James Bond Creator's Preposterous Plan to Outwit Nazis Revealed
The plot cooked up by Ian Fleming in September 1940, more than a decade before he created James Bond, was so brilliantly preposterous that it can now be seen as the prototype 007 mission.
Fleming, in his role as a naval intelligence officer during the Second World War, was the architect of Operation Ruthless, a daring scheme to seize a German codebook that may have inspired the plot to "From Russia With Love."
His plan, involving a staged plane crash and disguised commandos, is revealed in full at a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London.
Operation Ruthless was composed after British code breakers realized that they could not efficiently decipher messages sent by the German navy without copies of their conversion tables. Fleming hatched a plan to “obtain the loot.”
His idea was to borrow a captured Luftwaffe bomber and fake a crash to attract one of the German rescue boats picking up downed air men in the English Channel. Fleming’s men would then overpower the crew and make off with their codebook.
“Pick a tough crew of five,” he wrote “including a pilot, W/T [wireless/telegraph] operator and word-perfect German speaker. Dress them in German Air Force uniform, add blood and bandages to suit.”...
Read entire article at Times (UK)
Fleming, in his role as a naval intelligence officer during the Second World War, was the architect of Operation Ruthless, a daring scheme to seize a German codebook that may have inspired the plot to "From Russia With Love."
His plan, involving a staged plane crash and disguised commandos, is revealed in full at a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London.
Operation Ruthless was composed after British code breakers realized that they could not efficiently decipher messages sent by the German navy without copies of their conversion tables. Fleming hatched a plan to “obtain the loot.”
His idea was to borrow a captured Luftwaffe bomber and fake a crash to attract one of the German rescue boats picking up downed air men in the English Channel. Fleming’s men would then overpower the crew and make off with their codebook.
“Pick a tough crew of five,” he wrote “including a pilot, W/T [wireless/telegraph] operator and word-perfect German speaker. Dress them in German Air Force uniform, add blood and bandages to suit.”...