brother in a new light
It is a royal death that has never been satisfactorily explained. Officially, George VI’s brother, the Duke of Kent, died when the RAF aircraft he was on crashed in dense fog near Dunbeath, Caithness, on August 25 1942. Announced to a shocked nation, who had taken the charismatic prince to their heart following the abdication of his eldest brother Edward VIII in 1936, the disaster, which also claimed the lives of 13 other passengers and crew, was blamed on poor weather and pilot error.
But suspicion has always surrounded that verdict. An RAF Court of Inquiry, hastily convened just three days after the crash, reported its findings in under a week – and almost as quickly, before anyone could question the thoroughness of the investigation, the report went missing. It has never been seen since.
In addition, despite the 39-year-old Duke being the uncle of the late Queen, and a popular figure during his lifetime (a million people flocked into The Mall to witness his 1934 wedding to the exquisite Princess Marina of Greece), no public monument has ever been erected, no official biography commissioned, and no charity ever set up in his name. He has been airbrushed from history.
Why? It is a royal mystery that has been compared to the 1483 disappearance of the Princes in the Tower, and, over the years, researchers, filmmakers and biographers have vainly attempted to get to the bottom of it.
In the absence of any concrete information, a clutch of wild theories has emerged, including the idea that the Nazi deputy führer, Rudolf Hess, was on board the fateful flight as part of secret plans to negotiate a peace deal, and that it was the Duke himself piloting the aircraft. Other theories include the presence of an unnamed woman on board.
Inquiries to the National Archives, the RAF Air Historical Branch, the Royal Archives at Windsor, the House of Commons library, the Defence Accident Investigation Branch, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, Police Scotland and the Procurator Fiscal Service have all produced the same answer: we don’t have the Court of Inquiry report, we’ve never seen it.
However, one person has now brought to light the disappeared document – or at least a significant part of it – hidden in the papers of Australian Pilot Officer Sydney Wood Smith, the 24-year-old third pilot on the plane. And it blasts a dozen holes in the official explanation for the crash, while suggesting evidence was covered up to spare the reputation of a senior officer and hide a catalogue of errors by the RAF.
Michael Morgan, a distinguished former detective chief inspector and senior investigating officer at both the Metropolitan and Kent police forces, features the document in a new book, entitled simply The Death of Prince George, Duke of Kent, and claims the man blamed for the crash – the Australian pilot Frank Goyen – may not have been at the controls, but instead a senior officer, Wing Cdr Thomas Moseley.
An examination by Morgan of the service record of PO George Saunders, the plane’s navigator, also reveals that he lacked the experience required for such a flight. Furthermore, a compass on the plane had not been set or had been set incorrectly, claims Morgan. And the crew’s flight plan, which took the craft – a Short Sunderland flying boat – over land rather than around the Orkney Islands, contradicted regulations for a seaplane.
“In many ways, I believe the authorities may have been only too happy for the conspiracy theories to later develop and flourish – acting as a form of disinformation, diverting attention away from the real issues,” says Morgan. “The blaming of Flt Lt Frank Goyen is a travesty of justice. I have found before that the RAF is very quick to put the blame on the pilot to deflect from others who may be responsible. In terms of the RAF, this is a catalogue of complete mismanagement.”
Morgan’s theory that Wing Cdr Moseley was flying the plane is supported by the Duke’s close friend and neighbour, the MP Henry “Chips” Channon, who, in an overlooked diary entry for the following day, recorded that he had seen the “Air Ministry report” and that it was Moseley at the controls.
The one survivor of the crash, Flt Sgt Andrew Jack, who signed the Official Secrets Act, is also said to have gone to his grave angry that Goyen had been blamed for the crash and the loss of so many lives.
Why Thomas Moseley would have been at the controls, and why the inexperienced Saunders was given the role of navigator, is open to question, but evidence from numerous sources reviewed by Morgan paints a picture of RAF incompetence and mismanagement – and aircrew tossing a coin to see who would do what job.
The officers chosen to man the Court of Inquiry were also of inappropriate rank for a task of such magnitude, says Morgan. They were the equivalent of two captains and a major, only one of whom had any experience of piloting flying boats.
In his book, Morgan also reveals that the chief inspector of the Air Accidents Investigation Board, when learning who was aboard the doomed seaplane, refused to take part in the investigation – but apparently signed off its findings anyway. In addition, numerous important witnesses were ignored by the Inquiry. These included the Marquess of Titchfield (later Duke of Portland) – a cousin by marriage of King George VI – who was one of the first people on the crash site, heading an impromptu search party. His testimony would have been vital to a full understanding of what happened that day, but he failed to volunteer the information – or wasn’t asked.
