2. The Crash At Eagle’s Rock
Like his brother King Edward VIII, it was rumored that Prince George, Duke of Kent, was pro-Nazi and favored appeasing Adolf Hitler. He was also an alleged bisexual drug addict. So when the plane carrying him mysteriously crashed in 1942, talk of assassination inevitably surfaced.
George Edward Alexander Edmund was the fourth son of King George V. Dashing and handsome, he was even more popular with the public than his speech-challenged brother Bertie, King George VI. In 1934, he married his second cousin, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, but he also allegedly had relationships with playwright Noel Coward, spy Anthony Blunt, and author Barbara Cartland. George hung out with American socialite Kiki Preston, the “girl with the silver syringe” and was said to be a user of cocaine and morphine himself.
On August 25, 1942, as World War II raged, George and 15 other companions took off on an RAF Sunderland flying boat from Cromarty Firth in Scotland and headed for Iceland on a “special mission.” A short time later, Flight W-4206 came crashing down on Eagle’s Rock, the fireball incinerating everything and everyone on board save for the lone survivor, Flight Sgt. Andrew Jack.
Such accidents were numerous in the North Highland’s atrocious weather, and an official inquiry blamed the crash of Flight W-4206 on a “serious mistake in airmanship.” But rumors of a cover-up were already buzzing. Was it really the work of enemy saboteurs? Or was it an inside job to eliminate the Duke with pro-German sympathies?
It appears that the only survivor, Flight Sgt. Jack, was compelled to sign the Official Secret Act, as he refused for a long time to divulge any details of what really occurred during the fatal flight. When Jack finally told his family, it was to reveal that it was George, not the pilot, who was at the controls when the plane crashed, and that someone was on board who shouldn’t have been there.
The identity of this mysterious person has fueled speculation. It was suggested that it was George’s then-current lover. (Jack never specified if it was a man or a woman.) More bizarre was the theory that the person was Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess and that he and the Duke were on the way to Sweden to negotiate peace. A double allegedly stood in for Hess in the Nuremberg trials and subsequently died in Spandau prison.
Discussion about this post