Historian (3:30)

Well, I think Ian Fleming is a real enigma of an individual. He had unsuccessful career up to the point of becoming a writer, or up to the point of joining the Naval Intelligence. And he lived his whole life feeling like he wasn't a success. So that in itself I found very interesting from early on, because he obviously created this franchise, which was all his own doing, in his own imagination, which is one of the largest in the world. So I was initially very interested by him as an individual. And then when I started to read into his background and research his earlier life and his career and his wartime antics, I started to notice that a lot of James Bond, as we know the character today, and a lot of the stories are actually not as fictional as I had originally thought.

Edward Abel Smith (4:33)

And how much of that stems from Fleming's early life and to what extent were they shaped by Fleming's early life? Because that was quite turbulent, wasn't it?

Historian (4:44)

Yeah, he had a difficult upbringing. He was born in 1908 into a very affluent and influential family, which was actually the complete opposite to his grandfather, Robert Fleming, who. Who grew up in extreme poverty, so much so that actually five of his six siblings died during their childhoods in Glasgow. And Robert went on to become one of the wealthiest businessmen in the country, if not in the world. And he was transacting deals at the same level as the likes of JP Morgan. And he passed this wealth on. And so Ian grew up with a very lavish lifestyle. But as was customary at that time, when he turned 6 in 1914, Ian was shipped off to Durnford Proprietary School in Dorset. And he really struggled there, as you would imagine a six year old would. He was bullied by older children, known then as character building, but also missed his parents hugely. And in 1917, so he would have been at the school for three years at that point. His father, who he absolutely worshipped, was killed in action, and that had a Lasting impact on Fleming through his whole life, as you would imagine it would. His father had been the MP for Henley. He was a highly regarded man and actually Winston Churchill wrote his obituary and Fleming kept that framed on his desk for the rest of his life. He went to Eton College when he turned 13, the prestigious institution in Windsor, and that was really a time of two halves for him. He was incredibly sporty. He actually held on to some records. I don't know if they've been broken now, but he held onto them certainly through his life in the sporting world. He won seven out of ten events in the athletics competition, but he was very, very unenamoured by the academic curriculum and he would very openly in classrooms, describe it as irrelevant. And he was, I think, jumped before he was pushed and left Eton a term early. And he actually wrote that James Bond did the same, or the. Although Bond left for something slightly more glamorous, he was involved in a sexual encounter with a maid. So that's why he left. Fleming was down to his lack of academic achievements.

Edward Abel Smith (7:24)

So was he a bit of a rebel?

Historian (7:26)

Yeah, he absolutely was a rebel. And he was fiercely independent and probably quite entitled as well. So I can only imagine him being an absolute nightmare for the teachers to control. His mother, Eve, was sort of despairing at this point, so put him through some evening classes and sent him off to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. And aged 18, he started to. I wouldn't say thrive, but certainly there was an improvement while he was at Sandhurst for his first year. But. But unfortunately he met a girl named Peggy Barnard while he was actually competing on a sports day, and he fancied her and invited her to dinner with him that evening and she turned him down due to some prior engagements. So Fleming went in a sulk up to London and ended up contracting gonorrhoea from a prostitute and then was thrown out by his ear out of Sandhurst. And by this point his mother was despairing even further and sent him first to a clinic to get him cleaned up and then he was off to Europe to learn languages. So he went to university in Munich and he also went to university in Geneva, and from there he went and sat his exams to join the Foreign Office, which he failed. But actually he did. He did do rather well, surprisingly well, actually. He came seventh out of a class of 62 other pupils and they only accepted the top five, so he only missed out by a whisker. But that doesn't take away from the fact that by the age of 20, he had failed Pretty much in everything that he had attempted up to that point.

Edward Abel Smith (9:26)

Wasn't he labeled by one of his colleagues as the world's worst stockbroker? I mean, is that true? And what was the story there?

