To the fifteen passengers and crew onboard the lumbering Short Sunderland flying boat, everything appeared normal and routine as it lifted off from the seaplane base at RAF Invergordon on Sunday, 25 August 1942. Its destination was Iceland, where one of the passengers, Air Commodore HRH Prince George, The Duke of Kent, supported by his entourage, was to undertake an inspection of various RAF bases in Iceland in his role as a senior RAF Welfare Officer. It was about thirty minutes later that disaster struck. At 13.42 hours, the Sunderland ploughed into a hillside on the remote headland known as Eagle's Rock, near Dunbeath in Caithness. Apart from the rear gunner, everyone on board, including Prince George, was instantly killed. There was a Court of Inquiry, which opened on 28 August and completed on 1 September. This resulted in a disagreement between two senior officers in relation to its conclusion. The funeral of the Duke surprisingly, took place on the 29th during the Court of Inquiry. There was also a rapid and thorough wreckage clearance of the scene by 16 September and the apparent disjointed recording of the various men’s deaths with the registrar. Pilot error was the official cause for the crash, allegedly ‘signed off’ by the Chief Inspector of Accidents, but hard evidence has been difficult to find since 1942. In fact, the Court of Inquiry report could not be sourced in the UK and had to be obtained from the Australian archives. Witness statements and any possible technical assessments have also disappeared and are not even contained in the Australian file. So where are they, and why have the documents for the second worst fatal air crash up to that period of time gone missing? In addition, where is the Duke of Kent’s diary and personal papers for this period? Where any plans drawn of the site and the position of the casualties? Where post mortems carried out and by whom? Over the years a variety of researchers, historians and authors have sought to identify whether the cause of the crash was pilot error or something else. Others have sought to explain it with a number of possible conspiracy theories including murder, a Nazi plot, a plot linked to Rudolf Hess and a peace initiative. The author, a former police senior investigating officer who was a member of the first Murder Review in London in the late 1990s, has sought to gather all the available evidence from a wide variety of resources. He looks at the history of the main characters and any possible reasons or motives they may have been targeted or involved in a plot. He seeks to find further evidence, even allowing after more than 80 years for hearsay evidence in his review. He also examines the investigation and what it perhaps should have done in 1942. While other books, newspapers and magazine articles have sought to establish the cause and or a conspiracy behind the fatal crash, this author covers all bases and asks what evidence is missing and why?

Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.

A Cambridge spy must unravel a dangerous mystery that goes all the way to the heart of the Third Reich—and the British Monarchy—in this vivid new spy thriller from a London Times bestselling author. Two old friends meeting in a remote castle in Sweden. They are cousins. One is Prince George, brother of the king of England, and the other Prince Philipp von Hesse, a close friend of Adolf Hitler and a committed Nazi. Days later Prince George is killed in a plane crash and the country weeps, but not everyone believes that it was an accident. When FDR, who happens to be a good friend of the prince, hears the tragic news, he wants to find out exactly what happened. The American OSS doesn’t believe the story that MI5 are pedalling. The situation is delicate. Professor Tom Wilde, Cambridge don, is called in to uncover the truth—but what he discovers is far more than he bargained for.

Numbed by grief and harboring shameful secrets, Lt. Adler Paxton ships to England with the US 357th Fighter Group in 1943. Determined to become an ace pilot, Adler battles the German Luftwaffe in treacherous dogfights in the skies over France as the Allies struggle for control of the air before the D-day invasion. Violet Lindstrom wanted to be a missionary, but for now she serves in the American Red Cross, where she arranges entertainment for the men of the 357th in the Aeroclub on base and sets up programs for local children. Drawn to the mysterious Adler, she enlists his help with her work and urges him to reconnect with his family after a long estrangement. Despite himself, Adler finds his defenses crumbling when it comes to Violet. But D-day draws near. And secrets can't stay buried forever. Bestselling author Sarah Sundin returns readers to the shores of Normandy, this time in the air, as the second Paxton brother prepares to face the past--and the most fearsome battle of his life.

On 12 August 1762, Queen Charlotte gave birth to her first child. Twenty-one years later, to the week, the 15th and youngest was born. All but two children survived to maturity. The eldest of King George III's children, who became Prince Regent and King George IV, is less remembered for his patronage of the arts than for his extravagance, and maltreatment of his wife Caroline. As Commander-in-Chief to the British army, the administrative qualities of Frederick, Duke of York are largely forgotten, while King William IV, usually dismissed as a figure of fun, brought a new affability to the monarchy which helped him through the storms engendered during the passage of the Great Reform Bill in 1832. The princesses, for many years victims of their parents' possessiveness, married late in life, if at all, and are passed off as non-entities. This objective portrayal of the royal family draws upon contemporary sources to lay to rest the gossip and exaggeration.