Was the death of Queen's favourite uncle in 1942 plane crash covered up by the Palace?
A sunny afternoon at the private chapel of Windsor Castle and a christening celebration for the child who grew up to be Prince Michael of Kent, the Queens 79-year-old cousin. As the family party broke up that day in 1942, the newborns father kissed goodbye to his niece, the young Princess Elizabeth, and promised to visit her at Balmoral in the coming weeks but first he must go abroad on duty. However, she never saw Prince George, Duke of Kent again. Within days the future Queens favourite uncle was dead, killed when his RAF flying boat crashed into a Scottish mountainside, its 2,400 gallons of fuel erupting in a horrifying fireball. All on board, except one, perished instantly. The death of the Prince became the highest-profile fatality of the Second World War  no royal prince had given his life in defence of his country for 500 years. But after three years of conflict, the Royal Family joined with tens of thousands of families in mourning the loss of a loved one  bringing rulers and ruled that much closer. Georgie Kent was a wildly popular figure  glamorous, debonair, sexy. At the time of the Abdication, six years earlier, it was thought in court circles that he might succeed the throne in preference to his elder brother Bertie. In 1942 the Queen's favourite uncle was killed when his RAF flying boat crashed into a Scottish mountainside with its 2,400 gallons of fuel erupting in a horrifying fireball. See box below for royal party  Georgies elegant wife Marina, granddaughter of the king of Greece, had borne him two sons and a daughter and many favoured a male line of succession which Bertie could not provide. Decorated with the Order of the Garter, and a rear admiral in the Royal Navy, Georgie was a vital asset to an embattled Royal Family still struggling to wipe the slate clean after his eldest brother Edward VIIIs shabby escape to foreign parts with his American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Georgies death at the age of 39 was a colossal shock to the nation. Yet, after a hastily arranged funeral held just four days later, no public memorial was erected in memory of him  no statue, no official biography, no charity bearing his name. He was airbrushed from history. But now I can reveal that the Establishments connivance at a cover-up may well have been because the Prince had secretly and illegally  smuggled a woman lover on board the fatal flight. The known facts about that journey are scant. Namely, that the Short Sunderland flying boat W4026 took off from Invergordon, on the Cromarty Firth on the east coast of Scotland, at 1.10pm on August 25, 1942, on its way to Iceland  the frozen north, Georgie called it  where he was due to inspect bases. Thirty minutes later, a huge explosion was heard in the village of Dunbeath, 60 miles from Invergordon. In a thick cloud of sea mist, the aircraft had ploughed into a craggy hill called Eagles Rock. A court of inquiry was set up, held in private, and a brief rsum of its findings read out in the House of Commons. Families of the 14 dead were not allowed to attend the court and in some cases had difficulty gaining access to any information about the loss of their loved ones. Later it emerged that all documentation relating to the court of inquiry had mysteriously gone missing. The National Archives, the RAF Historical Branch, the Imperial War Museum and the Royal Archives at Windsor all deny having possession of the key records relating to the death of George Vs son and his fellow aviators. Significantly, the flight briefing which the pilot, Australian Flight Lieutenant Frank Goyen, was instructed to follow by superior officers has also disappeared. Whos who at the royal party Princess Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth Prince Edward of Kent King George VI Queen Mary George, Duke of Kent Princess Alexandra of Kent Prince Michael of Kent Marina, Duchess of Kent Advertisement  This is a very surprising vacuum of information  after all, the Duke of Kents death was the most talked-about British fatality of the Second World War  and, inevitably, has spawned countless conspiracy theories over the years. Whatever the truth, the fortunes of war were decidedly against Britain in the summer of 1942 and successive military losses and victories quickly dominated the news again. Prince George was forgotten  the circumstances of his death left undisturbed. But some years ago, while conducting research into the crash, I was contacted by Leading Aircraftsman Arthur Baker, service number 1505244, who told me hed been part of the RAF search-and-rescue team sent to retrieve the bodies on Eagles Rock that hot August afternoon. I met him in Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire, where he proudly laid out his medals and photographs of himself as part of the RAF Regiments 2847 Squadron B Flight, based at Skitten near the crash site. He reeled off the names of his comrades and his Flying Officer leaders before telling me what he witnessed. Id just returned from leave, he recalled. We were put in lorries and taken up to the crash site. We were told, Find the bodies, bring them here.  