Historian (9:33)

It was true. And what's a shame is he found his feet when he was 23. He joined Reuters News agency and was a very successful journalist. He really found his calling and in 33 he was sent out to the Soviet Union where he covered a large show trial out there. And what's quite interesting is there's a handwritten letter to Fleming from Joseph Stalin where Fleming had requested an interview with the dictator and Stalin had written back a letter of apology and he obviously kept that with him for his whole life. So journalism suited him, but it didn't suit his lavish lifestyle. By this point, Fleming was smoking custom made cigarettes which had three different types of his favourite blended tobacco in them and he was smoking 400 each week. He was also drinking a bottle of gin a day until his doctors advised him to stop. So he moved on to drinking a bottle of whiskey a day and he drove a three litre Bugatti. And that simply, he couldn't pay for that lifestyle through his journalism. So he decided to go into the family business of finance. And through connections, he had no problem in joining a company called Cull and Co, where he was a stockbroker, and then onto somewhere called rowan Pittman in 1935. And as you say, he was absolutely terrible at the job, didn't understand what he should be doing. He had a few loyal clients who, who were loyal because of his family name rather than his reputation. And yes, he was famously said that as a stockbroker, he must have been the world's worst.

Edward Abel Smith (11:23)

So things began to change for Fleming in May 1939 when Admiral John Godfrey, the recently appointed Director of Naval Intelligence, appointed him his personal assistant. So, two questions there. What did this rule entail and what did Godfrey see in Fleming that others hadn't?

Historian (11:46)

Well, the role didn't really have much of a remit. It was very much Fleming's to shape. And as you say, he was given the role after a lunch he had with Godfrey in May 1939. And the two got on incredibly well because Godfrey was a very difficult character to work for. And I think he immediately saw that in Ian there was someone who was equally as tricky. Ian was incredibly insubordinate and right from that first lunch told Godfrey outright that he wouldn't call him sir, which was obviously the custom, and he became his assistant and he was Really a kind of a gatekeeper for Godfrey. And what really stood out was he was so bold and brash in the way that he talked to people and dealt with people in the Navy that it really suited Godfrey because that was his style as well. He took to writing on top of memos from other admirals that were meant for Godfrey. He would write not of enough importance and then sign it with his famous initial F, and then send it back if he deemed that document not worthy of his boss's time. As I said, that really suited Godfrey. If you look at the character of M, who we know was inspired pretty much completely by Godfrey, if you look through the 14 books that Fleming wrote, he describes, the words he used to describe the most are angry, brutal, dry, cold. It's important to say he didn't like how he was described or how he was depicted in the books. He said that, and I've got it here. Fleming turned me into that unsavoury character, M. And the end result did not convince nor thrill. So he was pretty put out with the fact that he was turned into.

Edward Abel Smith (13:53)

M. The Second World War broke out a few months after Fleming was appointed. How did that change his role? How was he able to bring his sort of unique talents to naval intelligence once the war was underway?

Historian (14:08)

Fleming was immediately taken by the more eccentric elements of sabotage, spying and intelligence. And he came across some guidebooks on underhand warfare that were given to agents. And when he questioned why they were so small, he was told that it was so they could be swallowed by, in one gulp with a large glass of water to stop them falling into enemy hands. And then he came across things like sores concealed in coat buttons in case someone was captured, cameras and cigarette lighters. He loved it when he heard about garlic laced chocolate that was given to spies when they were dropped into France to make their breath seem suitably French. And this really got his imagination flowing. And within a few months of war being declared, he produced a document for Godfrey seemingly off his own back. But it also shows that he. He clearly had free rein to be working on this type of thing. And the document was called the Trout Memo. And it was 51 ways of bamboozling the Enemy at Sea. And he listed in there some incredibly elaborate ideas and reading through them. My personal favorite, which was never picked up, unfortunately, was the idea of filling tins of food with explosives and then placing cooking instructions on the side in German. These would be dropped in the sea, according to Fleming. And the hope was that German U boat crews might find the tins bobbing in the ocean and then, stricken by hunger, they would heat them up according to the instructions and then cause a massive explosion. He also had other ideas, one of which became Operation Mincemeat, the idea of dropping a corpse dressed as a British naval officer off the coast of enemy territory with fake documents in his pockets. And that became a film quite recently with Johnny Flynn playing Ian Fleming.

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Historian (17:28)

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Historian (17:37)

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Edward Abel Smith (17:39)

McCrispy strips at McDonald's, that was a deception operation that was run before the invasion of Sicily. Is that correct?

