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.

Mountbatten was appointed a Personal Naval Aide-de-Camp to King George VI on 23 June 1936, and, having joined the Naval Air Division of the Admiralty in July 1936, he attended the coronation of King George VI in May 1937.

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.

Gandhi with Lord and Lady Mountbatten, 1947Given the British government's recommendations to grant independence quickly, Mountbatten concluded that a united India was an unachievable goal and resigned himself to a plan for partition, creating the independent nations of India and Pakistan.

Mountbatten was married on 18 July 1922 to Edwina Cynthia Annette Ashley, daughter of Wilfred William Ashley, later 1st Baron Mount Temple, himself a grandson of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury.

Four years later Mountbatten secured an invitation for himself and Amanda to accompany Charles on his planned 1980 tour of India.

Mountbatten was buried in Romsey Abbey after a televised funeral in Westminster Abbey which he himself had comprehensively planned .< ref >

In addition, Mountbatten himself had withdrawn from the project.

On 14 July 1917, Prince Louis of Battenberg (" Prince Louis I ") assumed the surname Mountbatten ( having rejected an alternative translation, " Battenhill ") for himself and his descendants and was created Marquess of Milford Haven .< ref > Duffy, Michael.

This did not daunt Mountbatten, who, four years later, obtained an invitation for himself and Amanda to accompany Prince Charles on his 1980 tour of India.

In view of implacable demands by the political leadership of both Hindu and Islamic communities in British India for a separate Hindu and a separate Muslim homeland, Mountbatten conceded the notion of two nations consisting of a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan ( which incorporated East Pakistan, now Bangladesh ).

Lord and Lady Mountbatten with Muhammad Ali JinnahNotwithstanding the self-promotion of his own part in Indian independence — notably in the television series The Life and Times of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Mountbatten of Burma, produced by his son-in-law Lord Brabourne and Dominique Lapierre, and Larry Collins's Freedom at Midnight ( of which he was the main quoted source ) — his record is seen as very mixed ; one common view is that he hastened the independence process unduly and recklessly, foreseeing vast disruption and loss of life and not wanting this to occur on the British watch, but thereby actually causing it to occur, especially in Punjab and Bengal.

From 1967 until 1978, Mountbatten became president of the United World Colleges Organisation, then represented by a single college: that of Atlantic College in South Wales.

" The biography of Labour MP Tom Driberg, written by Francis Wheen, claims that — like Driberg — Mountbatten had " a sexual preference for men ".

Lord Mountbatten in 1976, by Allan Warren

In 1969 Earl Mountbatten participated in a 12-part autobiographical television series Lord Mountbatten: A Man for the Century, also known as The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, produced by Associated-Rediffusion and scripted by historian John Terraine.

Christ in Triumph over Darkness and Evil by Gabriel Loire ( 1982 ) at St. George's Cathedral, Cape Town, South Africa, in memory of Lord Mountbatten.

* August 27 – Lord Mountbatten of Burma and 3 others are assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

In 1984, Powell claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency had murdered Earl Mountbatten of Burma and that the deaths of the MPs Airey Neave and Robert Bradford were carried out by the USA in order to stop Neave's policy of integration for Northern Ireland.

Mountbatten and members of his family were killed by a bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

* The Rt Hon The Countess Mountbatten of Burma ( Lord Milford Haven's first cousin once-removed, great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria through her daughter The Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine )

Hough bases his account on conversations with the Mirrors long-time editor Hugh Cudlipp, supplemented by the recollections of the scientist Solly Zuckerman and of Mountbatten ’ s valet, William Evans.

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 ).

Alarmed at the idea of an independent Hyderabad in the heart of Indian territory, Sardar Patel approached the governor general of India, Lord Mountbatten who advised him to resolve the issue without the use of force.

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.

Mountbatten ’ s reaction to the breakthrough is recorded by Pyke's biographer David Lampe: