Lord Mountbatten

Biography

Louis Mountbatten was born Prince Louis of Battenberg on 25 June 1900 at Frogmore House, Windsor, the son of Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse. He attended Lockers Park School and entered the Royal Naval College at Osborne in 1913, served at sea in the First World War, and spent two terms at Christ's College, Cambridge, from 1919. In 1922 he married Edwina Ashley.

Between the wars he specialised in naval signals. In 1939 he took command of the destroyer HMS Kelly, which was sunk off Crete in May 1941. That October he was made head of Combined Operations, overseeing raids on Bruneval and St Nazaire and the costly Dieppe raid. In 1943 he became Supreme Allied Commander in South East Asia, where his forces retook Burma from the Japanese.

Appointed Viceroy of India in February 1947, he decided that partition was unavoidable and brought forward British withdrawal, creating India and Pakistan in August 1947. He stayed on as independent India's first Governor-General until June 1948, and in October 1947 accepted the Maharaja of Kashmir's accession to India. He was made Viscount and then Earl Mountbatten of Burma.

Returning to the navy, he commanded the Mediterranean Fleet, served as First Sea Lord from 1955 and was Chief of the Defence Staff from 1959 to 1965. On 27 August 1979 he was killed, along with others on board, when the Provisional IRA bombed his boat at Mullaghmore in County Sligo. He received a ceremonial funeral at Westminster Abbey and was buried at Romsey Abbey.