Historian (17:46)

Absolutely. So that was the moving troops away from Sicily before Operation Husky. And that was originally Fleming's idea, although he didn't follow it through. But as Godfrey was flicking through this document, he did come across one idea he was happy for Fleming to go ahead with. And this was the idea to bury men in the Rock of Gibraltar in the event that it fell into enemy hands. And this was to enable the British to monitor shipping movements. Gibraltar has always been such a strategically valuable location, and it's been occupied no fewer than 15 times in the last 2,000 years. So the authorities in Britain were concerned what would happen should it fall to the enemy. So Fleming's plan, which was given the code name Operation Tracer, was all run out of Godfrey's flat, 36 Curzon street, because it was so sensitive. And after several recce of the network of tunnels within the Rock of Gibraltar, Fleming found the perfect site. It's called Lord Ainslie Shelter and he had it modified. It was about 58,000 cubic feet in size. And he put in a whopping 1666 ton tank of water. There were two viewing points, one to the east and one to the west, for spying on shipping movements. And then he fitted out with living quarters and even generators that were powered by exercise bikes. Fleming then recruited six men, this included two doctors. And they were asked to volunteer for special hazardous duties. And Fleming was very open with them from the start that he would kit out the shelter with enough supplies and enough water to allow the men to live for one year. And if the Rock was not recaptured in that time, the men would perish. And they all signed up and the men were sent to Gibraltar in August 1942, Fleming remaining in London but overseeing the operation. And they were ready at all times to be rushed to the shelter should an invasion occur. And then they would be cemented in and their spying would commence.

Edward Abel Smith (20:18)

And Fleming actually used from this operation in the plotline of one of his books as well, is that correct?

Richard Karn (20:23)

Yeah.

Historian (20:24)

So the operation never actually went ahead. Hitler's change in strategy to focus on the Eastern front meant that Gibraltar wasn't seen as enough of a target to warrant Operation Tracer. So it was shut down. And he was incredibly disappointed. But 16 years later, he was sitting in his Jamaican house called goldeneye at his gold plated typewriter and he started to write From A View to a Kill, which was a story of a group of Soviet agents buried in British territory, where they carry out sabotage missions at night. And when you read the story, everything from the living conditions the men were in through to the bike powered generators all came from Operation Tracer. And what I love about that story is that somewhat ironically, when reviewing From a View to a Kill, the Express described it as being too fanciful even for James Bond. And little did they know that actually it was probably one of his least fictional stories.

Edward Abel Smith (21:31)

Can you also tell us about Operation Ruthless and Operation Postmaster? Because these also inspired plot lines in Fleming's books after the war.

Historian (21:43)

So Operation Ruthless all came about when Fleming was spending about one day every fortnight in Bletchley park and he got to know the great Alan Turing well during that time. And by this point, Bletchley park had got their hands on several German Enigma machines. And these had wheels on them, which could be set to about 17,000 different settings to code messages. These, in turn, would then be put through a system called Stecablet, which would turn these coded messages into about 150 billion further permutations. Now, Bletchley park were intercepting about 4,000 messages a day, and the only way to start decrypting them was to have access to the latest code books. So the Germans would produce these code books and it would tell their men how to set the wheels on the machine, dependent on the time and the date to then send their message. And these books would get changed on a regular basis, and the most recent ones hadn't been captured, despite lots of trying. So Turing took this as a problem to Fleming, who came up with a quite elaborate solution. The most obvious target to capture these books was the torpedo boats. They were also known as E boats, and these were stationed in and around the English Channel, and they were there to pick up airmen, Luftwaffe airmen, I should say, who had been shot down by the mighty British air defences. These boats were incredibly nippy. They could travel at a whopping 42 knots, which meant they were just impossible to be captured by the navy. So Ian created Operation Ruthless, and the idea was that he procured a captured Heinkel 111 German bomber and it was in full working order. He also got hold of the uniforms of Luftwaffe pilots who had been captured and then recruited some of the most ruthless British commandos to carry out his mission. He wanted to take part himself, but he wasn't deemed to be fit enough to be part of it. The plan was for the captured plane and the disguised commandos to effectively join at the back of a fleet of Luftwaffe bombers as they were returning from an air raid in Britain. The plane was fitted so that it would emit smoke from its tail as it crossed the Channel. It would then fake a crash landing into the sea and await rescue. When one of the torpedo boats came to rescue it, the commandos would jump out, they would overpower it, kill the crew on board the boat, take it back with its code books to Bletchley Park. And this plan was met with a huge amount of optimism and it was all put into place and it was ready to go. But unfortunately, it was scrapped at the last minute when Turing and his team intercepted a message from the Germans saying that the torpedo boats needed to be relocated so they would no longer pick up stricken pilots. But in Fleming's fifth book, From Russia With Love, it's all about capturing a cipher machine and using bait to capture a Cipher machine, albeit in Operation Ruthless. The bait was a Heinkel 111 Luftwaffe plane in from Russia. We love the bait was a beautiful Russian agent called Tatiana.