The site was a terrible mess  the aircraft had totally disintegrated, smashed to bloody bits. There was one body thrown well away. He didnt seem very damaged but his eyes were hanging on his cheeks. In his left hand he still had a fan of playing cards  Lexicon, I think  and he was lying on his back. Hed been thrown a good 50 yards from the rest of the crash, landing on thick heather. It was the Duke of Kent, instantly recognisable in his flying suit. We got him back to where the main crash was, carrying him on a piece of metal from the wreckage. Then we continued with the search. There was a strong smell of scent in the air and suddenly I saw ladies clothes lying about  and a jewel case. Then I saw this body, badly damaged with one leg nearly severed. I thought, thats not a man, and, to make certain, I opened up the front of her clothes and there were a womans breasts. I shouted to my sergeant Woman! and he told me to cover her up quick and get her away, which we did. Then the sergeant ordered, What youve seen here, you speak about to nobody.   During the war, it was forbidden for women to fly on operational missions. It would be unlikely  given their precious and important Royal cargo  that any crew member would have smuggled a girlfriend aboard the plane. Therefore, if there was a woman aboard, she had to be there at the invitation of the Duke. Given his well-documented track record of serial infidelity, that would come as no great surprise. On the evening of the tragedy, the Kings punctilious private secretary, Sir Alan Tommy Lascelles, noted the loss of the Duke of Kent in his diary, adding, There were 16 people in the aeroplane. Yet only 15 have been officially accounted for  the Duke plus 13 RAF dead, and the one survivor, rear-gunner Flight Sergeant Andy Jack. In 2003, Andy Jacks niece, Margaret Harris, broke the eerie silence over the Dukes death. She recalled that her uncle, badly burned, was taken to hospital where the first person to visit him was a senior officer who ordered him to sign the Official Secrets Act. Later, Jack was promoted to officer status. After that, until his death in 1978, he never spoke of the circumstances surrounding the crash, but his niece revealed that he had told her father  Jacks brother  he could no longer keep the secret from the family. A mysterious extra person was on the plane, she said, without specifying the extra passengers gender. As I pursued my researches, I spoke to the now-dead Earl of Dudley, whose family had been close to the Royals for two generations and in whose home Prince George and his wife Princess Marina spent part of their honeymoon. He spoke freely of Prince Georges love of women and, in particular of one inamorata, the American jazz pianist Edythe dErlanger. Lord Dudley described one occasion, in late 1941, when the Prince leant over the piano and whispered in her ear as she played at her London flat. She had eyes only for the Prince, he said. But it wasnt Edythe dErlanger in the plane. The only conclusion to be drawn  if Arthur Bakers testimony about finding a womans body among the wreckage is to be believed  is that the same figure who silenced Andy Jack visited the dead womans family and put to them the undeniable fact that she had broken the law, compromised a military operation and, by accepting a lift in the flying boat, had brought shame upon their family and, incidentally, the Royal Family, too. Georgies elegant wife Marina (pictured together), granddaughter of the king of Greece, had borne him two sons and a daughter and many favoured a male line of succession which Bertie could not provide  That, in a high-born aristocratic family  and Georgie didnt bed any other kind  might just be enough to silence them. A number of unanswered questions hang in the air to this day. The crash occurred at about 1.40pm, yet the Dukes brother, King George VI, holidaying not far away at Balmoral, was not informed until around 8.30pm, when a courtier interrupted a family dinner to break the news. Three weeks later, the King visited Eagles Rock to inspect the hillside. All evidence of the accident had been removed, with heather replanted and turf relaid to expunge the horrors of that day. It is the only example I could find during the whole of the Second World War where such remedial action occurred after an aircraft crash. I have spoken with the families of two others killed in the crash. Arielle Eweson was married to Michael Strutt, the Princes equerry at the time and another of the fatalities. She said: Somebody rang me up and told me point-blank my husband was dead. And that was it  I never learned any more. I was never told about the findings of the inquiry. No effort was made, no explanation offered as to what happened.  After the war, Allan Goyen, brother of the pilot, Frank Goyen, made it his first duty to travel to England from his home in Australia to talk to the sole crash survivor, Andy Jack. But Jack dodged his questions and stuck to a number of part-recollections. The cover-up was complete. And repeated requests to government and military departments by researchers, biographers and journalists since 1945 have failed to establish why such a determined news blackout was put in place, apparently to protect the reputation of the most famous casualty of the Second World War. Having written about royalty for much of my professional life, I considered writing a book about what I knew, but the story is so fantastic that a mere biography could not do it justice. So, adding my own belief of what actually happened, Ive turned it into a novel, Burying The Crown, written under my fiction name TP Fielden. Georgie Kent had three children  Prince Michael of Kent, the present Duke of Kent, 85, and Princess Alexandra, 84. If they know, theyre not saying.