Prince Christoph of Hesse

Prince Christoph served in the Luftwaffe Research Office and, in 1942, he joined the staff of a fighter unit, Jagdgeschwader 53. He was based primarily in Tunisia and Sicily, with missions to Malta. After the Allied Invasion of Italy, Christoph was recalled to Germany, but was killed during his return. On 7 October 1943, his plane, a Siebel 104, collided with a hill in the Apennine Mountains near Forlì, Italy. His body and the body of his copilot were found two days later and were buried on the site.

According to the historian Hugo Vickers, Prince Christoph became "disenchanted" with the Nazi Party by the time of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942. He told his mother: "The death of a certain dangerous and cruel man is the best news I had in a long time."

Christoph married his second cousin, once removed Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark on 15 December 1930 in Kronberg im Taunus, Germany. Princess Sophie was the youngest daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, and the sister of the future Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Prince Christoph of Hesse was born in Frankfurt, the fifth son of Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse and Princess Margaret of Prussia. His father, Frederick Charles, a scion of the House of Hesse, was elected King of Finland in 1918, when Finland declared its independence after the collapse of the Russian Empire. However, the overwhelming Republican victories in the 1919 Finnish parliamentary election effectively ended any ambitions for a Finnish monarchy.

Prince Christoph Ernst August of Hesse (14 May 1901 – 7 October 1943) was a nephew of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He was an SS-Oberführer in the Allgemeine SS and an officer in the Luftwaffe Reserve, killed on active duty in a plane crash during World War II. His brother-in-law, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, fought on the British side and married the future Queen Elizabeth II after the war.