Edward Abel Smith (25:35)

And so what about Operation Postmaster? This one did come to fruition, didn't it? And it inspired elements of an operation and you only lived twice, I believe. Can you tell us about that?

Historian (25:48)

So Operation Postmaster was, as you say, one of the operations that actually did come off during the war. And it's been hailed as one of the most daring missions in the conflict and has had maybe not quite as much attention as maybe it deserves. It all started with a request to Fleming from Bletchley Park. Effectively, multiple messages to German authorities of Allied shipping movements in the Atlantic Ocean were being intercepted and sent from the neutral Spanish islands of Ecuadorial guinea, which is in western Africa. And Bletchley park were able to pinpoint that these messages were actually coming from a boat in the harbour of Santa Isabel, which was on the island of Fernando Po. And this boat was called the Duchessa de Aosta, and it was controlled by one Captain Specht, who sounds like a Bond villain in himself. He was a longtime fascist supporter. And the request to Fleming was to effectively destroy the ship and therefore stop any further messages being transmitted. So Fleming partnered with the Special Operations Executive, the soe, with Colin Gubbins at the lead, and they quickly decided that it was politically too risky to actually destroy the Duchessa de Oosta in neutral Spanish territory. So they planned something far more subtle. They decided they would carry out some simple piracy and actually capture the boat and steal it. So to do this, the first thing, like with Operation Ruthless, was to recruit a crack team. And this was led by the deeply religious Dunkirk survivor Gus Marsh Phillips, and He was codenamed W01. And his second in command was the handsome, very athletic Geoffrey Appleyard, codenamed W02. I'm sure among the 10 men with them, there was a W07 as well, and they became known as the Maid Honour Force, named after the converted fishing trawler, the Maid Honour. And this had been modified into a Q ship. It's right out of one of the. Right out of a spy novel. It's. It had a two pound gun and 100 rounds of ammunition installed in a fake wheelhouse. It had five pounder spigot mortars, it had Bren light machine guns, it had Tommy guns, rifles and grenades all concealed within. And the men travelled to Lagos where they awaited orders from Fleming to intercept the Duchessa de Osta, as well as its accompanying tug which was called the Licombe. Now, in order to be able to capture the boats, Fleming knew that it was important to get Captain Specht and as many of his men off them as possible to avoid resistance. So he tasked a local agent called Richard Lippitt to arrange a party for the boat's officers to attend. And they settled for Casino Terrace Restaurant. Again could be something right out of a Bond novel, which wasn't ideal because it was very close to the harbour and to the two boats, but it was the only available option for them. To ensure that the officers were suitably enticed to attend the party, unlimited amounts of alcohol were laid on and several local whorehouses were asked to provide girls to also attend. And on the night of 14 January 1942, 10 enemy officers and 15 scantily clad prostitutes sat down for dinner. The men were all strategically placed with their backs to the harbour. They erected particularly bright lights to shine in as well, to try and obscure the view as much as possible. Alcohol was flowing in extreme quantities. All the staff were told to continually keep glasses topped up. Meanwhile, the Maid Honour Force made their way into the harbour on two tugs. There was the Vulcan and the Nuneaton. Two canoes were dispatched and initially, actually they raided the wrong vessel and found it empty. But eventually they did board the Link Comba first they met no resistance. There were two guards on board, but they immediately jumped into the sea and swam to shore when they saw the men with their blacked out faces and all their gear coming aboard. Meanwhile, one of the tugs silently pulled up alongside the Duchessa de Oster and seven heavily armed men boarded the boat and then successfully arrested all 29 crew aboard. There was only one injury and that came from a charging pig that knocked one of the men off his feet. Both boats were secured and they attached explosives to the anchor chains. And then with one short sharp blast from Marsh Philip's whistle, the whole bay was shaken awake by a mighty explosion which was heard for miles and the Dutchessa de Oster and the Nicomba were towed away and out of sight. By the time that the drunk officers managed to get out of their dinner and see what was happening, and they looked on in disbelief to see the harbour was empty, as you say. This was used as inspiration for Bleming's book, you Only Live Twice and there is a covert mission by commandos. The only difference is they weren't capturing a ship, they were trying to capture a fortress in the instead.

