Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma ( born Prince Louis of Battenberg ; 25 June 1900 – 27 August 1979 ), was a British statesman and naval officer, an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and second cousin once removed to Elizabeth II.

In 1979 Mountbatten was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army ( IRA ), who planted a bomb in his yacht, the Shadow V, at Mullaghmore, County Sligo, in the Republic of Ireland.

Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, Prince Louis of Battenberg and their four children Princess Alice of Battenberg, Louise, George and Louis. Lord Mountbatten was born as His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenberg, although his German styles and titles were dropped in 1917.

In June 1917, when the Royal Family stopped using their German names and titles and adopted the more British-sounding " Windsor ": Prince Louis of Battenberg became Louis Mountbatten, and was created Marquess of Milford Haven.

His second son acquired the courtesy title Lord Louis Mountbatten and was known as Lord Louis informally until his death.

David Kahanamoku, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince Edward, and Duke Kahanamoku, c. 1920. After his war service, and having been promoted to sub-lieutenant on 15 January 1919, Mountbatten attended Christ's College, Cambridge for two terms where he studied engineering in a programme that was specially designed for ex-servicemen.

In 1934, Mountbatten was appointed to his first command-the destroyer HMS Daring.

In July 1939 Mountbatten was granted a patent ( UK Number 508, 956 ) for a system for maintaining a warship in a fixed position relative to another ship.

When war broke out in 1939, Mountbatten became commander of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla aboard his ship Kelly, which was famous for its many daring exploits.

On the night 9 May / 10 May 1940, Kelly was torpedoed amidships by a German E-boat S 31 of the Dutch coast and Mountbatten subsequently commanded the 5th Destroyer Flotilla from the destroyer HMS Javelin.

Coward was a personal friend of Mountbatten, and copied some of his speeches into the film.

In August 1941, Mountbatten was appointed captain of the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious which lay in Norfolk, Virginia, for repairs following action at Malta in the Mediterranean in January.

Mountbatten was a favourite of Winston Churchill, ( although after 1948 Churchill never spoke to him again since he was famously annoyed with Mountbatten's later role in the independence of India and Pakistan ), and on 27 October 1941 Mountbatten replaced Roger Keyes as Chief of Combined Operations and received promotion to commodore.

Mountbatten, who was promoted to the acting rank of vice-admiral in March 1942, was in large part responsible for the planning and organisation of The Raid at St. Nazaire in mid 1942, an operation resulting in the disuse of one of the most heavily defended docks in Nazi-occupied France until well after war's end, the ramifications of which greatly contributed to allied supremacy in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Historian Brian Loring Villa concluded that Mountbatten conducted the raid without authority, but that his intention to do so was known to several of his superiors, who took no action to stop him.

Another project that Mountbatten proposed to Churchill was Project Habakkuk.

South East Asia Command was disbanded in May 1946 and Mountbatten returned home with the substantive rank of rear-admiral.

Mountbatten was fond of Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru and his liberal outlook for the country.

Attlee appointed Lord Louis Mountbatten Viceroy of India, and agreed to Mountbatten's request for plenipotentiary powers for negotiating Indian independence.

In August 1943, Churchill appointed Mountbatten the Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command ( SEAC ) with promotion to the acting rank of full admiral.

In August 1943, with the agreement of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Winston Churchill appointed Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia, a post he held until 1946.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Peirse was appointed the Air Commander in Chief under Mountbatten.

On October 4 Winston Churchill appointed Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten supreme Allied commander of the South East Asia Command ( SEAC ).

Admiral Lord Mountbatten was appointed as the Supreme Allied Commander of South-East Asia forces in October 1943.

In Autumn 1943, he was appointed to the South East Asia Command ( SEAC ) of the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II on the staff of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, where he served as principal administrative officer and from February 1944, as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, replacing General Vinegar Joe Stilwell.

Dr. Solandt joined the Canadian Army in February 1944 with the rank of Colonel and continued as Director of the Army Operational Research Group until 1945 when he was appointed Director of the Operational Research Division, South-East Asia Command, and scientific advisor to Lord Louis Mountbatten, then Commander-in-Chief S. E. A. C.

He was then selected as staff officer ( plans ) and fleet navigating officer in the Mediterranean where Admiral the Earl Mountbatten of Burma appointed him as special assistant to the newly created Chief of NATO ’ s Allied Staff.

* Personal Diary of Admiral the Lord Louis Mountbatten, South-East Asia, 1943-1946 ( 1988 )

She writes in the book India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During the Transfer of Power that, while her mother, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, and Jawaharlal Nehru, the future Prime Minister of India, were deeply in love, " the relationship remained platonic ".

Pursuing his interests in technological development and gadgetry, Mountbatten joined the Portsmouth Signals School in August 1924 and then went on to briefly study electronics at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

Mountbatten served his final posting at the Admiralty as First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff from April 1955 to July 1959, the position which his father had held some forty years prior.

He assisted in planning the raids under Mountbatten and was the Naval Commander during the misconceived Dieppe Raid in 1942.

Mountbatten attended the funeral of King George VI in June 1952 and, having been promoted to the substantive rank of full admiral on 27 February 1953, he attended the coronation of the Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953.

Peter Wright, in his book Spycatcher, claimed that in 1967 Mountbatten attended a private meeting with press baron and MI5 agent Cecil King, and the Government's chief scientific adviser, Solly Zuckerman.

King and Peter Wright were members of a group of thirty MI5 officers who wanted to stage a coup against the then crisis-stricken Labour Government of Harold Wilson, and King allegedly used the meeting to urge Mountbatten to become the leader of a government of national salvation.

He from time to time strongly upbraided the Prince for showing tendencies towards the idle pleasure-seeking dilettantism of his predecessor as Prince of Wales, King Edward VIII, whom Mountbatten had known well in their youth.

Cudlipp arranged for Mountbatten to meet King on 8 May 1968.

Mountbatten insisted that his friend, Zuckerman, be present ( Zuckerman says that he was urged to attend by Mountbatten ’ s son-in-law, Lord Brabourne, who worried King would lead Mountbatten astray ).

King asked Mountbatten if he would be willing to head an emergency government.

Zuckerman said the idea was treason and Mountbatten in turn rebuffed King.

Perhaps significantly, when King penned a strongly worded editorial against Wilson for the Daily Mirror two days after his abortive meeting with Mountbatten, the unanimous reaction of IPC's directors was to fire him with immediate effect from his position as Chairman.

Prince Louis of Battenberg changed his surname to Mountbatten ( its literal English translation ) during the First World War at the request of King George V. When then-Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg ( the royal house of Denmark and Norway and the deposed royal house of Greece ) took British citizenship, he used this surname since he descends from the Battenberg family through his mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg.

In 1947, Princess Elizabeth ( as Queen Elizabeth II was then titled ), heir presumptive to King George VI, married Philip Mountbatten.

He wrote a number of pieces connected to his royal post, including Mass of Christ the King ( 1978 ) ( see below ) and Lament in Memory of Lord Mountbatten of Burma ( 1980 ).

The attendance included King Baudouin of the Belgians, the Vice-President of the United States, Spiro T. Agnew ( representing President Nixon ), Earl Mountbatten of Burma ( representing Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom ), British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and former prime minister Edward Heath.

George VI continued to hold the title King of India for two years during the short Governor-Generalships of Lord Mountbatten and of C. Rajagopalachari, until India became a republic on 26 January 1950.

Wells, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Fritz Kreisler, Tony Duquette, Amelia Earhart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Crawford, Noël Coward, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, Pearl S. Buck, Charles Lindbergh, Max Reinhardt, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Edison, Lillian Gish, Gloria Swanson, the Duke and Duchess of Alba, the King and Queen of Siam, Austen Chamberlain, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko ,, and Sir Harry Lauder.

*** Princess Louise of Battenberg ( 1889 – 1965 ), renounced her title in 1917 to become Lady Louise Mountbatten, married the future King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden in 1923.

Prince Louis's second daughter Princess Louise of Battenberg become Queen Consort of Sweden as she married King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden in 1923 and his younger son Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma served as the last Viceroy of India.

Other notable visitors, to cite just a few, have included: Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Lord Mountbatten of Burma of the United Kingdom.

* Louise Mountbatten, 1889 – 1965, born Princess Louise of Battenberg, second wife of King Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden and Princess of Sweden