Meanwhile, others who were first at the scene – local crofters and gamekeepers – were also never called to give witness, and the written evidence in the final document bore signs of having been “cherry-picked”. In other words, according to Morgan, witnesses were given leading questions “to direct the course of the evidence”.
There was also a curious debate in Whitehall, following the crash, as to what recognition to give John Kennedy, the local GP who attended the scene. For unspecified reasons, an OBE was deemed inappropriate and he was awarded the MVO, a medal in the king’s private gift. Instead of receiving it in the ordinary way at an investiture at Buckingham Palace, it was handed to Kennedy through the open window of a railway train standing at a station.
Morgan also states that at the crash site, women’s clothing and shoes were discovered, and a heavy smell of perfume hung in the air, despite the fact that women were banned from operational flights during the war. Pairs of white gloves and a number of ladies’ shoes were found strewn around the wreckage. Furthermore, the number of people on board was never satisfactorily confirmed, giving rise to the theory that another, anonymous person perished alongside those named.
Again, Channon’s diaries support this – the Duke’s police escort, Sergeant Evans, due to accompany his master to Iceland, was forced to drop out of the trip when he got to the take-off aerodrome at RAF Invergordon – “there were not enough places”.
The crash site was immediately cleared and landscaped “on the orders of the king” – the only known instance in the war of such an air crash clear-up. Officers and men who were part of the site clear-up were dispersed after the event, sent to different postings in other parts of the country, and ordered never to speak about what they saw.
Morgan also tells the curious story of Dorothea Gray, based on an examination of her personal papers. A WAAF officer, Gray was instructed to inventory the Duke’s possessions which had been recovered from the crash site, but when she returned from lunch, found they’d mysteriously disappeared. Gray also recalled a rumour which circulated at the time that civilian meteorologists had given a wrong weather forecast for the fatal flight. Immediately after the crash, they were hastily placed in RAF uniform, making them subject to King’s Regulations and thus stifled.
The War Cabinet, headed by Winston Churchill, never even discussed the crash in the two meetings which immediately followed the fatality, despite its being the second largest air disaster of the war thus far: according to the Cabinet minutes, ministers received no information about it. Yet Churchill wrote to the king saying he’d been commanded by his ministers to offer their condolences for the loss of the Duke. How could they if, officially, they knew nothing of what happened?
One further question which remains unanswered is – what exactly was Kent doing on his mission to Iceland?
In the preceding week he’d dined at the Bon Viveur restaurant in Mayfair with US General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, arguably the most powerful American military figure in Britain at the time. According to Robert Prentice, biographer of Kent’s sister-in-law, Princess Olga of Greece, the two men planned to meet again in Iceland, a country annexed by Britain in 1940 to prevent a German invasion, but now under the control of the Americans. The pair had been introduced by Nancy, Lady Astor, the Conservative MP and social mover-and-shaker during the wartime years.
Kent had expressed disillusion with his current job, which consisted of wearing his RAF uniform handsomely and visiting troops to tell them, “Well done, chaps.” After his visit to the United States in 1941, where he was welcomed as the personal guest of President Roosevelt, he felt he was cut out for something much bigger.
Chips Channon was a close friend of the Kents and their most frequent visitor at Coppins, their Buckinghamshire home. Just before the crash, Channon listened as the prince poured out his frustration at the lowliness (as he saw it) of his current employment.
“He said he was not given sufficient scope for his latent and many gifts, [then, blaming his brother] proceeded to abuse the king and queen, saying they are inept, ineffectual and inexpert... and are treacherous friends and hopelessly lazy,” Channon recorded. “How the Duke hates them!”
Clearly his ambitions – thwarted in large part by the king’s powerful private secretary Sir Alec Hardinge, who mistrusted him – had been deliberately scuppered at Palace level, so now Kent rested his hopes on this second meeting with General Spaatz, who would go on to play a significant role in the turning-point invasion of north Africa and the overall Allied victory.
Those plans and ambitions ended in broken pieces on a Scottish hillside.
Michael Morgan holds out the hope that police records, currently embargoed for 105 years, will reveal the complete story and that, in 2047, we will finally learn exactly what happened to the charismatic Prince George, Duke of Kent.
His loss, not only to his family but to the nation, was immeasurable. “His sad and dramatic death is the end of an epoch,” mourned Chips Channon. “London, and life, will be more colourless and less gay without him – that elaborate, eager, excited elf. And I shall miss his gossip, his maniacal laugh, and his haunting personality.”
The Death of Prince George, Duke of Kent, 1942 (Pen & Sword Books, £25) is available to buy here