Edward Abel Smith (31:52)

There's one final element of Fleming's wartime work. I'd like to ask about. And that's the 30 assault units, an intelligence gathering team that Fleming created. I mean, can you tell us about the work that they did and Fleming's.

Historian (32:06)

Role in that 30 assault unit was very much Fleming's creation. And off the back of the success of Operation Postmaster, he wanted to create something that was more permanent. So rather than doing one off missions and operations, he wanted to have a dedicated force. And this became 30 assault units, also known as 30 AU. And in a way similar to the likes of the sas, it was made up of a group of mavericks. They were very unruly, didn't dress in uniform. Fleming found it incredibly difficult to control them.

Edward Abel Smith (32:47)

Is it true that he labelled them the Indecent Assault Unit because of their antics?

Historian (32:51)

Yeah, I mean, they became known as 30 indecent assault units by Fleming. He became incredibly frustrated with them, firstly because he felt like he was losing control if you have a group like that. Fleming remained in London and pulled the strings from London, whereas his men were out. They took part in multiple operations. They were at the front during Operation Torch, which was the invasion of North Africa, the invasion of Sicily, Operation Husky, then the invasion of mainland Western Italy, Operation Avalanche, and then probably their most success came from Operation Overlord, also known as D Day. And Fleming was very frustrated that he couldn't go with them on these missions, partly because he wasn't physically up to it, he wasn't trained to do it, he didn't have the right fitness level to do it. But also because he had such a senior role. By this point, he was a commander, which was the rank that he gave to James Bond in his novels. He was deemed to be too much of a risk. He was captured because of his knowledge and given how much information he had from working so closely with Godfrey. But 30 assault units captured lots and lots of intelligence that was brought back to Britain before the enemy had time to destroy it. And probably the piece that was most important to Fleming and was most personal to Fleming was, was the work he did around the V1 and the V2 rockets. In March 1944, so the year of Operation Overlord, he had asked his loyal girlfriend, called Muriel Wright, to drive her motorbike to pick up some of his custom made Moorland cigarettes. By this point, he'd had them embossed with three gold rings to denote his rank as commander. And while collecting these cigarettes, she was killed in a V1 rocket attack in London. And Fleming wasn't a sentimental person, but he never talked about Muriel after having the gruesome job of identifying her body. But then he became obsessed with abolishing as much of the V1 and V2 paraphernalia as possible, I presume, to avoid further attacks on Britain. So after landing in Normandy, he sent his men deep behind enemy lines and they destroyed multiple launch sites, as well as capturing huge amounts of intelligence. And a lot of this V1 and V2 technology that his men captured was eventually sent to the US and was used in part during the Apollo space program. So helped to put the first man on the moon.

Edward Abel Smith (35:54)

You've obviously done a lot of research into Fleming's life. What is it, do you think, about his personality that enabled him to come up with these madcap schemes to bamboozle the Germans, but also the incredible plot lines in his Bond films? And what is it, what distinguishes him from other people of his time that gave him the capability to do this?

Historian (36:16)

Well, I think a lot of it was circumstance because he worked under Admiral Godfrey, who gave him such a long leash that he was able to really let his imagination go wild. During the time of the Second World War, the SOE Special Operations Executive, which Fleming kind of worked very closely with, were also coming up with a lot of these very kind of eccentric and elaborate schemes. And really, a lot of his books are based on some of those really eccentric ideas that he came up with during the war. And I think that adds a whole new dimension to them, and I think that's why it makes them so appealing, because it might seem like they are absolutely outlandish and could never actually happen. But in reality, in the time that Fleming was serving during the conflict, these were exactly the types of things that were going on. James Bond as a character was a amalgamation of lots of people that Fleming met during the war and people who served alongside or underneath Fleming. But really, he was the person that Fleming always wanted to be. Fleming wanted to live this lifestyle where he was smoking all these cigarettes every week and he was drinking his martinis and spending lots of time with beautiful women, but at the same time, he wanted to then be able to trek through the desert or be able to jump out of aeroplanes and take part in these operations. Of course, the reality is you can't have the two together, but in the fictional character of James Bond, he was able to do that. So really, I see the books and the character as him sort of living out the wartime life that he never had, which in a way is a huge shame, because he made huge contributions to the war and they should never be underestimated. But I think because he was never, you know, he never fired a gun himself. He was never involved in battle directly himself. He never really was given the credit for what he achieved.

Spencer Mizzen (38:42)

That was the author, podcaster and documentary maker Edward April Smith speaking to Spencer Mizzen. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.

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