Earl Mountbatten

Earl Mountbatten (1900-1979), British naval officer, the son of Prince Louis Alexander of Battenberg, and great grandson of Queen Victoria, born in Windsor, Berkshire, and educated at Osborne and Dartmouth Royal Navy colleges and at Christ's College, Cambridge. Because of anti-German sentiment, his father anglicized the family name to Mountbatten in 1917. Louis entered the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1913 and held a number of successively higher ranks. In 1942, during World War II, he became chief of British commando operations. The following year he was made Supreme Allied commander in South East Asia. He was made an Earl in 1947. Mountbatten served as Viceroy of India from March to August 1947, and governor-general of the new dominion of India from August 1947 to June 1948. He was commander in the Mediterranean of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1952-1954) and first sea lord (1955-1959); he became Admiral of the Fleet in 1956. On August 27, 1979, Mountbatten was killed when a bomb, planted by terrorists of the Irish Republican Army, blew up his fishing boat in Donegal Bay, near his home in County Sligo.