Did Germany kill the Duke of Kent?

Press, 27 August 1977, Page 16

Did Germany kill the Duke of Kent?

By

G. R. LANE

One cloudy summer lunch-time 35 years ago, on August 25, the Scottish hillside bordering the Moray Firth was shaken by the roar of exploding aviation fuel and scorched by the flames of death. The wreckage of a Sunderland flying boat smouldered on the heather and 14 men lay dead, among them the first son of the British king to die on active service since the fourteenth century. George Edward Alexander Edmund, Duke of Kent and the fourth son of King George V, died in circumstances, which, three and a half decades later, are still considered mysterious and even sinister. Now a new investigation has taken a searching look at the strange case of the doomed Sunderland and decided, as every other inquiry has done, that there was no logical reason for the crash. An author, Graham Bell, who has done research for two years on the Royal tragedy for a forthcoming book, confirms the view that it was a routine flight far away from enemy aircraft. The plane was in immaculate order, and the crew skilled and experienced. Mr Bell says: “There was absolutely no reason why, in ordinary circumstances, anything should go wrong. Yet one view, which has been persistently voiced over the years, is that the circumstances were in fact far from ordinary. “It is a view that I am inclined to accept.” He is not alone in expressing doubts about the flight. Many high-ranking former Intelligence officers still believe that Sunderland W4026 was lured to destruction by German operators posing as radio controllers of R.A.F. Oban.

Certainly there seems no logical reason why Flight-Lieutenant Frank Goyen, pilot of the Sunderland. should veer from the well-known, well-trav-elled route from Invergofdon to Iceland and sweep in an arc of destruction into a hillside at Eagle’s Rock, in the county of Caithness. “There is little doubt that if the death of the Duke of Kent, at 39 the prince charming of the Royal Family, was contrived with the purpose of lowering British morale, then its purpose was to some extent achieved,” Graham Bell says.

The Duke was tremendously popular. As chief welfare officer of the R.A.F. Home Command, he had done a superb job of team-building and spiritraising, especially on remote air stations where men felt they had been forgotten. It was on such a mission, to the bleak aerodromes of Iceland, that he died on August 25, 1942, leaving a widow and three young children — the present Duke of Kent, Princess Alexandra, and Prince Michael. Supporters of the sabotage theory say that there was absolutely no security cover for the Duke’s flight — when he left London’s Euston Station the day before, everyone, down to the most humble railway porter, knew he was bound for Iceland. At 12.30 p.m. the crew of 10, the Duke, and four other passengers went out by tender to Sunderland W4026. which was riding at anchor near Invergoron pier.

Weather reports were not promising. Low cloud covered most of Scotland, although forecasts indicated that the weather was

improving along the route the plane was scheduled to fly.

There was only one safe route that a loaded Sunderland could take to Iceland, and Flight-Lieutenant Goyen had travelled it dozens of times. This was to keep over the water of the Cromarty Firth and follow the Moray Firth out to the open sea. The heavy boats could not be trusted to gain sufficient height quickly enough to take them over the Caithness mountains with 100 per cent safety. And that was the only sort of safety in which the men in W4026 were interested. About 30 minutes after take-off the clouds had thinned enough for the coastline to be clearly seen below. The sole survivor of the wreck, a sergeant in the rear gun turret, remembers that about this time the plane began to veer towards the Caithness shore. This was not usual, but he assumed that the pilot was obeying radio instructions. If he was, they were not coming from Oban. By now, although noone on board knew it, the Sunderland was firmly on course for disaster. Shepherds in the hills saw the shadow of the plane in the mist and heard the crash. By the time a rescue party from the village of Berriedale had struggled across the hills in search of the wreck there was little left to find.

Only Sergeant Andrew Jack, thrown from the rear turret before the plane hit the ground, lived to tell the tale.

He staggered, seriously burned, to a cottage miles away. His faltering “The Duke of Kent is dead” was the first news the outside world had of the tragedy.

An elaborate court of inquiry found only what everyone already knew: that the Sunderland was badly off course.

The court could not explain why Goyen was flying over land, not sea, or why, if he had made a mistake, his co-pilot or navigator had not spotted it

Graham Bell explains: “One answer could, of course, be that they all heard the change of route on the radio and consequently expected Goyen to change direction. This, in my view, is probably what happened.”

But the web of uncertainty will probably never be unravelled. Today, all that is certain is that on that summer’s day 35 years ago, Britain lost 14 gallant men, including a prince. The reason for their death is a secret that the rocks and heather on a Scottish hillside have steadfastly refused to share.