George Duke of Kent

1902 – 1942 · Generation XXXVI · House of Windsor

Prince George was born at York Cottage on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk on 20 December 1902, the fourth son of the future George V and Queen Mary. His elder brothers included the future Edward VIII and George VI. After a tutor and a preparatory school at Broadstairs he followed them, at thirteen, into the naval colleges at Osborne and Dartmouth. He was commissioned in the Royal Navy and served on HMS Iron Duke, on the Atlantic Fleet flagship HMS Nelson and, from 1928, on HMS Durban on the America and West Indies Station, before leaving active service in March 1929.

Out of uniform he did something no member of the royal family had done before, taking posts as a civil servant, first at the Foreign Office and then at the Home Office. His real enthusiasm was aviation. He qualified as a pilot in 1929 and became the first member of the royal family to fly across the Atlantic. In 1931 he and his brother Edward, then Prince of Wales, made an 18,000-mile tour of South America and opened a British Empire Exhibition in Buenos Aires. He was also a freemason, initiated in 1928, and in 1939 was elected grand master of the United Grand Lodge of England.

In October 1934, ahead of his marriage, he was created Duke of Kent. On 29 November that year he married his second cousin, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece, at Westminster Abbey, followed by an Orthodox service in the chapel at Buckingham Palace. The couple lived at 3 Belgrave Square and George later inherited the house called Coppins from his aunt, Princess Victoria. They had three children: Edward, born in 1935, Alexandra, born on Christmas Day 1936, and Michael, born on 4 July 1942.

When Edward VIII abdicated in December 1936, George became a personal naval aide-de-camp to his brother George VI. In 1937 he was given commissions in the Army and the RAF, and in October 1938 he was named governor-general of Australia, to take office in November 1939. The outbreak of the Second World War put that appointment aside. After a short spell in the Admiralty’s intelligence division as a rear admiral, he moved to the Royal Air Force in April 1940. There he gave up his senior rank to serve as a group captain on the staff of Training Command, so as not to outrank more experienced officers. From July 1941 he was an air commodore in the welfare section of the Inspector-General’s staff, touring RAF stations to see to the welfare and morale of those who served on them.

It was on such a journey that he died. On 25 August 1942 he took off from Invergordon, in Ross and Cromarty, in a Sunderland flying boat bound for Iceland. About half an hour later the aircraft came in from the sea and struck a hillside at Eagle’s Rock, near Dunbeath in Caithness. Of the fifteen men aboard, only the rear gunner survived. An RAF court of inquiry, whose findings were given to the House of Commons that October, concluded that the aircraft had left its planned track and was flying too low to clear the rising ground, and it held the captain responsible. George was thirty-nine. His son Michael was seven weeks old. He was buried first in the royal vault of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and in 1968 was moved to the Royal Burial Ground at Frogmore, where Marina was laid beside him that year. His elder son Edward, then six, succeeded him as Duke of Kent.

Place in the family

• George Duke of Kent was an uncle of Queen Elizabeth II.
• George Duke of Kent was the fifth of 6 children of King George V and Mary of Teck recorded in this archive.

Images

• George (seated, right) with his brothers and sister in 1910 (W. & D. Downey, public domain)
• The Duke at Prestwick before boarding a Ferry Command Liberator for Canada, the first Atlantic crossing by air by a member of the royal family (G. Woodbine, Royal Air Force official photographer, public domain)

One of 53 people of House of Windsor (from 1917) in this archive. The present house — it renamed itself Windsor in 1917, setting aside the German title Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → Margaret Tudor → King James V of Scotland → Mary Queen of Scots → King James I → Elizabeth Stuart → Sophia of Hanover → King George I → King George II → Frederick Prince of Wales → King George III → Edward Duke of Kent → Queen Victoria → King Edward VII → King George V → George Duke of Kent.

Read more on Wikipedia

Parents

• King George V (1865 – 1936)
• Mary of Teck (1867 – 1953)

Siblings

• King Edward VIII (1894 – 1972)
• King George VI (1895 – 1952)
• Mary Princess Royal (1897 – 1965)
• Henry Duke of Gloucester (1900 – 1974)
• John Windsor (1905 – 1919)

Sources

1. Prince George, Duke of Kent · Wikipedia
2. George, Duke of Kent, son of George V · Westminster Abbey
3. Aircraft Accident (Court of Inquiry, Findings), House of Commons written answers, 7 October 1942 · Hansard (UK Parliament)